5. We have just stunned the world with what was the best opening ceremony ever produced – and by quite a margin. Danny Boyle’s filmic mixture of Blake, Dickens, Tolkien, JK Rowling etc etc has confirmed London’s status as the global capital of art and culture. Right-wing critics should be reassured that the meaning of the Mary Poppins-Dementors clash has been widely misunderstood. I am told by one figure close to proceedings that the bellicose nanny figure was intended by Danny Boyle to stand for Mrs Thatcher in her struggles with the NUM and other militant trade unionists. So that’s all right, then, eh! In any case, the Queen has made her first cinematic appearance – in the Bond movie segment – and deepened the admiration in which she is held in Britain and around the world. James Bond and the Monarchy – not to mention The Eton Boating Song… How can anyone call that Lefty propaganda?

6. We certainly didn’t spend the Beijing-style sums on fireworks – since the Chinese blew roughly the same amount as the British defence budget – but we unquestionably had the same global éclat.

7. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, made a truly excellent speech, in which he paid tribute to the role of Britain in either inventing or codifying the sports we celebrate at the Olympics. Only a small proportion of his speech was in French.

8. Jeremy Hunt has introduced a new sport to the Games, to go with the discus, shot-put, javelin. It is bell-whanging. He shows his class on YouTube. The rules have yet to be codified – there is still a dispute about whether you get extra points for hitting a spectator – but you can be sure they will be codified in London.

9. Unlike some other Olympic cities I could mention, the London venues were built on time and under budget – and represent a great global calling card for British construction and engineering. The athletes’ village is being hailed by all who bunk up there – including Tessa Jowell, who takes her duties as deputy mayor of the village so seriously that she actually pernoctates in the village, sharing the life of the young men and women on whom we pin our hopes.

10. The traffic in London has not – touch wood – been badly affected by the Games, or certainly not as badly as some people were predicting. As things stand, there have been plenty of times when we have been able to allow all drivers to use the Games Lanes – though you should always check the signs at the side of the road.

11. The Tube has performed pretty well so far.

12. Buses are running more or less to time.

13. Tens of thousands of people are attending the BT Live Sites in Hyde Park, Victoria Park and elsewhere. They are being treated to sensational rock and pop acts, as well as zipwires, zorbing (which involves large plastic balls) and other entertainments of all kinds: hog-roasts, tumblers, chaps painted silver and making jerky movements – and it is almost all FREE!

14. The Emirates Airline cable car from the North Greenwich Arena (O2) to the Excel, both Olympic venues, carried a record 26,000 people on Saturday. It is London’s newest and most successful tourist attraction, and was built to time and to budget by TfL, and very largely with sponsorship cash. We are still awaiting a visit from the great man after whom the project was named – Vince Cable himself.

15. The military are doing a fantastic job. Colossal numbers of people are being moved through the search areas and into the park – speedily, efficiently, and with great friendliness. They are working well with the excellent G4S staff. They are showing leadership and generally are entrenching the affection with which the Armed Services are regarded. In fact, the whole thing looks like a brilliant MoD anti-cuts manoeuvre.

16. The Olympics are proving to be a boost to tattoo parlours. Plenty of people seem to want their thighs inscribed with “Oylimpics 2012” and other ineradicable mis-spellings.

17. No single athlete was able to swank about having the honour of lighting the cauldron, since that went to a collection of young athletes. This was a typically brilliant and diplomatic decision by Seb Coe.

18. In the heart of the Olympic Park there are riparian meadows of wildflowers whose colour and glory are heart-breaking. There are cornflowers and vipers bugloss and rare and delicate orchids that are being neither trampled nor picked – but simply admired, by vast crowds, as evidence of our national genius for gardening.

19. As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.

20. Everywhere I go I see volunteers who are caught up in the excitement of the biggest thing this city has done in our lifetimes. They are happy and proud – and so, by the way, are all the spectators I have met so far.

