Gstaad
Far be it from me to give advice to the Queen — last I heard she is one wise and experienced lady — but she’s dining this week with the 13-member IOC evaluation commission, which is charged with judging the various bids of cities trying to land the 2012 Olympic Games. Feign sickness, Ma’am, the worst thing that can happen to London after Ken Livingstone and traffic wardens is the Games. I know, I know, Athens were the best Games ever, so why shouldn’t London have its turn? Well, plenty of reasons, and none of them boring. Athens had no Underground, no good roads to speak of, an airport hastily assembled to welcome Charles Lindbergh in 1927, and athletic facilities inferior to those of any junior high school in the great state of South Dakota. The Games rectified all that, with state-of-the-art roads, stadiums galore, an airport which makes Heathrow look like the French garrison’s at Dien Bien Phu, and an Underground fit for Kings Farouk and Fahd, and any other spoiled fatties from down south.
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But — at a price. Greece is now in debt until the year 4032, give or take a year, and that is only if the EU powers that be give us a favourable rate. (Rwanda and Swaziland are also willing to help us, and we have dispatched a team of bankers to negotiate. Alas, last we heard some of them had been boiled and eaten, but nothing has been confirmed.) When Athens first tried to bid for the 1996 Games, the centenary of the Olympics, my childhood friend Spyro Metaxas, of Metaxas brandy fame, was appointed head of the Greek delegation. His budget was $950 million dollars, which may sound small, but, as he says, if one does not overcharge in order to get kickbacks, it is more than sufficient.
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