By John Sexton
Two blonds brought a bright red London bus and a bus queue to Beijing last night in a bewildering tableau of modern Britain. One tubby, one trim, both blonds are the kind of ferocious self-publicists that define our age of celebrity.
But it must be admitted that the tubbier one has some way to go to build the kind of brand recognition already achieved by his lithesome partner in this part of the world.
Boris Johnson, mayor of London, was born to privilege and is a hereditary dresser in silly costumes, notably as a member, with Conservative Party leader David Cameron, of Oxford University's exclusive Bullingdon Club.
David Beckham, the son of a kitchen fitter and a hairdresser, has a flamboyant dress sense that is all his own, or perhaps his wife's.
But at Beijing's Olympic closing ceremony, their sober dress marked them out in a sea of silliness, both looking slightly at a loss as men in shiny PVC suits gyred and gimbled around them.
Boris's first duty was to wave the Olympic flag. As a Tory, you'd have thought he would be an expert flag-waver. But his jacket won't button up, due to too many lobster thermidors, and he looked extremely uncomfortable next to his much fitter-looking Beijing counterpart who, you can nevertheless be sure, unlike Boris, does not cycle to work.
A red London double decker bus rolled in to the stadium. Hang on, didn't Boris, when candidate for mayor, promise to bring back the classic Routemaster? But this was just another giant oblong tin can. It had London-Beijing-London written on the side, indicating that the Brits had no intention of making a present of it to the city council here, even supposing Beijing were willing to accept.