Publicity

When Sebastian Coe was a world beating distance runner and collected gold medals for the prestigious 1500 metre event at consecutive Olympics in 1980 and 1984, no-one cheered louder or applauded more enthusiastically than his fellow Brits.

Fast forward to 2012 and (the now) Lord Coe’s latest achievements, and fellow Brit Johnnie Walker would put his hands to a different purpose.

“I’d like to give him a clump. I’d like to chin him.”

The crusty community football boss is annoyed at the way the London Olympics juggernaut has crashed his patch. Seb Coe’s unstoppable machine has claimed 12 of Johnnie’s playing fields for Olympic parking and so a league of 1500 players now crowd a much smaller space.

“It’s elitist, everything has to be ploughed towards the elitist and the grassroots is neglected – you ain’t going to get your elitists unless you look after the grass root.” JOHNNIE WALKER Hackney & Leyton League

Johnnie is just one of a group of ‘Grumpylympians’  annoyed at the unbridled enthusiasm and runaway hyperbole surrounding London’s big sporting carnival.

Veteran Grump Will Self is another. The acerbic author would surely medal at the anti-Olympics.

“It feels like North Korea to me actually when people go ‘yeah the Olympics, the Olympic bid yeah’. It’s like Kim Il Jung (sic), you know, we don’t really know why we are cheering for the great leader and his amazing plan but we better do it because hey that’s what people like us do.” WILL SELF – Author

Foreign Correspondent’s Philip Williams braves the bile in search of both sides of the story in London’s East End. In a challenging lap in and around the Olympic site he does manage to find enthusiasts like Olympics Ambassador and rapper Wretch 32 and former Olympian Yvonne Arnold who’s had her lifelong ambition realised with a massive, state-of-the-art gymnasium appearing in place of ill-equipped facilities. It’s now an incubator for British gymnasts of the future.

“It is emotional and whenever I walk through these doors and show people the gym I have a well of pride inside me and I can’t stop smiling about it.” YVONNE ARNOLD Former Olympian

Lord Coe tells Phil he thinks it’s all ‘fantastic’ but another local critic, Iain Sinclair, has it otherwise.

“I feel excluded from my own territory. I feel I hardly know who I am because all my familiar markers that I’ve known over 40 years, have either disappeared or been enclosed in razor wire.” IAIN SINCLAIR Hackney activist

Olympics clock counting down

Music

00:00

Iconic sites around London

00:03

WILLIAMS: When you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life – so the saying goes.

00:10

Williams watching Olympics countdown clock in Trafalgar Square

Music

00:15

Time-lapse Olympics site construction

00:19

Time-lapse London streets

00:22

Olympics clock counting down

00:25

London scenes

00:26

WILLIAMS: The pace and vitality of this world capital never falters.

00:27

London scenes superimposed with Olympic countdown clock

Music

00:33

WILLIAMS: And there’s good reason for this place to be in hyper drive right now.

00:38

As Europe Correspondent for the

00:44

Williams watches Olympic clock counting down

last few years, I’ve watched as the clock

00:45

Time-lapse of pedestrians outside Westminster Abbey

ticks down, hurtling towards a huge moment even for this grand city.

00:48

Dissolve to Big Ben/moon

Make way for the London Olympics 2012.

00:54

Dissolve to time-lapse of Olympic site construction

Music

00:58

Philip Williams

WILLIAMS: “It’s going to be a hell of a show, at least that’s what we’re promised and I’d have to say there is a palpable sense of excitement here. Most people want Britain to succeed on the world stage but scratch that shiny Olympic surface and not everyone’s happy. Either way, love it or loathe it, the greatest show on earth is coming – ready or not.”

01:07

Dissolve to: Olympic Games site

Music

01:27

WILLIAMS: In our whirlwind tour of this city I’ll meet a famous Londoner who’s invested

01:30

everything in the games and can already smell success in his nostrils.

01:34

LORD SEBASTIAN COE: “Fantastic.”

01:39

WILLIAMS: And a less well-known chap with a different take on what’s happening to his city.

01:41

JOHNNIE WALKER: “Crap comes to mind.”

01:47

WILLIAMS: There are plenty of grumpy old men around here.

01:49

We’ll meet an elite Olympic gold grump.

01:52

WILL SELF: “ ‘Cause frankly

01:55

I think that, that kind of sport is bullshit anyway.”

01:56

WILLIAMS: And someone else who can’t believe their luck.

01:59

WILLIAMS (to Yvonne): “Wow, that is absolutely stunning! That is amazing.”

