Mary Hannigan/TV View: Beeb-bashing being the favourite sport of the British press, after topless babes' mud wrestling, there has been much comment in those yonder parts about the fact the corporation has 200 staff in Athens, compared to the mere 58 competitors in the British Olympic team. That, then, it has been noted, means each Olympian has 3.448 BBC people all to themselves.

At the rate we're losing competitors - either through injury or elimination - Sonia O'Sullivan will have half of Montrose to herself by the time she takes to the track.

There'll be 10 RTÉ commentators in the box when she runs, because they'll have no other Irish duties to perform, with George Hamilton, Tony O'Donoghue, Jim Sherwin, Myles Dungan, Jimmy Magee, Robert Hall, John Hall, Jerry Kelly, Ger Canning and Darragh Maloney passing the baton to each other every half lap to do the talking.

Bill O'Herlihy, Tracy Piggott, Tom McGurk, Michael Lyster and Peter Collins will host a studio debate on Sonia's efforts with Gary O'Toole, Neville Maxwell, Seán Kelly, Eamonn Coghlan, Jerry Kiernan and Mick Dowling providing the expert comment. "She should have decked the Kenyan on the bell," Mick would say, advice Kelly would describe as "super".

Not every RTÉ face is working on the Olympics, mind. Gerry "the winking weatherman" Fleming, for example, is still bringing us the bad news every day, when he could so easily have been asked to look after, say, the beach volleyball in Athens ("well, well: hello there").

And Nuala the weather-reader is still trapped in Montrose. "She came out of make-up this morning," Lyster told Piggott yesterday, "looked out the window and said 'oh no, look at the rain'. And I kind of thought to myself: maybe Nuala should have known what the weather would be like". For fear of offending Nuala Michael quickly added: "she doesn't make the weather up obviously, she has to take what she gets."

We know how she feels.

So anyway, there've been dark clouds hovering over Ireland's Olympic hopes the past couple of days, barely a patch of blue in sight.

Yesterday was only Day Four and already Bill was asking Gary one of those "where do we go from here?" questions (swimming the topic this time).

The solution, perhaps, could be for the Irish Sports Council to round up a bunch of five-year-olds, put them into a gymnastics camp for 10 years and then unleash them on the world - we could be dripping in gold by the 2016 Olympics, just like Romania in Tuesday's team competition.

Now, this couch means no offence because it is conscious a hefty chunk of the population is besotted with gymnastics, and it nigh on reduces the BBC's Barry Davies to tears, but we would rather go to the dentist eight days a week for the next 40 years than watch too much of it.

Maybe it's just the sight of those young girls weighed down by all that eye-shadow, with faces as lived in as your average first World War veteran. And you know, just know, when one of their team-mates does the business they're inwardly spittin', but outwardly grinning cheesily in an "oh my gosh, that was, like, soooooo amaaaazing Laurie-Lou" kind of way.

Or maybe it just all brings back too many bad memories. You know the way there was always one girl in your class who could do the handstand and was so proud of her talent she would handstand her way around the school, with her books balanced on the soles of her feet. And she wore eye-shadow that clashed with the colour of her uniform but nobody cared because she could do the handstand. Where is she now? Why isn't she winning gold for Ireland in the handstand event?

We didn't make it into the women's shot put either, but Hamilton and O'Donoghue did. Not as competitors, mind. For old times' sake it was held in Olympia yesterday, with the spectators sprinkled on the grassy banks. It was nice but, for all the world, looked like a clearing in the Phoenix Park or a Tesco car-park. Considering we have lots of clearings in the Phoenix Park and several Tesco car-parks (and an Olympia on Dame Street) it might be time for Bertie to submit a late bid to host the 2012 Olympics. By then, Ian Thorpe would be going for his 872nd gold medal. It would have been 873 only the US pipped the Aussies in the 200 metres freestyle relay final, Klete Keller holding off Thorpie, as we now know him, in the final leg. Wondrous stuff.

Piggott was, though, gutted for Thorpie. "That's because you have a huge crush on him," said O'Toole. "I'm a great admirer of his talent," she protested. "Amongst other things," he replied. And this class of talk was taking place 13 hours before the watershed. "I could sue him for that," Piggott said to Lyster.

"I don't think so, no," he said, "if it's true you can't sue". ("Jeez, bring back Colm O'Rourke and Joe Brolly," Lyster whispered to himself).