He went on: “I think the Government totally understands people’s appetite for this, they can see the benefits of sport and what it does for young people. I think they understand very, very clearly the social and economic advantages.

“I think it is of profound importance for the happiness and success of this country that we have more sport in schools.”

“I would like to see a much more thoroughgoing effort. I think we must build on the achievements of these Games.

“People are signing up for sporting activities of all kinds, they are enrolling, they are involved.”

Mr Johnson echoed a suggestion made by Mr Cameron that the 80,000 volunteer Games Makers at London 2012 could “mobilised” to “train kids up” in sporting activities, given that they have already been checked for criminal convictions.

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, took to Twitter to criticise the Government’s decision to scrap the two-hour target.

He said: Just met former school sport coordinator for Southwark. He organised competitive sport for schools but lost his job. Not his fault or school’s.

“Southwark school sports coordinator also told me schools have now told him they are doing much less because of loss of support.”

But Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport told BBC Radio 4’s PM that targets were not the answer to improving participation in sport in schools, saying this was “not all about money and structures, but a culture change that recognises the power of competitive sport”

He went on: “This summer has shown how powerful competitive sport can be for teaching the lessons of life.”

The Conservatives accused teaching unisons of damaging school sport by banning teachers from supervising pupils outside of class time.

They claimed that the NASUWT, the biggest teaching union, had issued guidance to teachers saying “Members should refuse to attend any meetings and activities outside school session times which are not on the school calendar and which are not within directed time.”

The NUT was said to be balloting its members to join the NASUWT in a “work to rule”.

Damian Hinds, a Conservative member of the Education Select Committee, said: “Following the huge success of the Olympics, the last thing we want is to go back to a time when school sport was crippled by militant union leaders embarking on a damaging and irresponsible work to rule.”

But Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, said the Conservatives had been “selectively quoting”. She added: “The NASUWT action short of strike action has not targeted sporting activities at all.

“The sport saboteurs are not unions, but ideologically driven Government ministers who are vandalising our education service.”

5 London 2012 is not just a breakthrough for women but for the older generation. Japan has entered a 71-year-old competitor for the dressage. He first competed for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, the year I was born. Banzai!

6 The Olympic Stadium is looking utterly superb, and is packed with athletics fans from the beginning of the day – very unusual in modern Olympics. If you watched the climax of the events on sensational Saturday, you will have become aware of a wall of noise from the supporters – a vast pro-British sonic boom that seemed almost physically to propel the Team GB athletes. When Greg Rutherford jumped, or when Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah made their amazing sprints for the finish, you could tell they were almost literally lifted by the crowd. It must be obvious that it would be insane to knock this venue down. With or without football, that stadium has a great future.

7 Sir Paul McCartney singing Hey Jude at the velodrome.

8 The weather – perfect English weather for a garden fête.

9 The BBC has more than made up for any deficiencies in its coverage of the Jubilee, with an endless stream of dazzling pictures and apposite commentary. My favourite is the late-night summary with Gabby Logan.

10 And the Beeb has not only given up the “empty seats” story. It has also chucked the stuff about “ghost town” London. There were about 100,000 people at the Hyde Park Live Site on Saturday night, and big crowds of shoppers both in Oxford Street and Covent Garden, to say nothing of the stupendous multitudes at Westfield in Stratford. Across the world people are seeing images of a country that seems to be (a) happy, (b) relaxed, (c) welcoming, (d) full of beautiful places and interesting things to do, and (e) pretty efficient at laying on the greatest sporting event on earth. That is worth a great deal to London and to the UK economy.

11 Many people seem to have enjoyed me looking like a complete prat on a zip wire. I want you to know that I had no intention of getting stuck. The only upside is that we saw a big increase in footfall in our excellent Live Site in Victoria Park, and long queues to use the zip wire of doom.

12 The ArcelorMittal Orbit may be bizarre, but it has been packed out.

13 The Tube is carrying more passengers than ever before – record numbers on most days of last week. Indeed, the transport network is (on the whole) running so reliably that quite a few officials and members of the Olympic “family” have apparently abandoned their BMWs in favour of public transport. Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, was conveyed on the Docklands Light Railway, and pronounced it comfortable in every respect.

14 Robbery in London has fallen while the Games have been on – making a safe city even safer.

15 The Games have been the most dramatic possible lesson in the virtues of ambition, hard work and competition. They are the opposite of the something-for-nothing culture. They could not come at a better time for a nation making a difficult psychological adjustment, after long years of easy credit and ballooning debt.

16 They seem to have exposed unexpected reserves of positive energy – pride – that is passionate without being remotely intimidating or chauvinistic. John Major once said he wanted “a nation at ease with itself”. Here it is.

17 The co-stars of the show have been the volunteers – whether they are with Locog, or Team London Ambassadors, or the Tfl volunteers. Most Olympic cities say that their volunteers start to drift away, with attrition rates of more than 10 per cent. Here in London we have a 98 per cent retention rate.

18 We have not only revived the ancient cult of near-nudity in the beach volleyball. The park also boasts a bronze plaque with an ode to the Games in Pindaric Greek.

19 There will now be overwhelming political pressure to encourage more competitive sport in all schools.

20 Stop press. Andy Murray has just won GGGGOLD! He has defeated Roger Federer and avenged Wimbledon. Excuse me but… honk… proot… sob… I don’t think I can write any more…

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.