After the chaotic scenes in town over the weekend, echoed in Paris yesterday, the thought must have crossed your mind too. London really can't risk hosting a Torch Relay in four years time. Not on the same global scale as the latest Chinese fiasco. Imagine the damage to our tourist brand collateral if foreign TV viewers started to link British holidays with civil unrest and being hit by batons. Prime Minister Cameron's reputation would never recover from another Torch Relay like this. So we've knocked together a few lower profile alternatives. See what you think. No rush.
Option 1) The Free Tibet Olympic Torch Relay: We run the torch around just one country - Tibet - to make up for all the embarrassment we caused last time. Advantages: The scenery's very nice. Will need to pack oxygen tablets.
Option 2) The Olympic Torch Motorcade: We send all our policemen over to the groves of Olympus in their woo-woo vans, pick up the flame and whizz back along the autobahns really really fast with all lights blazing. Advantages: Over very quickly. Worked well on Sunday.
Option 3) The Green Olympic Torch Relay: It's completely unsustainable to tour the planet by plane whilst burning fossil fuels from a big torch, so let's try it the environmentally friendly way instead. We'll get a six year-old to draw a picture of a flame in orange crayon on a sheet of recycled paper, and then post it round the world by surface mail. Or tied to the leg of a pigeon. Advantages: We could run this as a Blue Peter competition.
Option 4) The Online Olympic Flame: Let's film fifty riot police having fun with a burning torch, then stick the footage on YouTube and see if we can get ten million global web users to view it. Advantages: We could disguise the weblink as a Rick Astley video, that usually works.
Option 5) Ye Olde Olympic Torch Relaye: We could keep costs to a minimum by thinking nationally, not globally. Scale things down so that the torch only tours Britain. Especially all the places up north who don't think they're going to see any benefits from the Games. We could even employ local jobless people as torchbearers. Advantages: It's how Olympic Torch Relays used to be done. It's heritage.
Option 6) The Olympic Backpacker Gap Year: Find an MP with college-age offspring and get them to carry the flame around the world in their rucksack. Maybe use a chain of lighted spliffs to circle the world. Advantages: We can probably get this trip paid for on expenses.
Option 7) The Morally Upright Olympic Torch Relay: We run the torch through all the nations of the world with an unblemished human rights record. Advantages: Current estimates suggest that'd just be Wales.
Option 8) The Olympic Nuclear Option: Rather than visiting scores of other countries with the Olympic torch, one by one, we could save a lot time by simultaneously firing a nuclear missile at each one. Mmm, watch the flames burn. Advantages: Unless we use them soon, all our Trident missiles will soon be past their sell-by date.
Option 10) The El Cheapo Option: Tell you what Seb, I'll buy a cigarette lighter and I'll see you at the Olympic cauldron on 27th July 2012. Don't be late.
London Olympic Torch Relay 2012
Option 1) The Free Tibet Olympic Torch Relay: We run the torch around just one country - Tibet - to make up for all the embarrassment we caused last time.