5. We have just stunned the world with what was the best opening ceremony ever produced – and by quite a margin. Danny Boyle’s filmic mixture of Blake, Dickens, Tolkien, JK Rowling etc etc has confirmed London’s status as the global capital of art and culture. Right-wing critics should be reassured that the meaning of the Mary Poppins-Dementors clash has been widely misunderstood. I am told by one figure close to proceedings that the bellicose nanny figure was intended by Danny Boyle to stand for Mrs Thatcher in her struggles with the NUM and other militant trade unionists. So that’s all right, then, eh! In any case, the Queen has made her first cinematic appearance – in the Bond movie segment – and deepened the admiration in which she is held in Britain and around the world. James Bond and the Monarchy – not to mention The Eton Boating Song… How can anyone call that Lefty propaganda?

6. We certainly didn’t spend the Beijing-style sums on fireworks – since the Chinese blew roughly the same amount as the British defence budget – but we unquestionably had the same global éclat.

7. The president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, made a truly excellent speech, in which he paid tribute to the role of Britain in either inventing or codifying the sports we celebrate at the Olympics. Only a small proportion of his speech was in French.

8. Jeremy Hunt has introduced a new sport to the Games, to go with the discus, shot-put, javelin. It is bell-whanging. He shows his class on YouTube. The rules have yet to be codified – there is still a dispute about whether you get extra points for hitting a spectator – but you can be sure they will be codified in London.

9. Unlike some other Olympic cities I could mention, the London venues were built on time and under budget – and represent a great global calling card for British construction and engineering. The athletes’ village is being hailed by all who bunk up there – including Tessa Jowell, who takes her duties as deputy mayor of the village so seriously that she actually pernoctates in the village, sharing the life of the young men and women on whom we pin our hopes.

10. The traffic in London has not – touch wood – been badly affected by the Games, or certainly not as badly as some people were predicting. As things stand, there have been plenty of times when we have been able to allow all drivers to use the Games Lanes – though you should always check the signs at the side of the road.

11. The Tube has performed pretty well so far.

12. Buses are running more or less to time.

13. Tens of thousands of people are attending the BT Live Sites in Hyde Park, Victoria Park and elsewhere. They are being treated to sensational rock and pop acts, as well as zipwires, zorbing (which involves large plastic balls) and other entertainments of all kinds: hog-roasts, tumblers, chaps painted silver and making jerky movements – and it is almost all FREE!

14. The Emirates Airline cable car from the North Greenwich Arena (O2) to the Excel, both Olympic venues, carried a record 26,000 people on Saturday. It is London’s newest and most successful tourist attraction, and was built to time and to budget by TfL, and very largely with sponsorship cash. We are still awaiting a visit from the great man after whom the project was named – Vince Cable himself.

15. The military are doing a fantastic job. Colossal numbers of people are being moved through the search areas and into the park – speedily, efficiently, and with great friendliness. They are working well with the excellent G4S staff. They are showing leadership and generally are entrenching the affection with which the Armed Services are regarded. In fact, the whole thing looks like a brilliant MoD anti-cuts manoeuvre.

16. The Olympics are proving to be a boost to tattoo parlours. Plenty of people seem to want their thighs inscribed with “Oylimpics 2012” and other ineradicable mis-spellings.

17. No single athlete was able to swank about having the honour of lighting the cauldron, since that went to a collection of young athletes. This was a typically brilliant and diplomatic decision by Seb Coe.

18. In the heart of the Olympic Park there are riparian meadows of wildflowers whose colour and glory are heart-breaking. There are cornflowers and vipers bugloss and rare and delicate orchids that are being neither trampled nor picked – but simply admired, by vast crowds, as evidence of our national genius for gardening.

19. As I write these words there are semi-naked women playing beach volleyball in the middle of the Horse Guards Parade immortalised by Canaletto. They are glistening like wet otters and the water is plashing off the brims of the spectators’ sou’westers. The whole thing is magnificent and bonkers.

20. Everywhere I go I see volunteers who are caught up in the excitement of the biggest thing this city has done in our lifetimes. They are happy and proud – and so, by the way, are all the spectators I have met so far.

