Turin: a Rum Do, But One That Still Passes the 007 Test

My friend’s son is currently rooting round the base of the great ruck of human knowledge as questing, purposeful and generally terrier-like as Matt Dawson. No sooner has one question been recycled than in he goes again, burrowing for second, third, fourth and fifth-phase explanation.

Recently my friend sent his son to the local rugby union club for an hour-long session of coaching. When he went to pick him up again he was surprised to find the boys still standing round the coach, unmuddied and clearly not having played at all.

"What happened?" my friend asked as he and the boy drove away from the ground. "Mr Bradbury said we were going to be playing tag rugby and there wouldn’t be any scrums, so I asked why not," the boy replied sweetly. At the end of 60 minutes these potential successors to Dallaglio and Johnson had learned nothing about playing rugby, but were fully versed on the function of the spinal column and its relationship to the central nervous system. "Would you like to go again?" my friend asked. "Oh yes," his son replied enthusiastically, "Mr Bradbury hasn’t finished explaining the difference between quadriplegic and paraplegic yet."

On Sunday we all went for a walk. "Are you looking forward to the Winter Olympics?" my friend’s son asked me.

"Yes," I said. Which is true. I am very excited about the forthcoming Turin Games. Admittedly to my untutored eye the men’s downhill has never quite recovered from the retirement of the splendidly named Italian Herbert Plank, yet despite that I love the Winter Olympics. This, in part at least, stems from the fact that when I was a child the quadrennial polo-neck and cow-bell-shaking festival usually coincided with one of those illnesses that involve lying on the sofa watching TV while being brought warm drinks and ice cream at regular intervals by a kindly female family member. (A lifestyle, incidentally, that I fully intend to adopt on a permanent basis just as soon as I finish teaching my daughter to make hot buttered rum and shut the door of the freezer properly.)

"Which do you like best, the Winter Olympics or the Summer Olympics?" the boy asked. There are a number of good reasons to love the Winter Olympics - Britain gets more medals at them than the Australians for a start - but I knew I must choose my answer carefully, or risk being sucked into a maelstrom of clarifications, the answering of which, since we were at that point marching up a steep hill, would likely have resulted in me collapsing with oxygen deprivation.

There is, for example, the luge. The luge is one of my all-time favorite sports. This is partly because it attracts devil-may-care eccentrics such as Harvey Hook of the US Virgin Islands (at 52 the oldest competitor in Olympic history), but mainly because luge-ing is the only sport that sounds like the sort of thing that might carry a mandatory custodial sentence on the Isle of Man.

Then there is the lack of any national expectation. We live in a country that grinds to a shuddering halt the minute a single white flake falls from the sky. (It is fair to say that the biggest danger to Britain is not bird flu, but bird dandruff. If starlings ever got scurf the country would be paralyzed for months on end.)

As a result we can relax and watch, content in the knowledge that such is our general ineptitude in icy conditions, failure will not result in wailing, finger-pointing and demands that the UK taxpayer stump up for 60 all-weather cross-country skiing arenas so that next time around, the woolly hat-wearing equivalent of Mark Lewis-Francis can come 15th. Frankly, it is a huge relief to be able to watch as the brakeman fails to alight on the back of the four-man bob and makes futile pursuit down the track flailing his arms like a drunk commuter chasing the last train home, without having to ask what the pictures tell us about Life In Blair’s Britain.

I didn’t say any of these things to my friend’s son, however. What I said to him was: "I like the Winter Games best because it comes out higher in the 007 test. This supreme examination of the validity of any sporting endeavor is simple to apply. You just think of the sport and ask: ‘Would James Bond do it?’ Would James Bond do ski jumping? Undoubtedly. Would James Bond do triple jumping? I don’t think so. The giant slalom - yes. The shot putt - no way. Bobsleigh - definitely. Bicycling - highly unlikely. And then there is the winter biathlon - skiing and shooting - which is not only an event 007 would enjoy, but also a plot summary of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service."

"Yes," my friend’s son said after a five-second pause, "but would James Bond do ice dancing?"

"Probably not," my friend answered, "though there are clearly several ice dancers he would do. And on that note, I think we should say no more questions about the Winter Olympics, and enjoy this splendid view in peace and quiet."

And his son said: "Why?"