Lots of people in this business won't work on fast food, say, or tobacco. Rather prissily, AMV refused to advertise to children. Not me. Give me the briefs, I say. Tabs, Toys, Booze. Land mines, too. Not those boring campaigns complaining about them - I mean the ones which sell them to dictatorial regimes. Arms fairs? I bet they have plenty of point-of-sale they need doing. Well, I'm your man for that, too.
But I don't want to work on anything related to 2012.
It's nothing to do with the expense - even though I cannot see for the life of me why, when Cancer Research subsists on voluntary donations, the government should spend a billion on some twatting great stadium just so doped-up neanderthals can have their quadrennial moment in the sun.
No, I was prepared to overlook the expense and the morality on selfish grounds. You see I have always quite liked baseball. And here at least was a chance to see some baseball in Britain. Cricket - the world's only other major bat-and-ball sport - hasn't been an Olympic event since 1900 (in a bizarre twist which must have led to many a fiver won in pub bets, this means the French are the reigning Olympic Silver Medal Holders at Olympic cricket). But I could put up with the omission of cricket (and darts) if at least there was to be Baseball (and softball) at London 2012.
There isn't
In the first time a sport has been ejected from the Olympics since polo was ruled out of the 1936 Berlin games, some shady-looking blokes most likely called Jacques and Henri have decided (with no consultation with the organising committee of the London Games) that Baseball and softball are no longer Olympic sports from 2012 onwards. Presumably because they lack the mass appeal of events such as hammer throwing or synchronised swimming.
Well, that's me off the brief, then. How come, when Britain has invented perhaps 95% of all major team sports (polo being a rare exception, incidentally) we leave it to a bunch of foreign jackanapes to decide which sports qualify as sports? Their decision is probably veiled anti-Americanism, in any case, which is a bit of a pity since in Japan, Cuba, The Phillippines and much of S America baseball is a major national sport. And it isn't even American in origin.
Here's another pub bet for you to win: Q: Where is the first recorded mention of the sport of baseball anywhere in print? A. Jane Austen. Northanger Abbey.
