So it's official, England's capital will host the 2012 Olympic Games, our city's clean
friendliness winning through in the summer of 2005 to beat other strong contenders like
half-arsed New York or Russia's Siberian province. In the end we won the event by just four
votes, and while the French cried foul, every Great Briton knew that our victory was the
result of last minute appearances before the judging panel from David Beckham, whose
intense verbal reasoning skills and logical erudition can't fail to have impressed the voters,
and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who put his enormous global popularity to good use. Indeed, Blair's innate
humility and willingness to do the right thing may very well have been the deciding factor.
"We spent a lot of time and effort creating a bid we could all be proud of." Said team leader Sebastian Coe who
was found by CNN reporters wandering through Singapore covered in streamers. "Now that the work is over our
celebrations can begin. Most of my colleagues are looking to spend the rest of this decade getting drunk and
slapping each other on the back, and who can blame them? Everyone who backed the bid, indeed everybody
from the British Isles who didn't actively oppose it, deserves to share in our satisfaction." Coe then turned
directly to the television camera and added: "Well done you!"
Being granted the honour of hosting the games in 2012 will mean the regeneration of
large parts of the East End, including places no human has ventured into since their
destruction by the Luftwaffe in the second world war. There also promises to be an overhaul of the city's
transport system and the construction of many new sporting facilities, but all that strenuous stuff can wait.
In the short-term London will puff out its collective chest and take a lead from the Greeks, who approached
preparations for the 2004 games by holding a six-year party, then trying to sort everything out in the last
eighteen months. Everything went fine in the end, except that the country's now permanently in debt.
Pride in London's success is expected to swell even further as the months go by, with an enormous firework
display scheduled for every Autumn prior to 2012 in which colourful explosions will spell out phrases such as:
'Congratulations, You're All Extremely Special' above the River Thames, while planes fly over trailing banners
with inspiring sentiments like: 'This Is The Best City In The World' and 'Excellent Work Citizens, Treat
Yourself To Another Cake'.
"We are the bestest!" London resident Sadie Trailmix (28) told Home Defence, a girl who has spent the past
year forcing companies and individuals to support our bid. "That's official - it's been confirmed by the Olympic
committee! I don't care what people say about the muggings, gun crime, terrorist suspects, poverty, teenage
knife gangs or crack squirrels. If any of these problems really do exist in inner city London I'm sure we can cure
them with the power of sport. But boring social issues can wait, at least until Londoners have rejoiced in their
city and themselves by going on a bender for half a decade. There's a time and a place for work, and that's
2010 in Bethnal Green. Right now I need to be treated like a Queen!"
Another event scheduled for the extremely self-satisfied seven year build-up to these games is a Royal Military
Greatness Parade entitled 'British Empire Reborn 2012' which promises to be a huge, guffawing, ruling class cavalcade. There will also be regular lectures at Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Church Of England's new recruitment theme: 'If Jesus Were Alive Today He'd Be A Londoner'. Meanwhile plans are afoot to launch a new 'London Rejoice' Bank Holiday when everyone will have a day off to consider how wonderful the city is, and the summer of 2008 has been set aside for gloating, with British Airways offering cheap flights for Englanders to hop the channel and cock a snook at the French. Finally the Mayor of London, Ken 'Job For Life' Livingstone, has scheduled a series of meetings so the cream of the
capital's media, intelligentsia, and high society - from Booker nominee Zadie Smith to Big Brother's Maxwell -
can get together to thank each other for being so special and generally be smug.
But as England prepares for its longest period of sustained pomposity and schadenfraude since the post-war
years, what of the one time 2012 favourites? For a long while Parisians were dead-certs to reap the benefits of
Olympic hosting, and their preparations were well underway. In fact, years of acting superior in the presence of
le rosbif had been planned before notification arrived that they'd lost. HDUK managed to get through to a
member of the French team before it was compelled to disband and look for work in the garlic and le piat dior
industries.
Our man had this to say: "So you won, so what? You think we give le merde? No. Now go away, I'm due down
the labour exchange."
