My original intention vis-a-vis the forthcoming Olympic extravaganza was to keep quiet about my own feelings of irritation and despondency over the whole phenomenon (feelings which go back to the very moment the announcement that London had been awarded the Games was made in Singapore). I had intended to remain silent about these sentiments at least until it was all over, hoping that by then I might feel a little more in tune with the general mood. Not, I think, that by now the mood of celebration is indeed universal, despite the obvious enthusiasm of some. “It's already overwhelmingly exciting,” said Nicky Campbell on the Radio 5 Live breakfast show this morning (“this is the Olympic station,” says a man with one of those synthetically gravelly voices every five minutes or so; but you can’t escape the Games even on Radio 3, which insists on constantly updating its listeners about the whereabouts of the wretched Olympic torch). But the further North you go, the less hyperexcited the mood tends to be; and there are plenty of people even in the south of England and in the capital itself who by now are beginning to feel distinctly bolshie about the whole thing. One of these is the historian David Starkey, who on Any Questions? last Saturday delivered himself of the following splendid rant (supported by about a third of his audience — Jonathan Dimbleby took a vote): “I am fed up of this national act of everybody get together, jump up and down and pretend they’re at a school camp for the Olympics. I hate forced celebration, I hate turning my capital city into a theme park. I hate Zil limousine lanes. I hate the Olympic emblem which has become a kind of plague curse on the entire city, distorting it, perverting it; and I hate the rape of Greenwich Park in which one of the noblest of parks is defaced by this monstrous erection, and I use that word deliberately, this monstrous erection for a lot of prancing horsemen and women for about five minutes to satisfy the television cameras. I won’t rejoice and I hope the whole thing is buggered.” David Starkey was, in fact, one of the leaders of a campaign against using Greenwich Park for equestrian events, and in 2010 wrote to the Times explaining why; his reasons are relevant to more than the despoliation of Greenwich Park and I quote them for their evocation of the destructive and authoritarian mindset of the Olympic authorities and of the power they have been given over the rest of us. He vividly captures why an increasing number of people (I believe) are beginning to feel like worms who are turning, though maybe too late: