Claire Balding, the BBC presenter, is providing updates from Vancouver. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images Europe
Today we've got an absolutely action-packed column dedicated to the BBC's Winter Olympic coverage lined up for you. So let's just give you a brief taste of the excitement you can expect in the next 900 words or so. Coming up, in just about one sentence time, is a genuinely amazing paragraph number two in which we'll be looking forward to what promise to be truly memorable paragraphs three and four.
In paragraph three we'll be giving you a round-up of the highlights of those astounding first two paragraphs and in paragraph four we'll be doing exactly the same thing, only with the words seen from a slightly different angle and the addition of some loud whooshing adverbs and a phonetic rendering of a tune by Sigur Ros or Kasabian that we first heard as a ring-tone on the train to Stockton.
Paragraphs five and six – which have been rescheduled as paragraph three after the cancellation of paragraph four due to a sketchy grasp of structure and poor counting skills – offer an in-depth preview of what many experienced observers out here are already calling "paragraph seven". And just a few words later we'll be out and about in paragraph seven itself to find out just what all the fuss, the hysteria and the frat-boy whooping is about in the company of Great Britain's very own me, with a little help from gold medal adjective, fescennine.
In paragraph eight we'll be asking if the BBC is genuinely worried that if it doesn't keep telling us every few minutes what is about to happen, what has just happened and how spellbinding it has all been, the casual viewer may see all the snow and parkas and think they have stumbled across a TV remake of John Carpenter's The Thing with Clare Balding mysteriously cast as RJ MacReady, a part previously made famous by Kurt Russell.
After two minutes, unable to fathom why nobody – not even Hazel Irvine – has so far been bloodily torn asunder by a parasitic extraterrestrial life form, they will shuffle off in search of some reality show in which former members of the casts of Hollyoaks and EastEnders are left on a tropical island and eat their own feet. But not if they know what's coming up in paragraph nine!
Because we follow paragraph eight with a collection of sentences that really defy description and in which we'll unexpectedly link the vicious alien-occupied dogs of The Thing with snowboard commentator Ed Leigh, who spent several days living in a kennel with a pack of fox hounds in BBC3's terrifically watchable My Life as an Animal.
This will segue seamlessly into what is sure to be one of the great moments of the next 400 or so words – a joke about how living with those hounds was just about the ideal preparation for working with the BBC's expert summariser for snowboarding, Stine Brun Kjeldaas. Kjeldaas is a Norwegian who won silver in the 1998 half‑pipe and who, if her performance on Monday night – a breathtaking agglomeration of errrs and aaghs that suggested Robert Peston chewing a toffee the size of Frankie Dettori – was anything to go on, has clearly had several dozen full pipes since then.
Coming up straight after that we'll be taking an in-depth look at Ed, the man they are calling "the Hugh Porter of the alcopop generation". And enjoying some awe-inspiring similes about a commentator capable, in times of high drama, of generating the sort of crazed high-tar, phlegm-gargling noises that call to mind a Gauloise-smoking rooster attempting something by Puccini.
In paragraph 11 we'll look back at those unforgettable columns from the Games four years ago in Turin and the final of the women's snowboard cross when, following the unexpected tumble of Lindsey Jacobellis in the final few metres of the snowboard cross final, Ed shouted the surname of the Swiss woman who overtook her, Tanja Frieden so loudly and madly many people thought he was yelling "Freedom! Freedom" with the hysterical relief of a man who had just broken out of a particularly unpleasant Turkish prison. Or a studio containing a satsuma-shaded Sue Barker.
For the benefit of those who are joining us late after coming back from work, or a wine and cheese party at the local squash club, or having found us in May 2012 wrapped around some 1970s Scandinavian-design coffee cups you bought at a car boot sale this morning, paragraph 12 – which is scheduled to appear straight after paragraph 11 – will look back at the golden moments of what will surely go down as a classic paragraph eight.
And as if that weren't enough, in what promises to be an absolutely titanic penultimate paragraph we'll be recapping all the genuine highs and plumbing lows of this column's recaps, and previewing what promises to be an extraordinary weekend of previews as well.
So, without further ado, let's take a look back right now at what, by any stretch of somebody's imagination has been a wonderfully frenetic, if not-quite as fescennine as we might have hoped, column, starting with that incredible opening sentence which now seems as if it occurred – oh my goodness! – at least 863 words ago …
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