I was out yesterday evening at a very nice grill at Mitchell’s place in Brockley, so I didn’t watch the commonwealth games closing ceremony. I just caught up with it, but to be honest I can’t say that I found anything about it particularly noteworthy here. It was basically one long concert, although I wouldn’t have necessarily associated most of the acts involved with Birmingham. (Ozzy Osborne perhaps, but he’s more of an American these days.)

I have to raise an eyebrow, though, at the fact there’s now talk of a Birmingham Olympic bid. I suppose it’s only natural that now Birmingham has hosted one multi sport event, it would want to try its hand at another, even bigger version. But are such ambitions realistic? I don’t want to come across as patronising or big headed here, but from what I have heard over the past couple of days, Birmingham seems to suddenly be referring to itself as a great world city, the peer of London or Paris. Of course, by all accounts they did a terrific job with these commonwealth games, but the Olympic Games are another order of magnitude entirely. Only places with the infrastructure and transport systems of cities like London have their bids accepted, which is famously why New York has never hosted the games. Thus I have to say that I think this recent success has lead Birmingham to get slightly ahead of itself. As a born northerner, I also think that, if any uk city is going to bid for the Olympic Games within the next twenty years, surely it should be Manchester.