The true birthplace of the modern Olympic movement was the Cotswold village of Chipping Campden where a gentleman lawyer rekindled the ideal with country

The true birthplace of the modern Olympic movement was the Cotswold village of Chipping Campden where a gentleman lawyer rekindled the ideal with country sports for local rustics.On Friday, the Cotswold Olimpick Games (to give them their 17th-century spelling) begin on the same hill overlooking the village where Robert Dover presided over his first Games on horseback in 1612, wearing fine ceremonial clothes belonging to James I.The strict amateur code of the Cotswolds makes this September’s Sydney Olympics look like belated imposters.In Sydney, £960m is being spent so 10,000 athletes can compete for medals before hundreds of thousands of spectators, many millions of television viewers and 17,000 journalists and broadcasters.In Chipping Campden, the “real Games” will spend only £5,000 as 140 competitors strive for glory watched by an expected 3,000-strong crowd. The photographer from the local weekly paper may look in for a bit, if he can manage it.The Games will begin not with an Olympic torch, but with the firing of a cannon, a custom from the theatres of Tudor England to announce the start of a performance.The Chipping Camden contests are held every Whit Week and last only one evening. The sports are also different, shin-kicking, duelling with willow sticks, sack-racing, throwing the sledgehammer and spurning the bar (Old English caber-tossing).The Cotswold Olimpicks are the last preserve of an event staged at the Games of Ancient Greece and the modern Olympiad. The standing long-jump was discontinued by the IOC early last century.”I find it a miracle that these Games have gone on for so long,” said Francis Burns, secretary of the Games for 30 years “Robert Dover called them ‘harmless sports’. He was just dead keen on people coming together to enjoy themselves.”There have been hiccups. The Games were not held during the Civil War in the mid-17th century and they were discontinued for years after 1852 when navvies from the industrial Midlands brought unwelcome rowdiness.”These are the first games to originate in this country with ‘Olympic’ in the title and we will support them any way we can,” said Jan Paterson, of the British Olympic Association..

The man accused of shooting dead Jill Dando was in court yesterday for the first time since being charged with the television presenter’s murder. The man accused of shooting dead Jill Dando was in court yesterday for the first time since being charged with the television presenter’s murder.
Barry Michael George, 40, an unemployed musician, spoke briefly at the 22-minute hearing at West London magistrates’ court in Hammersmith, to give his name and address.Mr George, of Fulham, south-west London, who also calls himself Bulsara after the real name of the late Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, was remanded in custody for a week.He is charged with murdering Ms Dando on 26 April 1999 on the doorstep of her home in Gowan Avenue, south-west London. A second remand hearing will be held on 5 June at Bow Street magistrates’ court in central London, but he will not need to appear at that court until 26 June.When asked by the stipendiary magistrate, Justin Phillips, whether he understood when he would next appear in court he replied: “Yes sir.”Among the people seated in the court was Detective Chief Inspector Hamish Campbell, the officer in charge of the 13-month murder inquiry.Mr George arrived at the court at 9.25am in a white security van flanked by police motorcycle outriders and a police Land Rover. A large crowd of photographers and television camera crews lined the entrance to an enclosed precinct at the side of the court.Maryam Syed, representing Mr George, made no application for bail and reporting restrictions were not lifted. The magistrate imposed restrictions on the publication of any drawings or physical descriptions that could identify the suspect. It later emerged that the defendant is to take part in a second identification parade.Mr George left the court in a security van and was thought to have been taken to Belmarsh high security prison in south-east London.Mr George, the son of a retired policeman, was arrested at his home at 6.30am on Thursday, and was held for questioning at Hammersmith police station.

He was charged on Sunday shortly before 7pm.He lives less than a mile away from Ms Dando’s house. The BBC presenter was murdered with a single shot to the side of her head as she returned home from a shopping trip.In the past few days forensic science experts have removed boxes of items for analysis from his flat.He was first questioned after a public appeal on the first anniversary of the shooting. A police squad of 45 detectives has spent the past 13 months working on an inquiry that has cost £2m.. It’s almost enough to make you pity Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, the well-compensated chief executive of the Millennium Dome. It’s almost enough to make you pity Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, the well-compensated chief executive of the Millennium Dome.
Yesterday as Mr Gerbeau tried – not entirely convincingly – to claim that the Greenwich attraction had been “turned around”, a few miles upriver at Tate Modern, officials were almost having to turn away visitors.”We have not shut the gallery but we are having to regulate the flow,” said a spokeswoman for the recently opened gallery, housed in a former power station at Southwark.”People are being held in the turbine hall until enough people have come out. It’s about 500 out, 500 in.”She said the gallery, at which entry is free, had been drawing daily crowds of between 20,000 to 25,000.