Hands up anyone who managed to get tickets for the Olympics? Not many that I know. I found myself yesterday in the bizarre situation of watching my bank account online and willing the balance to go down - a sign, I hoped, that my ticket application had succeeded rather than my wife buying yet another eternity ring from an online auction. Sadly - nothing. Neither the tickets - nor for that matter an eternity ring - were forthcoming.
In the car this morning I listened as seemingly hundreds of other potential punters called Five Live with their tales of woe - proclaiming undying love for a particular sport or event that they had been saving all year to see, and yet now they wouldn't. Their hopes had been cruelly dashed. Hand Ball - the game rather than the footballing offence - appears to be the only event for which tickets are still readily available. Not surprising really, given that over here we have no idea what it is, and even if we did we wouldn't play it.
As the radio presenter attempted to calm the madding crowd, someone suggested that Seb Coe would have a lot to answer for if there were seats at major events left vacant, having been given over to corporate hospitality and not used. Which set me thinking...
At a recent ICM Think Tank, we were discussing by way of idle banter during the luncheon interval the pros and cons of corporate hospitality, and how it appears that all the major sponsors are obliged to spend additional monies on tickets and entertaining their guests. One killjoy - I think it was me - then raised the issue of the Bribery Act, and how many 'guests' were inevitably going to have to decline on the grounds of breaching ethical - if not legal - rules. Which means there might still be great rows of seats left vacant where well-heeled big cheeses should be sat, which in turn means that if Lord Seb works this out quickly enough, there might still be time for me to watch the 100 metres final. Or not.
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