A wealth of sports news today, the major story being that London's bid to host the opening stages of the Tour de France looks likely to be accepted.
According to "French officials" whose job it is to assess the applications, London's bid is currently wearing the yellow jersey, with other cities such as Utrecht, Rotterdam, Lugano (which we thought was a car) and Herning struggling behind in the wrong gear (that's enough of the cycling analogies now, we promise).
Apparently it's London's impressive landmarks which might have swung the vote, with the organisers drooling over the prospect of a route which takes in "Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park and The Mall".
Of course London still has to pay a "seven figure sum". For the honour of hosting the event and no one will be able to get to work for a day or two but it's a small price to pay right?
Moving on to tennis, it's the start of the Masters Champion tournament at the Albert Hall at the end of the month, and oldie but goldie John McEnroe has been shooting his mouth off about how he's going to take down all these young punks and take home the trophy.
Well, when we say 'young punks' what we actually mean is 'anyone younger than McEnroe'. So that's people like Jim Courier, Richard Krajicek and Sergi Bruguera who are, lets face it, ancient in tennis terms. But, then again, Londonist has a soft spot for the golden days of tennis when men were men and the games were, you know, exciting.
But we can't decide whether to root for part time rocker Pat Cash or Michael 'king of the backhand' Stich. So we might just have to go for Boris Becker because he has such a cool voice.
And, finally, we were glad to read yesterday that everyone's favourite deadly school kid, Amir Khan, will be appearing in the Lord Mayor's parade on Saturday.
Apparently, Khan "will help display the Olympic Games 'candidate file'", which sounds more like an administrative task than a parade but we may be wrong.
No news yet on whether Khan's trainer, Londonist favourite, and the real star of this year's Olympics, Mick Jelley, will be in the parade. But Londonist is crossing its fingers because we really can't wait until 2008 and the next Olympics for our next slice of Jelley.
