Now that was a right spectacle

10:21am Friday 11th April 2008

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AFTER THE humiliation that was the much-vaunted opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow, it took the debacle of the Olympic Torch procession to restore a bit of national pride. And didn't we do it well?

As the blue-tracksuited Chinese thugs, who were according to the newspapers highly-trained killers from crack military special forces units, struggled to cope with a man with a fire extinguisher and a few barmy yoghurt-knitters, it did your heart proud to watch democracy in action.

Have some of this, Denise van Outen! Stitch that, former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq! It was fantastic; an utter farce from start to finish.

Of course, you might ask why the Beijing Olympic Games Sacred Flame Protection Force, as they are apparently known, were allowed to jog through the streets of Britain in the first place, manhandling Lord Coe and roughing up assorted Z-list celebrities.

After all, didn't we have enough of our own paid heavies to cope with the demonstrators? I'm thinking of the cycle helmet-clad coppers in high-visibility jackets and the outer layer of riot police.

I know that if I was a pro-Tibet protester (and, truth be told, I'm rapidly heading that way) the sight of China's finest coming the big man on the streets of the capital wouldn't have put me off; rather, it would have inspired me to have a pop at them.

Meanwhile our brave Prime Minister, Wee Gordie Broon, managed to "welcome" the Olympic Torch to Downing Street without actually touching it, so continuing his craven habit of distancing himself from anything that might look remotely negative including, it must be said, most of his own Government's policies. It's enough to make a cat laugh.

I'M PUZZLED about all this fuss surrounding property prices. According to the hysterical London media, we're suffering from a massive financial crisis because house prices have dropped ten per cent in three months. Well so what?

I sit here in Bentley Mansions, my country pile apparently worth £10,000 less than it was worth last week, and how have I been affected? Well, not at all, really. My mortgage payments, vast though they are, haven't increased.

There are no bailiffs banging on the door and, as yet, I can still afford to feed the family by shopping at Waitrose, rather than Lidl. So what's all the fuss about?

The only people who might be affected are those whose fixed-term mortgages are coming to an end (and are you really going to tell me that they didn't expect the rate to increase when they renewed?) and those people who are trying to move house. And even then, we must presume that the house they are looking to buy will have decreased in value by a similar amount to the house they are trying to sell.

It's all a lot of fuss about nothing. London-based journalists sweating that the sale of their two-up, two-down terrace in Notting Hill won't fund their exodus to a country pile where they can wear green wellies and moan about smelly cows.

SPEAKING OF which, expect some serious media condemnation of the Dewsbury Moor estate, where Shannon Matthews lived with her "extended family" until her alleged kidnap.

When this story broke there was much soul-searching about the way the Matthews and their ilk were portrayed by the press, particularly in comparison to those nice, middle-class McCanns. The red-top tabloids held their noses; the posh papers condemned the hypocrisy.

But now, with Karen Matthews charged with perverting the course of justice in connection with her daughter's disappearance, all bets are off. The Sun was first out of the blocks comparing the estate to Beirut.

Bailiffs abound, we are told, and residents show off their electronic tags as some sort of fashion item. The easy comparison is made with the fictional Chatsworth Estate, home of the TV series Shameless.

Unfortunately that doesn't quite stand up. Consider this: Karen Matthews has seven children by five different fathers. Two of those children she calls The Twins', not because they are twins, but because they have the same father. That's close enough.

Now there's not a TV scriptwriter on earth who could have come up with a line like that.