Shopping is central to the Olympic spirit

Artist's impression of the Westfield Stratford City mall
12 April 2012

"Westfield Stratford City", it will be called. Roll that vainglorious, fakey phrase around your mouth and savour it. It's the name that has been given to the biggest "in-town" shopping centre in Europe.

It's being built now, in east London, and this time next year it will be clinging to the side of the Olympics site in Stratford.

Some concern is being expressed at how closely involved with the nearby celebration of the Olympic spirit this gleaming temple to Mammon is going to be. It's not so much a neighbour as a flatmate. Everyone who arrives at the 2012 Games by public transport - that is, 70 per cent of all visitors - will be forced to make their way through its marbled halls to get to the sports grounds. One exit from the Tube will take you straight into Westfield Stratford City; the other will offer you the chance to walk across a bridge into, um, Westfield Stratford City. Want to watch the Games? You must go shopping first.

Shouldn't the Olympics be about more than herding people through shopping centres? Shouldn't it be about strength, determination, the human spirit, and ... beauty and stuff? Hell, no. Give me a wilderness of soulless branded retail any day. 300 shops, 50 restaurants, three hotels, 17 cinema screens and a casino. It's going to be awesome!

The idea that the Olympics should be unsullied by commerce, like the idea that they should be "above politics", is enough to make any sensible person laugh like a jackal. The International Olympic Committee isn't a tracksuit-wearing subcommittee of the UN, still less a charity. It's a private company. And as it grunts and oinks about the Corinthian spirit, the transformative power of sport and the redemptive magic of the 400-metre dash, it wallows up to its greasy chops in a giant great tin bath full of hundred dollar bills.

The Olympics is going to be a giant, very expensive pain in the bum. Every penny we can claw back from it for the London economy will be a good thing. Westfield Stratford City will create 10,000 jobs, while siphoning tons of money from the pockets of Olympic tourists. It will give more pleasure and benefit to us all than any amount of synchronised swimming.

* I've just been to the Edinburgh International Book Festival to promote my novel, The Coincidence Engine. The last time I was here, flogging a previous book, I sat at a signing table and not one copy was sold. As I was giving up, someone asked me to sign a copy. Turned out that they worked for my publisher. This time, an actual member of the public came up with my book and asked me to sign it. "For Glenda," I wrote, and signed with an flourish. "My name's Brenda," she said.

Oh, how we love a man in fake uniform

I am utterly gripped by the revelation that Sir Hugh Orde, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers and a man who always seems so authoritative on telly, has all along been wearing a fake uniform with a made-up plastic badge.

"This uniform does not belong to any police force," an unnamed senior officer told the Mail on Sunday. "It has no constitutional or legal basis, especially the hat he wears. Instead of the traditional crest, he's put an ACPO badge on it. It looks made-up, like a traffic warden's uniform."

It's an annoying coinage of the modern age, I know, but sometimes the exclamation "bless!" is appropriate to the emotion. Bless, blessy bless bless! Some are suggesting that Sir Hugh's decision to wear this Gadaffi-style pretend uniform on television is a subliminal pitch for the Met Commissioner's job. But - picturing him doing knee-bends in front of his bedroom mirror with a big silly grin on his face - I think the explanation is more innocent.

The cheek of being more than a pretty face

Paul Breuls, director of The Devil's Double, says he rejected British and American actresses for the role of Uday Hussein's mistress, instead choosing the French actress Ludivine Sagnier. He explained: "The role is very demanding sexually and it's difficult to find actresses who are willing to take that leap into the sexual unknown, especially in the US or in England. Ludivine Sagnier is someone who made our first short list because she's done some of the most sensual work in French film. She's uninhibited, and she's an excellent actress to boot."

He might rephrase that to make "she's an excellent actress" sound like a bit less of an afterthought, no?

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