As I was relaxing in the snug of my favourite gentlemen’s club yesterday – a haven well away from the human race – supping the finest vintage port and sucking on a nicotine inhaler (and enjoying its resultant fug), I read an article stating that 26 people will be carrying the Olympic torch through the royal borough next week. Twenty-six people! I didn’t realise Kingston was that big? What are they doing, running 10 yards and then passing it to someone else?

OK, I admit that I haven’t ventured out into Kingston’s badlands for many a year – and maybe the area has grown a bit since I established base camp in Tolworth in 1921 – but that does seem rather a lot.

And apparently only four of those 26 people have any connection with Kingston. So there has been many a moan.

Headlines such as “Olympic game flame shame ain’t nothing like a dame” or something like that.

And it has been the same for other areas across the UK. People saying their kids should have been chosen, or they should have been chosen.

Hey, join the club!

I was hoping for a nomination myself.

You know, in recognition for services to getting people’s backs up, and all that?

But then, who would want to see a trilby-wearing, pipe smoking, wreck of a man – with a bad back and an equally bad front – puffing and panting his way down Clarence Street with a tube of fire?

Onlookers holding a sweepstake on how puce my face will get.

Although, thinking about it, it might be more fun than watching, say, James Cracknell, with his ultra fit frame, gliding through the borough.

It’s funny isn’t it?

At any other time of year running through a town centre carrying fire would probably be illegal.

But in an Olympic year it’s perfectly fine.