The Last Leg

Not quite up to Hannah Cockroft's speed

The summer holidays are over. I feel like I am on my last legs, but more on the past few weeks another time. This post is of course a reference to Channel 4's quite brilliant paralympics coverage. This time from Rio it's less about the ad breaks and more about the achievements of Team GB as they bask in much deserved glory. It's about learning people's amazing stories. And about what we Brits do best - irreverence. The Last Leg's now well-established team of Adam Hills, Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker have cheered up my evenings for the past week, and made the world seem a better place. Their unparalleled enthusiasm and passion for the event is infectious, and their ability to turn zany into cult status is sheer genius. The Brookworm dance. Jonnie Peacock in a tutu. Jody Cundy finding his inner Zen against all provocation. Shower caps for the Zimbabwean rowing team. Swimming coats. Johnny Vegas powerlifting. Johnny Vegas just about everywhere. Never has sport been so funny, so powerful, or so inspiring. I'm also very grateful for the nightly round-ups as so much of the "action", to use Clare Balding's favourite word, happens overnight. During the Rio 2016 Olympics I missed all the swimming and athletics as most races were on around one in the morning and the BBC completely lacked an evening highlights programme so I could catch up the next day. Yes, I know that technically it was all out there online, but sometimes I just need someone to do things for me. Here, I get the more earnest view with Clare for half an hour, then The Last Leg take the piss for an hour, and then a bit of live stuff happens before I crash out in bed. I feel informed, involved and enthused. What's more, I feel proud.

Compare this to the Last Night of the Proms, which this year I had to turn off in disgust. (Or rather turn back to the Paralympics.) I am so not in the mood for jingoistic nonsense and flag waving when it's about Rule Britannia and Land Of Hope And Glory. (And as Alex Brooker pointed out, these things have no place in the Paralympics either - why sing a national anthem about God saving a multi-millionaire when there are all those disabled people out there?) To me, all that smacks of UKIP and the Tories trying to turn our country back to the days of Empire, when we had no National Health Service, purely elitist education, sickly air in our cities, no European Union to listen to, and hanging and smacking were allowed (although not necessarily in that order). Frankly, they have almost succeeded.

I don't often prefer sport over music, but this year, we are living in very different times. Thank you, The Last Leg, for reminding me that there is something to love about being British after all. And it seems it took an Australian to do it.

Our family's medal haul for the summer. My daughter got one for reading.
My husband got one for running. I got one for a bike ride I didn't do.

Rio 2016

I greeted Rio 2016 without much enthusiasm. A bit like I'm greeting life at the moment. For what's the point? This will surely be the last Olympics when we can enter as Team GB, when a Scottish tennis player will carry the Union Jack at the head of our team during the opening ceremony. It will be the last Olympics before government austerity bites and all the sports funding dies out. From now on, it will just be shitty old England failing dismally and getting nowhere unless your parents are rich enough to send you to Eton with all the Saudi sheiks and Russian oligarchs.

How we all long to return to London 2012, when the nation still embraced multiculturalism, diversity, and helping those worse off than ourselves to achieve great things. We welcomed foreigners, basked in sunshine, made our children excited, and grinned from ear to ear. Britain felt good. Britain was good. I was there at the 30th Olympiad. In Newcastle. It feels like an age ago. Everything seems to have gone wrong since.

So, with it not happening on my doorstep this time, and with me not feeling the slightest bit proud to be British right now I had decided to pretty much ignore the Olympics in Rio.

But, you know, the sight of Tom Daley in his swimming trunks does wonders for drumming up a bit of enthusiasm.

So I've been watching quite a bit of diving this week. And gymnastics. And it's given me a flicker of hope in the world. Despite the doping scandals, at least the Olympics is still a place where stupidity, madness and a whole lot of money can't win the day. Just a lot of talent and hard work. Unlike in EU referendums. Or (dreading November) American Presidential elections.

The British seem to be feeling very at home in Rio. The lousy weather, boiling hot one minute, freezing cold wind and lashing rain the next. Buildings a last-minute rush job. Nothing quite working properly. A cycle track being gaffa taped back together after a crash. A swimming pool turning lurid green. Everyone at risk from a nasty virus. It's kind of how we expected London 2012 to be. So no wonder we are well prepared for coping with adversity, and things just being a little bit rubbish.

Good luck, Team GB. I will miss you.