Perfect 10

I suppose London 2012 hasn’t gone too badly after all, has it?

Britain have won a record haul of golds, London has looked stunning during the road races and Lord Coe has cosied up to the royals at every available opportunity. And, to top it all off, when Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah triumphed on Saturday evening the commentators informed us that we had all played our part in their success. Too right. Can’t wait for my segment of the medal to drop through the post…

To be honest, I’m not sure I deserve a segment. True, I have put in some considerable hours of TV watching and have sometimes had more than one screen going at once but I’m not convinced I’m working quite as hard as our athletes.

What I have been doing is blogging occasionally. Perhaps you’ve seen the tales of my wife’s violence – auditioning for the hammer event maybe? – or my call for the introduction of more ‘sitting down’ sports? No? Well, there’s still time and, in the meantime, let me present you with 10 things that simply have to change in this country following these games:

1) Cycling must become our official national sport. Whatever piece of paper it is that Cameron, Coe or the Queen have to sign, get it in front of them now and pass them the shiniest pen we can get our hands on. Then, call up the Lightning Seeds and get them to re-record Three Lions so that ‘cycling’s coming home, it’s coming home’ now resounds throughout the streets.

2) There should always be individual channels for individual sports. Who wouldn’t want the chance to tune into nothing but Water Polo whenever we fancy?

3) All young girls who ask for a pony for Christmas should be given one. The Equestrian golds will flood in for years to come. Trust me.

4) We must all say 'Ahoy!' rather than 'Hello!' when answering the phone in honour of Chris 6-golds Hoy.

5) Veledromes must be built in every city and cycling lines as wide as bus lines should be drawn on all our roads. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

5) It should be legal to use guns and bows and arrows in public and it should be deemed perfectly acceptable to shoot pigeons (clay or otherwise). Can’t see many problems with this either.

6) Fans should boycott football stadiums until footballers stop arguing back, swearing and playacting. Every time this happens on the pitch, the game should stop and all players should be forced to watch clips of Olympians on the big screen to show them how true sportsmen and women act.

7) Leisure centres should be free to use and pitches, courts, etc. should be free to hire so that there is no barrier to the development of future Olympians.

8) Next time, we should ‘forget’ to invite China and USA so that we can top the medal table…

9) We need to make sure there is a ‘next time’ – let’s rename London as ‘Londinium’ so that the IOC thinks ‘where is this city? They’ve never had the Olympics before so let’s choose them’. It’s a flawless plan.

10) The opening ceremony should be turned into a West End show and should then tour around the country with members of the public being given the chance to star in it as extras.

There you go, that’s my list. Undoubtedly, Britain would be a finer place if these ideas were to be put into action. But am I just one man and so what can I do?

Or perhaps you have even better suggestions? What would you like to see change?