At the Olympic Stadium with the Mayor of Beijing

Just seen the stadium. Superb. And squeezed in just in time to see Phillips Idowu from Hackney take silver in the triple jump. Well done him.

Spotting his slot among all the a ctivities taking place in tandem wasn’t easy. And the scale, shape and structure of the stadium is wonderfully distracting.

The water cube next to the birds nest changes colour like an upright disco floor. And the Mayor of Beijing tells me it’s built from green, flexible, state of the art material with water heated geo-thermally.

Twas an interesting drive to the site. No Olympic lane on the backstreets but worth snaking slowly past red lanterns, elaborate arches and crawling cars. Only those with odd numbers on their plates are a llowed into town today - one of the elaborate traffic management measures put into place for the games. The Mayor told me he might keep it in pla ce long-term to combat the extra 1000 cars which are added to the city’s streets every day.

They’ve also suspended work at countless factories for three weeks to improve the local air quality. One thing they won’t do is introduce a congestion charge. When I suggested that to my opposite number, he told me he wouldn’t dare.