Give gift-wrapping a sporting chance at the Olympics

Now that pole dancing could be on its way to becoming an Olympic event, following recognition by the Global Association of International Sports Federations, I have news of other activities that are hoping to qualify.

Competitive Gift-Wrapping is now hugely popular in this country, both with amateurs and with the professionals who practise it in shops. It requires a high standard of agility and hand-eye co-ordination. Judges award points for deft tissue work, sound sticky tape technique, a clean fold and good ribbon skills.

The Worldwide Micro-Scooter Slalom Club also has high hopes. Micro-scooting is now serious business, with customised scooters, strict rules about how both legs, in turn, must be used to propel them over challenging courses, requiring competitors to weave in and out of hazards (ie pedestrians) on pavements.

The rules of Ducks and Drakes have now been formalised as a first step towards recognition as a sport. Those taking part are forbidden to bring their own pebbles, as finding the best one on a shingly beach against the clock is part of the skill. Judges look for a good stoop and fling and for even bounces. This year, eight of our top skimmers achieved seven perfectly matched bounces, known as a “mallard”.

Finally, the sport that is all teamwork is, of course, Spectating. The idea is that competing countries would send groups of 500 entrants to show off their skills at disciplines such as synchronised chanting and overhead clapping, fancy dress and Mexican waving. They would also be judged on the quality of their mass “Oooh” of disappointment.

We sit in the GPs’ waiting room. No surprise, they are running late and there’s not much to keep us occupied for the next 40 minutes or so, apart from a dilapidated back number of Woman & Home and the silent TV screen showing someone doing up a grotty house. We are all suffering from that particular affliction: waiting room meekness. We will do anything to oblige, give us a form and we will try to answer the questions, however irrelevant. Trapped here for 40 minutes and eager to please, we are perfect for market researchers. They could help out the NHS financially by paying the surgery to allow them to dish out their questionnaires.

We are a random sample of obliging people and a rich source of that precious commodity, data. If there was a general election tomorrow, 43 per cent of people with gippy tummies would vote Labour; most pregnant women favour such-andsuch car insurance comparison site; an overwhelming proportion of people with chesty coughs say their dandruff disappeared after using this shampoo. Slip in a question about our sexuality in the middle of all this guff and we will hardly notice.

Henry Bolton, the new leader of Ukip, suggested strangling a badger, so the story goes, could form part of some Ukip leader initiation ceremony. Now readers have been asking me if the other party leaders have ever had to undergo any similar weird tests. Vince Cable, I am fairly reliably informed, was once required to

at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion eat six large pepperoni pizzas in one sitting and then swallow a tablespoon full of wasabi paste. Sticking to the Lib Dem policy of de-centralisation, he delegated the task to his 12 MPs.

Nicola Sturgeon’s task once was to rollerb rollerblade the length of Sauchiehall Street Street, in Glasgow, dressed as Wonder Woma Woman. Now she does this most weeks anyway. Theresa May had the daunti daunting challenge of returning to that w wheatfield which she so naughtily ran th through all those years ago, and to repeat the heinous act, but this time wearin wearing Dr Martens boots.

Jere Jeremy Corbyn’s initiation involved readin reading the whole of Tony Blair’s auto autobiography, A Journey, aloud to a colony of 600 penguins. Mo Momentum managed to get the rul rules changed so that he could ski skip the last 100 pages and cut the nu number of penguins to four.

Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley, co-leaders of the Greens, were challenged to listen to four hours of whale music while nursing a badger. After their protests, they were allowed an extra three hours of whale music.