02:03

YVONNE ARNOLD: “It’s lovely isn’t it?”

02:08

Olympic Games site

Music

02:09

WILLIAMS: We’ve arrived at the field of Olympic dreams, eight kilometres north east of Big Ben as the crow flies. Two hundred hectares carved out of what Games spruikers describe as a toxic wasteland in London’s hugely unfashionable and unloved east end. Rising phoenix-like from the marshlands, the eighty thousand seat stadium,

02:12

on this day hosting university games. It’s a trial run for the real thing when more than ten thousand of the world’s finest athletes test their mettle and compete for metal that they hope will be gold.

02:37

Lord Coe being photographed

Music

02:54

WILLIAMS: Seven years in the making, no one has invested more time and energy in these Games than this man. Arguably the world’s greatest middle distance runner in the 1980s, he’s still running things.

03:05

Dissolve to Lord Coe walking trackside

03:21

WILLIAMS: “We’re about to meet

03:26

Philip Williams

Mr Olympics himself, Seb Coe, Lord Seb Coe. Of course he’s won gold medals for GB before. He’s really the Lord of this ring here because without him it probably wouldn’t have happened.”

03:27

Lord Coe walking trackside

WILLIAMS: Lord Coe is a man in demand and a man with a story to tell, all good of course.

03:39

LORD SEBASTIAN COE: “Well it’s an extraordinary story. You know if you’d been here eight years ago and we were standing on a poisoned parcel of land that really was, you know, had been

03:49

Lord Coe
Super: Lord Sebastian Coe
Chairman London 2012

neglected for over sixty years, we’re now standing in a world class sporting venue that will go on serving

03:58

Olympic stadium

communities for years to come. If you’re standing on the site eight years ago, there’d be a fifty foot mountain of rotting fridges.”

04:03

WILLIAMS: “What’s it mean for the country? What does Britain get out of this?”

04:11

Lord Coe

LORD SEBASTIAN COE: “Britain gets out of it exactly what Australia did. You know no country is ever the same once it’s staged a Games. Certainly no city is ever the same.”

04:14

London scenes

Music

04:23

WILLIAMS: But I had to step outside of the arena to uncover some of the other stories. Hackney is one of the five London boroughs that borders the Olympic Park.

04:32

Hackney scenes

Music

04:42

WILLIAMS: Culturally diverse, a mixture of the middle class and the poor.

04:45

Iain Sinclair reading from book to audience

IAIN SINCLAIR: [reads] “It’s something else, it’s something new requiring gills and built-in decontamination filters.”

04:51

WILLIAMS: And home for forty years to author and Olympic sceptic, Iain Sinclair, a man with a mission to expose what he says are the lies and deceptions of an Olympic nightmare.

04:57

IAIN SINCLAIR: [reads] “Gateway to London’s Olympic Park, over three hundred dynamic brands, 1.9 million square feet of retail and leisure destination, Westfield.”

05:08

Williams at Iain Sinclair’s book reading

WILLIAMS: I was intrigued by this Australian connection so I collared Iain Sinclair to ask what it was all about.

05:19

“Hello Iain. Philip Williams from the ABC. Very interesting talk. Can you take me there?”

05:25

IAIN SINCLAIR: “Yeah I can take you there. Sure, why not. We’ll probably get a nice London day to do it.”

05:31

Exterior Olympic Park and Westfield

Music

05:36

WILLIAMS: It turns out that by happy co-incidence the recently opened Westfield Stratford Shopping Mall finds itself right at the front door of the Olympics. To get to the Games most visitors will be funnelled from the train station

05:45

Interior Westfield Stratford Shopping Mall

right through the middle of one of Europe’s largest shopping centres.

05:59

Williams and Iain Sinclair outside Westfield

IAIN SINCLAIR: “What we’ve got here is the Olympic Way otherwise known as a track through the chasm of retail opportunities that is the Westfield Super Mall.”

06:07

WILLIAMS: “So the Olympic experience is also going to be a Westfield experience?”

06:15

Super: Iain Sinclair
Olympics critic

IAIN SINCLAIR: “I think we’d put it the other way around – the Westfield experience has a possibility of a minor Olympic extension for a couple of weeks.”

06:19

WILLIAMS: “And yet thousands of people are going in there every day.”

06:26

IAIN SINCLAIR: “Yeah thousands of people used to turn up to public hangings. They were very, very popular but civilisation does move on.”

