How huge Hugh filled the clogs of Grapes

Great artists are often visionaries. Evidence of that was to be found on the front page of the newspapers on Monday. In one corner a photo of the pale and haunted face of Paula Radcliffe, in the other Edvard Munch's The Scream, stolen from an Oslo museum the previous day.

A cursory glance at the two offered convincing proof that when the Norwegian sat down at his easel in 1893 the image of utter desolation that popped into his head was not that of some anonymous angst-ridden Scandinavian, but of the British marathon runner crouched, head in hands, on a kerb outside the Greek equivalent of the Carphone Warehouse (if further confirmation was needed it was plain that Madonna, the other painting that was taken, is BBC presenter Suzy Perry sashaying sensually towards the artist while trying to explain what an Yngling is).

The tortured Norse genius had seen the future. Plucky Paula's golden dreams had melted like butter in the merciless Aegean sun (© this column) and - more painful yet - the crowning glory of his artistic endeavours would end up valued at exactly the same sum as Wayne Rooney.

The Scream is only one name given to Munch's most famous work. The other is The Cry. With what we know now it is to be hoped that if and when the painting is returned it will be given a third and more appropriate title - The Blub.

If Radcliffe has given us the most visually artistic moment of this Olympics there is little doubt who has provided the poetry. True, Britain's plucky triathlete Andrew Johns delighted many of us by announcing that after the first two stages of the event "I had spent all my biscuits" but that was a mere haiku compared with the blank verse epics delivered more or less daily by the BBC's veteran cycling commentator Hugh Porter.

There are many of us who felt that the Olympics would never recover from the retirement last time around of David Vine. Grapes, as he is known to his millions of fans around the globe, was peerless. The man's ability to interpret the grunts, wheezes and yells issued by Bulgarian 105kg weightlifters and render them into pithy English is never likely to be equalled (and that is hardly surprising, since Vine had spent his junior years honing his craft by doing something similar for Eddie Waring on It's A Knockout). When the Vinemeister went, he left a big pair of clogs to fill. Luckily Hugh Porter has huge feet.

In fairness it must be noted that the man from Wolverhampton is not universally popular with cycling fans. They tend to feel that the fact he kept calling Bradley Wiggins as Bradley McGee and seems to be under the impression that the Sydney Olympics took place earlier this year are negatives. What's more they are irritated by his habit of conflating the names of several foreign riders into a single Esperanto moniker - Lavondernados! - of a type usually only dreamed up by the parents of American sprinters.

I cannot agree with this assessment. Porter does indeed spend much of his time talking gibberish, but it is old-fashioned belted-gaberdine-mac-with-a- quarter-of-Payne's-army-and-navy-drops-in-the-pocket-and-an-odour-of-paraffin sort of British gibberish. A type of gibberish which, like the cry of the corncrake or the croak of the natterjack toad, we hear far too little of these days as it is forced out of its natural habitat on our airwaves by sub-coffee commercial banter imported from the Americas by somebody who thought it would make a cute addition to the landscape. While the rest of the BBC team in Athens look like they unwind with a workout in the gym, Hugh sounds like he unwinds by sorting out biscuit tins full of galvanised nails in his shed.

What's more, Porter's Black Country accent is brilliantly suited to track cycling, a sport which, despite space-age helmets, carbon-fibre bikes and suits so tight-fitting they may well come out of a dispenser in the gents, still retains a strong whiff of shaving soap, boiled cabbage and those disinfectant rings they put in urinals.

It is the non-canine answer to greyhound racing, and the fact that Hugh's voice is the aural equivalent of corrugated iron matches it marvellously.

"He's steamrollering round the track," Porter cries in the tones of a man gargling with a whelk, "he's got wings on his wheels. He's turned up the wick and he's literally smoked them."

This may be total rubbish but is frankly 10 times better than listening to Craig Doyle, an Irishman so twinkly he makes Des Lynam look like a stealth bomber, straining to generate some sexual chemistry with Clare Balding.

The last time I witnessed anything quite like that scene was when I was teenager and a drunken friend tried to set fire to a sugar beet field. If Edvard Munch had been around to witness it, I'm betting he would really have been inspired.