• Bunce on Olympics

Olympics needs more pot-bellied monsters

The opening ceremony left its mark © PA Photos

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I have let the dust settle for a day or two but it is now time for me to launch the first 2012 nostalgia column. The first: 'Where were you when...'

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We know that it was not Brenda, AKA Queen Elizabeth, jumping out of the helicopter. However, we do know it was two of her dogs used in the sequence and now we know that she asked for a picture with James Bond. Connery and Moore will be livid.

"Can I, Mr. Bond," she told Mary Peters, a 1972 gold medal winner. Hey, I never believed it either, but it is true. Sweet Dame Mary is her lieutenant here at the Games and has the Queen's ear.

She, that's the British Queen, also refused Danny Boyle's offer of using a body double. Hey, I would do my best to keep Helen Mirren as far away as possible from Prince Phillip!

She was, that's the British Queen, in two minds about the parachute jump and had her 'people' look at the possibility of actually doing it. Hey, she told Dame Mary this, I'm just a messenger. Anyway, I saw the 'Queen' jump from the ESPN studio opposite the VIP car park. I was there.

Nobody has any idea whether the Queen and James Bond did pose for a picture, presumably snapped on a bodyguard's phone. How does she get that? Text, email, Twitter, Facebook? It's an Olympic conundrum, much like tight-shorts in beach volleyball and the loss of tug-of-war as an event from the programme. There was also once rope climbing, which deserves a recall in my mind.

I feel that we need more fat men at the modern Olympics, men like the pot-bellied monsters of the weight-lifting and wrestling from the Sixties and Seventies. Thankfully, there are still some hefty lumps involved in the Winter Games and, as somebody pointed out to me, there are enough ropy-poly reporters wandering about.

"The opening ceremony was bonkers," Lord Coe told me today. That is not a name drop, I do have a bit of clout and can get to the top people. Seb also told me that Henry Cooper, the iconic British heavyweight, was looking forward to the Games before he died. We both agreed that Our 'Enry would have been an ideal minder for the Queen as she walked with Bond, the Corgis and a slight smile on her face to the helicopter. We can only dream.

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