Firstly, congratulations to Benjamin Boukpeti, bronze medallist in the men's K1 slalom and Togo's first-ever Olympic medallist. A quick mention of The Phelp of Phelps' third gold medal of Beijing 2008, and his ninth ever, and Leisel Jones' win in the 100 breaststroke, thereby enabling Australia to stay level with the aforementioned Senor Phelps in this year's gold count. Now to more important matters hanging over from last Friday.

Zhang Yimou fudged the opening ceremony. He used special effects. Are you shocked?

The fireworks over Beijing looked a little too pristine to be true, and indeed for the TV cameras they were computer-enhanced. No problem with that in my opinion.

It was obvious that young Lin Miaoke was miming as she did her Nikki Webster turn. But we assumed that at least she was miming her own voice.

Nah.

In the tradition of West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and goodness knows how many Bollywood pictures, China's greatest film director used Yang Peiyi's voice. The reason she didn't appear in person? Too ugly.

Much tut-tutting in the western media, but the fact is that it would have happened anywhere in the world. And not everyone would have been so honest about it.

But did Zhang script the Windows XP software failure during Li Ning's final lap with the torch? At least they didn't rely on Vista.