The Olympic games trundle ever closer, and already you can smell the excitement in the air, because it's being wafted in by gigantic corporate excitement blowers. Try as they might to engage us, we're not on tenterhooks yet. On paper it's virtually illegal to be anything other than thrilled to self-pissing point at the prospect of hours of running, jumping, swimming etc filling our minds and airwaves for several weeks, but in reality, the majority of Britons appear to be acknowledging the forthcoming games with little more than an offhand shrug. We're just not that arsed – not right now, anyway. That'll change the moment any of our athletes gets within sniffing distance of any kind of medal – then it'll be all cheering and jubilant BBC montages – but until then we're being very British about the whole thing by largely ignoring it, aside from the odd quiet moan about the negative effect it'll have on the traffic.
Well, for starters we could make that fake smile frosty-white by brushing our teeth with an Oral-B electric toothbrush. "Oral-B is getting behind the London 2012 Olympics," cheers the Boots website. "Share the excitement with their Professional Care 500 floss action electric toothbrush." Yes: the exhilaration, the agony, the sheer elation experienced by athletes operating at the peak of their physical aptitude – all this can be yours in the form of a vibrating twig you stick in your mouth.
The Olympic rings have been whored around so much they've become valueless: a status symbol for a few corporations to tote like a badge for several weeks, impressing almost no one except themselves. It's bizarre, and it's increasingly far removed from the event itself, which, last time I checked, chiefly involves running around and jumping over things. And, if you're British, moaning about the traffic.