Alice Wyllie: Only a walking, talking, sporran wearing spurtle could have been more obvious

By ALICE WYLLIE
Published on 22/09/2012 19:04

WITH the Olympics now a distant, sweaty, summery memory, I have finally succeeded in banishing the sinister, Cyclopean Wenlock & Mandeville from my nightmares.

The official mascots for the 2012 Games, they surely sit somewhere between the Child Catcher and the Wicked Witch of the West on the list of children’s characters that scare the Smarties out of their target audience. A single, giant, unblinking eye where a face should be? What sicko thought that one up?

I had barely had a chance to delete the Olympics app from my phone, however, before a new sporting mascot was foisted upon me, and this one is certain to occupy the spot in the darkest corners of my dreams left vacant by W&M.

Clyde the thistle – the official mascot of the 2014 Commonwealth Games – was unveiled earlier this week and despite being designed by a child (well done to 12-year-old Beth Gilmour from Cumbernauld whose rather charming drawing of a thistly man has been translated as the Jolly Green Giant with a purple mohawk) remains faintly creepy.

Mascots in general, give me the heebie jeebies, perhaps something to do with the fixed smile, the glazed eyes, the propensity for unsolicited hugging.

And where Wenchcock & Vaudeville at least had an abstract “quality”, Clyde is painfully literal. Only a walking, talking, hugging sporran-wearing spurtle could have been a more obvious choice than a thistle.

The purpose a mascot actually serves seems to have long been forgotten. We can surely be certain that no Olympic athlete rubbed Wenlock for luck or raised Mandeville on their shoulders in the throes of victory. There’s merchandising of course, but when it comes to selecting a soft toy, who wants to cuddle a thistle? And is there a sadder spectacle than a bargain bin full of these grinning, unwanted, over-ordered oddities come the end of the Games they were created to represent?

No, there is no point to Olympic and Commonwealth Games mascots. They are relevant for a matter of weeks and fans treat them with ambivalence at best. They are pure box tickery, an odd sporting tradition which, like doping, diving footballers and drunk rugby fans, needs to be relegated to that sweaty locker room in the sky.

• APPLE’S recent switch from the user-friendly Google Maps to their own vastly inferior navigational app as part of their iOS 6 software “upgrade” has thrown this iPhone user, like the rest of the world, into disarray. As someone who once carried a binder of printed Google maps with her in order to make her way in the world, 
I hadn’t fully considered 
the extent of my reliance on the service until I found myself “lost” on a very familiar central London street. Please send sustenance, a compass and an OS map.

• Autumn is here, Downton Abbey is back, and it’s time for the annual sentimental weepfest from John Lewis. Their latest advert follows two young lovers living 90 years apart as they laugh, dance, play, argue and reconcile, all in different centuries.

He’s wearing jeans, but she’s wearing a funny, old-timey hat! But it’s not that old-timey; you can buy the funny hat in John Lewis! “What’s important,” goes the tagline, “doesn’t change.” Consumerism and funny hats, it seems, are timeless. «