I don’t know how all the jumping, throwing, sweating and grimacing went, but that opening ceremony for the Olympic Games in Barcelona was hallucinogenic. I’ve never seen so many men in leather-look congregating under lights! And wasn’t that rippling sea effect fantastic? Who’d imagine you could do so much with the new synthetics. How wonderful for the Barcelonians to have snaps for their family albums of pop as a water drop.

I came in at about the time when Odysseus – no, that’s not right, this is the Mediterranean, or near enough, so it was Hercules ... what’s he got to do with it? ... Anyway, there’s this Hercules character, a nifty wire-foil thingummy that moved when a man moved under it. That’s not a Bob Hawke joke, but something that we sophisticated post-poppers understand about – the way illusion can show its structures and still beguile. Although the tin-foil was looking a little loose, Hercules had a kind of Alien-style grace to him that made him fun to watch, so perhaps they could have cut their expenses and just had him dash around the oval a few times. Instead, once Herc had done his dash, things got really silly.