The campaign to get London Olympic officials to serve traditional food at the 2012 games has taken a step forward with the news that Fabio Capello, the Italian manager of the England football team, has taken a shine to Shepherd’s Pie.


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Ragu-with-potatoes, as he calls it, could now take its place alongside other London/English fayre such as pie and mash, jellied eels and chicken tikka marsala as Olympic specials, but why stop at food? Why not give the sports a London theme, too?

Already this week, we’ve had 122 London commuters invent a new event in the form of the Mass Group Hug – surely inspired by crowded Tube trains – in which they now hold the world record.

To keep the Olympic Committee happy, there has to be a legacy, so let’s start with the crime-busting Harry Brown Pistol Shooting, where you have to gun down knife-wielding gangsters on a nearby estate while talking like Michael Caine.

Next stop is the Bus Queue Steeplechase, where Greco-Roman wrestlers have to negotiate gaggles of braying schoolkids trying to nick their Osyter passes.

Buses provide fertile ground for athletic events as there’s also the Missed the Night Bus Marathon; like a normal marathon, but with a man-against-machine twist and you have to be drunk to enter.

That should at least counter all the performance enhancing drugs and opens the prospect of another popular London sport – getting down on your hands and knees and aiming your own version of ragu-with-potatoes at the toilet bowl.