Just when you thought it was safe to hang out your Union Flag, eh?

Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony had somehow managed hoist up the hangdog expression of Britain’s usual cynicism, squidging the country’s glum acquiescence into an agonising girdle of genuine pride. The groaning transport infrastructure of this ill-prepared city had failed to grind to ash under the stampede of a million foreign boots, instead performing adequately and without national embarrassment, or killing anyone at all. Not only this, but Team GB has today achieved its first gold medals. You just started to think we, a nation run and organised by inbred, homogenized fuckwits, might have somehow managed to pull something off that’s actually quite good.

But we forgot about the elephant in the room, didn’t we? And it’s our fault because, fucking hell, it’s not exactly a wee ‘un. The myth. The man. The man who runs the city the Games are in, to be exact - and the perpetually erroneous buffoon we elected to do so. The best clue we have to what might happen if Barney Rubble fucked a horse, got it sloshed on VK and then pushed it headfirst down a spiral staircase, all with the express intention of spawning as big an idiot as possible.

BoJo just couldn’t stay away, could he? Before today it seemed he’d been kept from potentially volatile public engagements since his initial address in which he pwned cabinet-faced Republican Mitt Romney. Here, unbelievably and bizarrely, he’d succeeded in making us look quite good, and LOCOG representatives, realising the miraculous nature of this, should have then kept him away from anything with sharp edges until the world had gone home; dangling a set of keys before his bewildered, delighted face if they had even an inlking he might go outside and do something mortifying. The world is watching, and it’s just better for everyone if Boris keeps schtum for a couple of weeks.

Someone thought it would be a bally excellent idea to have the vaguely anthropomorphic swirl of hair and gibberish ride a zip line into Victoria Park

And yet someone, somewhere, thought it would be a bally excellent idea to have the vaguely anthropomorphic swirl of hair and gibberish ride a zip line into Victoria Park, sporting enough national symbolism to make a version of Geri’s infamous Spice dress for every member of Team GB, with MC Hammer pants to match. Because there’s no way – no way AT ALL – this combination of elements could ever result in some form of gaffe: Boris Johnson, a public event, cameras, flags, and a zip line. Just read that list again. You can’t be surprised that it didn’t go to plan any more than you can be surprised that your hand goes through a piece of Tesco Value bog roll. Cause – effect. It’s a universal constant.

So when the inevitable happened and Boris’ zipline halted halfway through its journey - leaving the legs of London’s most senior elected representative flailing like unmanned fireman’s hoses – the sheer number of simultaneous facepalms was so great that it gave off the sound of a rapturous applause. We were not surprised. Not even disappointed. Just…yeah, it’s Boris.

The beauty of the digital age is that cameraphones were produced, Twitter was ablaze, the nation howled with laugher, and then we moved on, and this was all before they’d even managed to poke the vacant arse down with a stick, like a piñata stuffed of sport-related aphorisms. One particular witness said, ‘he was up there so long it got a bit boring.’ And there, people, is the sad indictment of the Youth’s dwindling attention spans that technophobes have been searching for all these years.

The saddest thing of all, after Bojo had congratulated the rowing team as the combination of his rotund bulk and immovable harness crushed his testicles to the width of a typewriter ribbon, is that it feels like the cringe is Britain’s default setting; the one in which we feel most comfortable. We don’t like pretending to be cool when we have international mates over. Germany will be looking over at us, aghast, while the USA will be trying to finger our missus, telling her “yeah, we’re friends, but only because our mums make us walk to school together.” But we don’t mind. We laugh off worse stuff off than this every day. Embarassment. Acceptance. Mockery. THIS IS WHAT WE DO.

So, thanks Boris. We were sick of all this ‘national pride’ bullshit anyway.

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