“I say this respectfully to our Chinese hosts who have excelled so magnificently at ping pong: ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century. It was. And it was called wiff waff.

“And there I think you have the essential difference between us and the rest of the world.

“Other nations – the French – looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner.

“We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play whiff whaff.

“And that is why that is why London is the sporting capital of the world. And I say to the Chinese, and I say to the world: ping pong is coming home!”

“You’ve got to love him,” we journalists said to each other, “but what on earth is the rest of the world going to make of Boris?”

Now that ping pong has come home, along with football, sailing, cycling, boxing and 25 other sports, we now know the answer to that question: the rest of the world apparently loves Boris too.

Tonight he is expected to play a leading role in the Olympics Opening Ceremony, before a crowd hundreds of times larger than that at London House and a TV audience expected to approach a billion.

It marks the culmination of an astonishing rise for the Mayor (and Telegraph columnist) from Britain’s private joke to a global superstar.

The Olympics come just a few weeks after Mr Johnson took New York by storm, and where he was forced to adapt his standard response to questions about his ambition to become prime minister.

Asked by TV host David Letterman if he fancied the US presidency (having been born in the Big Apple he is eligible for the job) he replied “About as likely as being reincarnated as an olive – or being blinded by a champagne cork.”

Assuming Jeremy Hunt isn’t the one wielding the champagne bottle, Mr Johnson’s prospects for becoming prime minister seem brighter than ever.

Because as much as the world has caught Boris-fever, Britain seems to have terminal case.

His appearance in Hyde Park last night with its amusing retort to Mitt Romney – “He wants to know whether we’re ready. Are we ready?” – was greeted with such roars of approval that the event came to resemble a Nuremberg rally.

Should the Games prove a success – and at this stage in proceedings suggesting otherwise is tantamount to treason (hello Mr Romney) – it will be thanks to the Mayor as much as anyone. You can’t buy PR like that.

The same can not be said of Mr Johnson’s hitherto rivals for the throne.

Thanks to his troubles with News International, Mr Hunt’s career was in freefall even before he starting braining people with hand bells.

And the repercussions from George Osborne’s omnishambles budget continue to be felt, with even loyal Tories muttering about him being removed from the Treasury following this week’s dire GDP figures.

And above it all, strides the Mayor, a quote-producing, dishevelled national joke turned national treasure. He even has a new haircut.

Ping pong has come home. And so has Boris.

It is all too hilariously accurate. We Olympic committee types really do sit around and talk about “legacy”, “sustainability”, “diversity”, “inclusivity” and “multiculturality”, and contained within those woolly abstracts are of course many good things. But when the Games begin this week they won’t be remotely inclusive — not on the track, not where it counts. They will be elitist, ruthlessly and dazzlingly elitist. They won’t be diverse, not really. They will be an endless parade of a fraction of the top one percent of the most physically gifted human beings on earth. If you want the antithesis of the “all-must-have-prizes” culture, this is it. You either win gold, silver or bronze — or else you are an also-ran.

But the important point about the Olympians is not just that they have exceptional bio-mechanical equipment. It’s not just the paddle-shaped hands of the swimmers or the muscle twitch of the sprinters. What makes the sport so compelling is that it is not enough to have a well-made skeleton or musculature. It is all in the heart, or all in the mind. It is a palpable lesson in human achievement and effort. It’s about overcoming pain, and bouncing back from defeat. It’s about endlessly denying yourself some elementary pleasure, like a Mars Bar or a lie-in or a pint of beer, because you hope for some greater long term reward.

Listen to this paper’s wonderful online interviews with great Olympic gold medallists, and how they put in their best performance. You can hear the extraordinary 400-metre hurdler Ed Moses explain his system of measuring 13 paces between each hurdle, and running eight inches from the inside track. Sir Steve Redgrave discusses the exact division of a 2,000-metre race into segments, and the techniques of psychological self-management that are necessary to deal with the lung-bursting agony of the final push. Denise Lewis tells how she threw the javelin in Athens with a broken foot. Seb Coe reveals his trick for beating Steve Cram in Los Angeles (the secret was to stay in front of him all the way round).

