Wow! The tickets are about to go on sale, the buildings are going up – and we’ll have the added bonus of at least one local hero to follow – Laura Massaro, from Hoghton, who last week became the British Women’s Squash Champion.

The Olympics 2012 will soon be here.

I never believed that this would happen. Failure in soccer’s World Cup bids has become an excruciating national habit.

Manchester tried twice to become host city for the Olympics – in 1996, and 2000.

Neither was successful. It did manage to host the 2002 Commonwealth Games. They were a success.

But it was touch and go. The finances had never been pinned down properly in advance. A rescue plan had to be organised in 2000.

When, just after the Commonwealth Games, Tony Blair and Tessa Jowell came up with the bright idea of using the mainly derelict, decaying area of disused railway yards and scrap dealers in Stratford, East London, as the 21st-century site for a bid for 2012, I confess a high degree of scepticism.

My fate was to be made chairman of the Cabinet sub-committee to oversee the bid. In it went.

Nine cities in the long list were reduced to five in the short list. In the final round of voting on 6 July 2005 we beat Paris by 54 votes to 50.

It was an astonishing moment – only to be marred the next day by the appalling terrorist atrocity of ‘7/7’ when 57 people lost their lives in the London tube and bus bombings.

But the work started. There were the inevitable, unexpected costs – like the hundreds of millions which had to be spent putting overhead power lines underground; and the usual arguments with the Treasury.

Thanks, however, to good organisation, good leadership, and amazing commitment from British sportsmen and women preparations for 2012 are ahead of schedule.

I’ve surprised myself about my own anticipation.

And I’m going online as soon as bookings open to get my tickets – including for the squash.