OUR Prime Minister is looking terribly addled these days. He has aged 100 years since taking office and has the carriage of a man with the world on his shoulders, which, let's face it, he clearly has.

It can't be easy keeping up with George Dubya's plans to colonise Mars after he's done the same job in the Middle East, which will continue to prove more difficult than establishing a galactic US of A.

However, Saint Anthony had the customary Messianic zeal in his eyes when he announced London's optimistic bid to stage the 2012 Olympic Games.

I almost choked on my tea when Mr Blair described our capital as the greatest city in the world.

Blimey! He lives there but travels quite a bit, too, so how can he be labouring under that misapprehension?

Has he waded through the litter and street beggars recently, or don't they have them in Whitehall? Probably not.

And how about London's underground rail network where the phrase 'packed like sardines' is derogatory to sardines? They have much more room.

It is our transport system, or non-transport system, which will do most to undermine the London bid.

Present forecasts indicate that it will take at least another eight years to raise the efficiency of the UK's infrastructure to somewhere near the level of other major European countries, particularly France, whose Paris Olympic bid, launched simultaneously, must heavily outpoint London's on that score alone.

Britain's rail network suffered decades of under-funding and in consequence has become a sick joke.

The depressingly familiar television shots of people looking despairingly at departure and arrival screens will surely convince London's opponents on the Olympic selection committee that the Brits are incapable of hosting such a massive event, notwithstanding the success of Manchester's Commonwealth Games.

I sympathise with those who work on the railway. Well, I'll amend that to anyone who daily has to face an army of travellers for whom even the most simple journey has become a brain-scarring ordeal of delays, overcrowding and worthless schedules.

With the network split into an unbelievable number of operational bodies, it's virtually impossible to identify those responsible for the cock-ups.

The guilty parties must have been quivering in their bunkers when Mr Blair went into his 'Give Us The Olympics' address. They will be hoping he jets them off to Japan on a fact-finding mission to determine how a transport system should operate.

However, in case a miracle happens and London gets the go-ahead, a number of extra events are being planned to give the host nation a better chance of boosting its medals tally. These include:

Bus shelter and phone booth trashing (gold assured).

Vehicle vandalism (gold assured)

Pensioner punching (gold assured).

Litter spreading (gold assured).

Lager drinking (gold assured. Germans will win silver and object because of loutish behaviour. Ours not theirs. The objection will be overruled, leading to the outbreak of World War Three. Who said it's only a Games?)