As you listen, you realise that these performances were the result not just of physical genius, but also of colossal intellectual and emotional effort — years of self-discipline. The Olympics, in other words, is about character. It’s about the will. Of course, as Baron de Coubertin was at pains to point out, it is not all about winning. But if you want to win, then you need to work. That is the basic message of the Olympics.

Young people in this country are going to see it demonstrated, before their eyes, on the grandest possible stage and in the most vivid and exciting way. Of course you need all sorts of things to have a chance of success. You need opportunity. You need facilities — and it is one of the scandals of our time that both Labour and Tory governments allowed the playing fields to be sold. You need people to take an interest in you and coach you. But you also need to understand that success – in any field – means drive, and the will to win, and the resolve to do things that are dull, repetitive, uncool and very often painful and exhausting.

Yes, of course the Olympics is about legacy, sustainability, diversity, inclusivity, posterity and multiculturality. But it is really about competition between human beings; the glory of winning, the pathos of losing, and the toil that can make the difference. That is the grand moral of the Games, and a very good one, too. It is also the key to economic growth.

Maybe it was time to call upon the sun god Ra, or Phoebus Apollo, or Sol Victrix, or whatever name he now goes by, and lift our hands in chanting entreaty. Come on, O thou fiery spirit that animates the world. Come on out from wherever you are hiding. Shine the light of your countenance upon us, you miserable blighter. Extend thy beams, so reverend and strong, and dry the water from our upturned cheeks. Flatter the mountain tops with your sovereign eye, vaporise the thunderheads, and give us all a break.

For the sake of completeness, and so that no one can later accuse me of concealing the bad news (what did he know about the weather, and when did he know it?), I should say that Piers has a general thesis that the current phase of grim weather – cold, snowy winters and wet summers – is just the prelude to something yet more bracing. We are heading, he says, for a mini Ice Age. These wet Julys and frosty Januaries are part of the opening drum roll of a cold period that will set in over the next decades.

Some say it will be upon us by 2045, some say by 2030. Looking at the pattern of the last few years, Piers Corbyn now thinks it could be sooner than that. He does not say that sabretooth tigers will roam the streets of Newcastle. He does not say that the Thames will freeze at London Bridge and that we will have fairs on the ice – unlikely, given how fast the river flows these days. But he does believe that it will get nippier, and that we will see the kind of cold period last experienced in the late 17th century and early 18th century.

That is the long-range forecast; and as for the next few days – well, do you want me to tell you what the short-term forecast is? Do you really want to know what the augur Corbyn foresees for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games? Brace yourselves. “We’re very confident that there will be a lot of rain – a deluge, really – during the entire Olympic period, and we are 80 per cent sure that the Opening Ceremony itself will feature heavy rain, including hail and thunder.”

Well, my friends, I have two rejoinders. The first is that I don’t necessarily agree. Piers may be wrong. As I look out of my window this very moment, I can see beautiful blue sky and high, fleecy clouds – a perfect day. I have watched the flight of the birds, and they seem perfectly auspicious to me (a pair of pigeons, obviously much in love, occupying the right hand portion of the sky). Over the course of lunch I will examine the entrails of my Cornish pasty, but I can already tell you the results of the extispicy. Yes, there will be some greyish turnip, presaging more cloud; but also bright yellow swede, indicating more glorious sunshine.

In other words, it is going to be a classic English late July; and even if Corbyn is right in every particular – even if we can expect some more moisture – is that the end of the world? We have just staged a flawless Wimbledon; huge crowds are turning out for the torch relay, whatever the weather, and all enjoying themselves; the parks are heaving with joyous concerts, rain or shine. And even if we are about to enter a little Ice Age, the last ones didn’t seem to impede Britain’s rise to a position of global dominance.

Blow, winds and crack your cheeks. Blow, you cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drenched our country yet again. We don’t give a monkey’s. We like a spot of precipitation. It intensifies the pleasure of the sun. Made us what we are. And by the way, it still rains more in Rome than it does in London.