06:28

Olympic Park

Music

06:36

WILLIAMS: I suspect if hanging was still an option Iain Sinclair may have ended up swinging for his Olympic cynicism. He took me further around the alarmed and razor wire Olympic perimeter. It’s as close as many Londoners will get to the Games.

06:41

Music

06:54

Williams and Iain Sinclair at fence of Olympic construction site

IAIN SINCLAIR: “We’re now going to have more military personnel at Stratford around the Westfield Mall and the Olympic site than were used in the whole of the Afghanistan campaign from England.”

07:03

WILLIAMS: “Really?”

07:13

IAIN SINCLAIR: “That’s a fact.”

07:14

WILLIAMS: “Well how do you feel as a local resident when you see this?”

07:15

IAIN SINCLAIR: “Well I feel excluded from my own territory. I feel I hardly know who I am myself because all my familiar markers that I’ve known over forty years have either disappeared or been enclosed in razor wire. In one respect we are the world leaders and that is in fences and surveillance systems, CCTV cameras, helicopters overhead – all of that.

07:18

Helicopter flies over Olympic site

We’re pretty safe. We’re secure. Everybody knows what we’re doing all of the time.”

07:43

WILLIAMS: “Gold medal?”

07:46

IAIN SINCLAIR: “Gold medal definitely.”

07:47

WILLIAMS: Iain Sinclair’s magical misery tour was getting a bit of a downer after

07:51

Williams and Iain Sinclair viewing Olympic sculpture

Lord Coe’s glowing spruik, but this man of intellect and culture surely knows art when he sees it?

07:55

IAIN SINCLAIR: “This particular piece I think is like a DNA spiral caught in a whirlwind and blown around an East German border post.”

08:02

Anish Kapoor’s sculpture

WILLIAMS: Spearing higher than the Statute of Liberty on the Olympic site is this sculpture by British artist Anish Kapoor. It’ll be there long after the Games as a viewing platform over London.

08:10

IAIN SINCLAIR: “If the stadium itself is a flat pack stadium from IKEA that could be any height you want, these

08:22

Iain Sinclair and Williams

are the bits that are left over. There’s always something at the bottom of the bag that you can’t fit and they’ve scrambled it together. It’s turning the city into a circus like the end of the Roman Empire. It’s all blood and circuses. Take the minds of the people off it by throwing up another big show and this is the biggest show in the world.”

08:28

Café near Olympic site

WILLIAMS: The greatest show on earth straddles a vast area, it stomps on a lot more ground than the rusting pile of refrigerators Lord Coe talks about.

08:44

Williams greets Julian Cheyne at café

“Philip Williams. Foreign Correspondent. Nice to meet you.”

08:58

Julian Cheyne was one of the 430 residents in his estate tapped on the shoulder

09:00

Construction site

and told to move on in advance of the bulldozers. Clay Lanes Estate

09:06

Stills: Clay Lanes Estate

was a social experiment in the 1970s, the UK’s largest purpose built housing co-op. The residents received a small relocation allowance – small comfort for the upheaval to their lives.

09:10

Construction site

JULIAN CHEYNE: “Well I’ve lost a home. I had a bungalow, which

09:23

Julian Cheyne
Super: Julian Cheyne
Relocated resident

I wanted to continue living in and I lost a community which was a lot of people living nearby. The estate was laid out in a series of ten courtyards

09:27

Still: Clay Lanes Estate

and it was a very sociable place and there were lots of people that I

09:36

Julian Cheyne

knew there. So as far as I was concerned, you know, this was my home really for the rest of my life.”

09:41

Julian Cheyne and Williams at café

WILLIAMS: “When you look out here, look around, what do you see?”

09:47

JULIAN CHEYNE: “I’m afraid I’m depressed because I see something which is basically a lie. This was a working industrial area and working industrial areas are not always pretty but there were perfectly nice factories and workshops. It was not a… the whole place was not some kind of waste tip. If you want to have a national celebration, a national sports celebration you can do that by employing existing facilities. You don’t have to go for this massive kind of, spaceship kind of thing landing in the middle of east London like this.”

09:52

Adidas advertisement
Super: Commercial

Music

10:21

WILLIAMS: After the shock and shame of the London riots, this city needed an upbeat ambassador, someone who could instil a little optimism into angry youth and a man Olympic sponsors could call their own. Well they found him, one of the UK’s hottest rap stars, Wretch 32.

10:27

Time-lapse Williams in backstage tunnels of Millennium Stadium

Music

10:49

WILLIAMS: I’m at London’s other big venue, the Millennium Stadium, lost and confused in the backstage labyrinth.

