East End to give us must-see reality TV
Things could be worse, you tend to conclude, when you consider the catalogue of violence, rejection, scorn, blackmail and hospitalisation Billy has been subjected to over the years.
But the redemptive powers of sport were in evidence this week when Billy enjoyed a rare day in the sun carrying the Olympic torch through Albert Square. Knowing their audience well, however, his paymasters had a little more work in store for the rare-do-well. A cameo in British sporting history was one thing, but to keep viewers watching you still have to throw in the emergency birth of a great granddaughter.
It was a fitting prologue to the greatest soap opera of them all.
For two distinct Olympics will start in earnest this morning. There is the Games of Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps and Kenenisa Bekele, during which we will frequently draw breath and make whistling noises of appreciation.
But while we await the arrival on stage of the super humans, there is the mountain of human drama in between that will keep us tuned in. Keep us glued to sports we wouldn’t, ordinarily, pull the blinds for if they pitched up in our back yards.
We might not see any fresh lives delivered in London this next fortnight, but we will see many fulfilled. And we will sit just as enthralled by the legion of dreams dashed and the oceans of tears shed.
It is the perfect television format — 10,000 athletes contained in a village they’ve worked all their lives to reach. Big Brother meets It’s A Knockout. It can hardly be long — my money is on Rio — before the first cameras are installed inside Olympic Village bedrooms, likely to be a profitable exercise if recent reports of antics at previous Games are to be believed.
But we will need no diary room. Because these people already spill everything in full view.
That’s what we gather to see. To see Derek Redmond hobble up the home straight in Barcelona with his father as a physical and emotional crutch. To see Mary Decker felled and raging. The Dream Team beaten. Eric the Eel splash gamely on. Little Kerri Strug in the arms of her coach after nailing a vault on a sprained ankle to seal team gymnastics gold, but shatter her individual chances.
Ideally, if it’s at all possible to arrange, we’d like to see a life saved, like Canadian sailor Lawrence Lemieux managed in Seoul, when he veered off his silver medal course to pull a couple of Singaporeans out of the drink.
And, let’s face it, a few drug tests failed will only add a tasty layer of scandal to the intrigue, though we will shake our heads.
We want to see shambles, unfairness, regret and shame. And in that regard, Athletics Ireland got us off to a strong start before the thing got going at all.
This year, we have a few plotlines to keep in mind. Oscar Pistorius, of course, who probably belongs among the superhumans, wherever he finishes in the 400m.
Dong-hyun is back too and South Korea’s legally blind archer’s eye is already in.
And we wait to see if poor old Matt Emmons, the nervous gunman, is finally trigger happy, having blown shooting golds in Athens and Beijing by twice twitching on his last shot.
A man will run proudly under no flag — Guor Marial, a refugee from the Sudan war, will truck alone in the marathon while South Sudan organises itself.
While all kinds of preconceptions will be scotched. Italian kayaker Josefa Idem will mock the restrictions of age, by returning to an eighth Games at 47. Gymnast Oksana Chusovitina, at 37, will tumble among the teenagers, but still dream of winning. Malaysian shooter Nur Suryani Mohamed Taibi takes part at 34 weeks pregnant. You assume Billy Mitchell remains on standby.
There will, as always, be plenty of scope to unload our prejudices. The need for so many races where men and women cross swimming pools while handicapped by unnatural arm positions will be debated. The dressage will be roundly laughed at. And we’ll wonder, once more, if the exchange of gold for dignity is a fair reward for the waddling walkers.
But we’ll watch all of it and while we gasp at greatness and at history being made, we’ll all find our own small dramas that grip just as tightly.
