Be Excellent To Each Other

Do you reckon he got the relevant permission for this?

Agreed, all the female athletes in that video are lovely. So much more real to have a crush on a woman who has shown how hard they have worked to try and achieve their dreams while being a normal person and sharing the joy or heartbreak with them. I cried when Jess Eniss won gold and I cried when Victoria Pendleton got disqualified preventing her from winning gold. I really hope that kids and teenagers (and plenty of shallow, celebrity obsessed adults as well) are influenced by these game and by team GBs success and use these athletes as positive role models.

@starling I don't know who all the athletes are, but I'm pretty sure the two women singing together are rowers. The black guy that it ends on who's wearing the GB vest top is a gymnast (pommel horse I think), the black girl wearing the boxing gloves is Nicola Adams, the first womens boxing gold medallist(!)...can't remember who else I saw!

Fit women are more fit than women who aren't fit. This is true.

I'd far rather perve over the athlete ladies than models.

Lizzie was beautiful last night.

If Olivia Wilde entered the olympics, I'm pretty certain I would have a heart attack.

Depends on the sport rather. The dietary and exercise rigours of, eg. the 10K produce athletes that are fit, but a little 'unwomanly' for my preferences. And we'd best not even mention the hammer throw.

Well, maybe, but the rowers, cylclists, triathletes, beach volleyballers etc... the vast majority of them are hummana hummana of the first order.


What you and Mrs Craster get up to in your bedroom is up to you, young man.

Goodness yes.

I have a big LCD clock above the bed so as I cross the finish line I can check if it's a new championship record.

A scant few of the throwers this time were quite nice. Goldie Sayers is very cute indeed

Unrelated to fanciability, but every time Johnson Thompson was on, we burst into fits of giggles. I don't really know why but that name was just superb. Then it got even funnier when they interviewed her and following the relative calm, composure and sophistication of Jessica Ennis you suddenly got this really broad scouse chavvy accent, with her practically ending interviews with street slang like 'Safe'. Amazing.

The amount of comedy names in this olympics was amazing. Johnson Thompson was brilliant, but for someone called Stambelova to enter the hurdles and then fall down was just incredible.

That describes a lot of film stars, too.

Fucking the casting director isn't hard work.

Maybe not for you, slag.

Well obviously, I mean that athletes make better role models than some of the women who are wheeled out in all the celebrity magazines. Athletes are fit, healthy, hard working and from normal backgrounds rather than someone who is famous simply for being a footballers wife. Sure, these people might have more depth to them, maybe they work tirelessly for charity or they have 26 degrees and are nearing the unveiling of their invention of a clean and endless energy source but that's not what their famous for. They're famous and championed for being considered pretty and skinny and having a rich boyfriend. Which is a horrible message for young girls to get.

I totally agree about rubbish celebrities being bad role models (for young people of both sexes), but I think assuming they don't have "normal backgrounds" (and that sports people do) is probably a bit of a jump.
If I'm honest, I don't think "managed to jump a little further than someone else" is that impressive a role model, anyway. Being able to jump far or run fast (or kick a ball, drive an F1 car, etc) is purely about providing entertainment to the people watching (otherwise it's pretty pointless, except for purely personal "I ARE BESTEST" reasons), but you could argue that plenty of people are entertained by the cast of TOWIE, etc.

Lizzie Armitstead, for one.

What I meant by normal backgrounds was simply that the lifestyles they are living are achievable for the average person in the UK. Ok, some of the sports might require a natural talent, but plenty of them have got where they are through sheer hard graft. That's a great example. The actual skill of jumping further than most other people isn't the reason their a good role model, it's the life they've led to reach that point. Far better than the cast of TOWIE, who only appear to be famous for putting on fake tan, showing a bit of cleavage, appearing very ditsy and getting drunk. Sure, that's achievable as well for the average citizen, but it's probably not going to make you happy, or successful, or even particularly proud of your life.

Sure - but the example of the cast of TOWIE was an example of rubbish celebrities, not good ones. I don't think anyone would argue that someone like Sir Ian McKellan hadn't put in sheer hard graft in his career.

Oh indeed. I think it's the overnight celebrity culture that is being railed against.

The best case in point is that during the Olympics the current series of Big Brother was reaching its 'climax', but you'd have been hard pressed to find anyone giving a shit about it. Huzzah!

All those medallists shouldn't have tied their belts at the front though.

I've not got a problem with people viewing actors as role models...I have watched every oscars ceremony since i first got a TV in my bedroom when I was 16, I think most of my positive role models growing up were either actors, or characters in films.

I've watched big version on vimeo about 10 times now.

She should have got some sort of medal for funniest self-deprecating tweet. It was something like "I've got two surnames and I do seven events. I'm not talented, just chronically indecisive."

Probably a bit late for an Olympics post, but I was just on the bog reading the Guardian Weekly, which my father-in-law passes on to us when he's finished with them and it was saying something like "when Michael Phelps failed to medal". Are we using "medal" as a verb these days? I'm clearly even more out of touch with the UK than I thought.

The media and commentators have been using it as a verb pretty much throughout. Irritating, isn't it?

"medal" and "podium".

Garghk.

Probably, possibly, I dunno - more likely, as I said in one of my ill-advised posts yesterday I'm just turning into Victor Meldrew.

"Podium" as a verb too?.....you are joking, right?

SAdly, no.

They would have got away with it were it not for those medalling kids.

Oh, good work, sir.

Unlike Doc G's joke yesterday, at least I did get that one

I suppose you don't google stuff? or hoover the floor?

Malc

Turning a noun into a verb to represent 'to use X' is common usage. Pedalling, telephoning, videoing amongst others. Using it for 'to win an X' or 'to achieve the right to stand on a Y' isn't.

Well, duh! Of course language changes over the years, it just sounds a bit odd or even annoying when you hear it/read it for the first time. One of the strange things about living abroad is that it sometimes becomes difficult to tell the difference between reality and parody, especially when you see the parody first. For example, I saw The Day Today and the other one (Brass Eye - I just internetted it to check) before we got BBC World News on cable only to find the presenters sounded exactly like the parody. Another one was when my cousin introduced me to the Scottish sit-com Still Game (hated it at first, but it's become a peronal favourite since, which I heartily recommend) and there's a scene where Jack and Victor, the two main characters, are planning their OAP TV evening and there are programmes like "When Pets go Bad" or "Britain's Hardest Pubs", that sort of thing.

I think that the media started using them because the athletes do. Which makes more sense when you consider the athletes must talk about medals and podium finishes a lot so it is natural to come up with a shorthand.

No, there's a definite silly trend for this sort of thing. Medal and podium are hardly new words, so they somehow managed to get by until now without using them as verbs.

Verbing nouns impacts us all.

Yes. I also ouvert the fenetre.

I don't like nouning verbs:

"That's a big ask."
"I'll send you an invite."

The torch is running 90 mins late, I hope it can catch up for tonight.

Why are they breaking a coconut in Neasdon?

To put a lime in it.

Is it time for The Big Zing?

Neasden.

Just thought: was it in the Swaminarian temple? If so it's a religious offering. I think, if I remember rightly, that it's because the coconut insides are pure and unseen so you break them open in the holy building to be first in the presence of the gods. You often see it at Diwali celebrations.

Opening ceremony has been fun so far. Not as batshit as the first one, but pretty spectacular nonetheless.

Liz is looking as bored as ever, mind.

Now the ads, because this is Channel 4, not the Beeb.

Which is pretty shameful, right?