10:58

Williams backstage at Millennium Stadium

“Well we’re going to meet Wretch 32, he’s a big star and we’re on the run. Apparently very keen on the Olympics. Let’s see what happens.”

11:07

Band sound checking and fans waiting

11:20

A wrong turn, and an accidental stage appearance. But clearly not a let down for the fans. After my

11:28

Wretch 32 being photographed outside Millennium stadium

fifteen seconds of fraudulent fame, I found the real star out the back.

11:39

Williams and Wretch 32

WILLIAMS: “It’s an incredible venue. I’ve never been out here.

11:45

If celebrity is measured by the size of his bus, Wretch 32 is as big as they come and an Olympic ambassador to boot.

11:49

WRETCH 32: “I think the Olympics will definitely

11:58

Super: Wretch 32
Olympics ambassador

help lift the mood of a lot of people. Of the country as well in general. I think when everyone’s sat at home watching, you know, their favourite sport, they’re watching the Olympics and they know that this is only taking place around the corner or everybody’s in the venue and they’re watching it go down. I think everybody’s spirit is going to be lifted man and I think it’s a real good vibe man. It’s exciting.”

11:59

WILLIAMS: “Some people are a bit down on it. They’re saying we’re not getting the jobs we thought we’d get or we’re losing our sporting fields and that sort of thing, especially in the Hackney area. What would you say to that?”

12:25

WRETCH 32: “Do you know what the weird thing about it is I’m not too much of a politician man I just kind of go with the flow. I wouldn’t… I don’t let anything like that hinder my mood or get me down so you’ve just got to look at the plus side to everything I suppose so if you’re from that area and it’s coming to your town, just make sure you go and watch it to be honest. I think everything else will be all right.”

12:37

WILLIAMS: “Can I just quickly get a snap?”

12:58

Fade to white/Fade up from white: Still of Wretch 32 and Williams

Music

13:00

Underground railway

13:02

WILLIAMS: I’m buoyed by Wretch’s prediction that the Olympics will be banging, haps and fully sick – that is a jolly good show.

13:09

Williams hurrying along street

But I suspect the man I’m running late to see won’t be so upbeat.

13:17

Will Self waiting in pub

He’s not someone I want to keep waiting with his reputation as one of British television’s

13:21

Williams hurrying to pub

grumpy old men.

13:26

Will Self in pub waiting for Williams

WILL SELF: [to bartender] “Where’s my coffee?”

13:29

Williams joins Will Self in pub

WILLIAMS: “Will. Philip Williams. Nice to meet you. So, the Olympics, not a big fan?”

13:32

Super: Will Self
Writer

WILL SELF: “The fact that somebody can run or jump faster or you know higher than somebody else, that’s not a meaningful assay of a country’s worth. It feels like North Korea to me actually when people go ‘Yay the Olympics, the Olympic bid, yay’ – it’s like Kim Il Jung (sic), you know we don’t really know why we’re cheering for the Great Leader and his amazing plan but we’d better do it because hey you know that’s what people like us do! If you talk to people in a reasoned way then you very quickly get the picture that it means virtually nothing to them. It’s not impacting on, you know, people’s lives here at the moment. It’s not what they need.”

13:39

WILLIAMS: “What’s for you the single most then offensive element of this whole project?”

14:17

WILL SELF: “Of the Olympics? It’s the nationalism, actually. I find that the most offensive. It’s the yoking, you know, so it’s the Jubilee year and it’s the Olympics year and it’s ra ra ra for the Queenie and ra ra ra for our sporty folk and that to me is, again it’s insulting and it’s insulting to people’s intelligence that they should be demanded to pay attention to a higher ideal that is so empty and worthless.”

14:23

WILLIAMS: “And yet millions will be there, they’ll be enjoying it, they’ll be watching it on television. They may even feel a sense of national pride about the whole show.”

14:53

WILL SELF: “It’s all over in a couple of weeks of flim-flam and then we’re left with this cracked and sprawling piles of concrete.”

15:04

WILLIAMS: “But they talk about the legacy though, that this is going to leave fabulous facilities, that will encourage people to play sport for decades to come.”

15:10

WILL SELF: “Now what encourages people to play sport is getting off their arses from in front of the TV and getting down the local playing field and doing it. And the spectacle of elite athletes, I never really buy that, ‘cause frankly I think that kind of sport’s bullshit anyway.”

15:20

Hackney Marshes football game

FOOTBALL COACH: “Oy! Move it, move it, move it!  Come on!”

15:35

WILLIAMS: When Brits think of sport for most this is the game of choice. The Olympic goal is to get an extra million butts off the couch and into places like this. This is the local Hackney Marshes Sunday morning football. It’s spitting distance from the Olympic site, a bit too close.

15:38

JOHNNIE WALKER: “It’s elitist. Everything has to be ploughed towards the elitist

16:05

Johnnie Walker and Williams at Hackney Marshes football game

and the grass roots is neglected. You ain’t going to get your elitists if you don’t look after the grass roots.”

16:09

WILLIAMS: Johnnie Walker has had local footy running through his veins for most of his 78 years. He’s the undisputed boss of the fifteen hundred players of the Hackney and Leyton League, but he was powerless to stop Olympic authorities paving over twelve of his beloved grounds for what they say is a temporary car park.

16:15

Johnnie Walker
Super: Johnnie Walker
Hackney & Leyton Sunday League

JOHNNIE WALKER: “It represents a glorious land grab to me. That’s all it seems to be about. You know they’ve taken so much land around here.”

16:36

WILLIAMS: “Let’s look at one word to encapsulate the Olympics for you, what would that one word be?”

16:46

JOHNNIE WALKER: “Nightmare to be honest. It’s up there with a whole range of other disgusting words that I can think of and can’t repeat so… and that’s basically what I think.”

16:51

WILLIAMS: “Have a go. You’re on Australian television.”

17:00

JOHNNIE WALKER: [laughs] “Well I can’t go too strong. ‘Crap’ comes to mind. I hate the bloody word and I hate the people that pontificate in front of it.”

17:03

WILLIAMS: “If Lord Coe was here, what would you tell him?”

17:21

JOHNNIE WALKER: “What would I tell him? If I was younger I’d like to give him a clump, because of this smug look, you know, and oh well you know ‘I’ve done all this, I’ve done all that.’ Yeah he’s done it on the backs of us. Well I’d like to chin him.”

17:24

Iconic London scenes

Music

17:38

WILLIAMS: For Lord Coe and his cohorts the grand vision of a great Games shouldn’t be clouded by the loss of a few local footy fields, but what the Olympics takes the Olympics can sure give back and then some.

17:45

Music

17:58

Williams and Yvonne Arnold in gymnasium

WILLIAMS: “Wow, that is absolutely stunning. That is amazing.”

18:04

YVONNE ARNOLD: “It’s lovely isn’t it? I’m very proud of it I must say.”

18:10

WILLIAMS: “Wow, and how much of a role has the Olympics played in the construction and this being here?”

18:13

YVONNE ARNOLD: “Well they contributed 1.2 million towards the total cost of the building so yes, we wouldn’t have been here without them.”

18:19

WILLIAMS: “Can you show me ¢round?”

18:26

YVONNE ARNOLD: “Yeah, absolutely.”

18:27

WILLIAMS: In London’s south-east former Olympian Yvonne Arnold runs a gym big enough to keep the whole community fit. Soon it’ll become a training venue for Olympic volleyball teams. She’s also nurturing the next generation of champions.

18:29

“Can you see some gold medallists here perhaps?”

18:45

Super: Yvonne Arnold
Gymnastics coach

YVONNE ARNOLD: “I hope so. I think we have got two or three that could make it to Rio, yes, who are too young now for London. We haven’t got anybody for London but Rio definitely four years down the line. I see maybe two or three.”

18:48

WILLIAMS: This is a facility that will be here for a long time after the Olympic torch moves on. It’s the Games giving something back. The husband and wife team who once struggled to maintain their gym in a dilapidated warehouse, have now struck gold well before the Games and the whole community is sharing their good fortune. This will be a play space for thirteen hundred local children and their thirty coaches and supervisors.

19:03

YVONNE ARNOLD: “I never thought… I never dreamed that I would have a building of this size, this magnitude, with all this wonderful equipment.

19:33

I never dreamed. When I think back to our old place, we really struggled there. Really, really struggled and now well hopefully the sky’s the limit.”

19:40

WILLIAMS: “It’s quite an emotional thing for you isn’t it?”

19:48

YVONNE ARNOLD: “Yes it is emotional, yeah. It does make me emotional as well and I… whenever I walk through those doors and show people the gym I have a well of pride inside me and yeah you’re right, I can’t stop smiling about it.”

19:50

Olympic Park

Music

20:01

WILLIAMS: Back at centre stage

20:07

Inside Olympic stadium

Olympic Park the trials inside the 80,000 seat main stadium are giving up and coming British athletes a moment to experience the biggest stage of all. But getting ordinary Brits off their backsides is a core pledge of the Olympic promoters. It was their way of selling the Games to the wider public and ever wider the public is becoming. One in four adults in Britain is now classified as obese so you can imagine the scepticism of claims that millions more will take up sport and exercise all inspired by the 30th Olympiad.

20:08

Super: Lord Sebastian Coe
Chairman London 2012

LORD SEBASTIAN COE: “I don’t believe sport for all has ever put one extra person into sport. I actually believe the inspiration from sport comes from big British moments, Australian moments and they tend to be in Olympic Games.”

20:46

Olympic Park

WILLIAMS: But perhaps hedging their bets, alongside the main stadium and swimming centre is this – the world’s largest McDonalds. It’s here to provide local jobs of course. Planners claim by the time the Olympic Park is complete, 40,000 people will have worked at this site.

20:58

London scenes

Music

21:18

WILLIAMS: It’s all about change for a greater good and legacy, legacy, legacy. So don’t worry Londoners it might all seem a bit chaotic,

21:24

Olympics Park

but look at what you’ll be left with. The government ringmaster for all of this is the Olympics Minister.

21:33

Hugh Robertson and Williams

Hugh Robertson has got to get it right. No pressure.

21:40

Super: Hugh Robertson
UK Sports Minister

HUGH ROBERTSON: “Well I often say… I mean in a sense with almost everything we do with the London Olympics we use Sydney as a benchmark. I suspect this is going to be one of those moments of great national celebration. People will benchmark their lives by where they were in 2012. You talk to any Australian who’s interested in sport and they pretty quickly go back to Sydney 2000 and I’m sure it’s going to have a very similar effect here.”

21:44

WILLIAMS: “If you’re wrong you might be looking for a new job.”

22:06

HUGH ROBERTSON: “If I’m wrong I will be looking for a new job but I don’t anticipate that.”

22:07

WILLIAMS: “One of the great rivalries of course is who gets the most medals, Australia/GB and it’s been see-sawing lately. What’s your bet?”

22:11

HUGH ROBERTSON: “My bet is that British sport is in a very strong position at the moment. Indeed I have a bet with my Australian counterpart over who’s going to win the more gold medals in the table.”

22:20

WILLIAMS: “Can I have a tenner on that?”

22:30

HUGH ROBERTSON: “Yes.”

22:32

WILLIAMS: “Can we shake on that? Thank you. I’ll be back to collect.”

22:33

HUGH ROBERTSON: “Oh right. Okay. There’s a thing… actually, if I lose this bet I’ve got to run ¢round Australia House in an Australia Hockey singlet so there you go.”

22:37

WILLIAMS: “We’ll be there.”

22:46

HUGH ROBERTSON: “We’ll be there.” [laughs]

22:47

London icons

Music

22:50

Philip watches clock count down in Trafalgar Square/CUT WITH London scenes

WILLIAMS: As I watch the clock run down and this city preening itself, I wonder whether London will be left in better shape and maybe even turn old sceptics around. Mmm, maybe not.”

22:58

WILL SELF: “There is an aesthetic to it.

23:12

Will Self and Williams in pub
Super: Will Self
Writer

People really appreciate that aesthetic of ultimate speed and fitness. I believe a guy called Hitler really appreciated that too.”

23:13

London scenes

Music

23:20

WILLIAMS: “Given your effort and given your concentration on this whole Olympic phenomena, do you get annoyed

23:29

Dissolve to: Lord Sebastian Coe trackside

when you hear people criticising it?”

23:36

LORD SEBASTIAN COE: “No it goes with the territory. I’ve got great friends that put the Sydney project together. I think we’ve actually had a far

23:37

Time-lapse of Olympic site construction

gentler ride than some of the misconceptions that were being peddled in Australian media before the Games, you know, if you remember on the eve of the Games it was going to be a national disaster. It turned out to be the greatest Games ever.”

23:44

Lord Sebastian Coe trackside

WILLIAMS: “If you had one word to describe the Olympics, what would it be?”

23:57

LORD SEBASTIAN COE: “Fantastic.”

24:00

London scenes

Music

24:01

WILLIAMS: So there you are. I hope he’s right. There’s a lot of money on it and not just my tenner. These are hard times and Lord knows the country could certainly do with a lift.

24:03

Fade to black

Music

24:15

Credits

Reporter: Philip Williams
Camera: Tim Bates, Cameron Bauer
Editor: Scott Monro
Fixer: Ian Lynch
Producer: Trevor Bormann