MAYBE it's the greater sense of danger. Maybe it's the fact that they have more layers on and you can't see the physical evidence of drug use. Maybe it's the enviable facial hair.

Whatever, the Winter Olympics are exciting this column.

Some suggest that it's a freak show for us beneficiaries of Atlantic air flows but after watching BBC's preview, these competitors look saner than the addled automatons running anticlockwise on clay every other couple of years. The summer games are not without their characters, but the fascination quotient seems to get higher as the temperature drops.

Shaun White is a 19-yearold millionaire with a number of houses. Known as 'The Flying Tomato' (think Mick Hucknall with the inverse amount of cool) he snowboards better than anyone since the heyday of . . . well nobody really, the sport's only been recognised for the past three Olympics. The kid actually seemed pretty sane as well, and smarter than your average dude.

Ditto Kristan Bromley, Britain's best medal hope.

It's the sort of name that has your eyes halfway rolled before the surname but he seemed genuinely interesting. An inventor, an intellectual and he likes to chuck himself down a luge track feet first. What's not to like? Bromley, of course, is known as Dr Ice. Nice.

The BBC put a lot of effort into their preamble, and we hurtled down every track going as we were treated to more on-board cameras than you'd find on a pirate-themed porn set.

And then, just when we're getting really excited about their coverage, they bring out Colin Jackson.

He told us he was on "a voyage of discovery" as he went to meet a brother and sister skating act wetter than a surfing holiday in Donegal. He tried to skate with them, giggling throughout like a violated whoopee cushion. One can only wonder at the despair endured by the technical staff at the BBC, as fine work becomes obscured by the station's downright bizarre pundit selection policy. Maybe they could position a few hurdles on a luge track and send Colin on another 'voyage of discovery'.

Time for the opening ceremony, which was just like every other opening ceremony you've never watched. Lots of cows ballroom dancing, rollerbladers on fire, the usual drill. Barry Davies had the mic and isn't about to be criticised here for reading from the script as a chap with a dorsal fin on his head and veins on the outside danced ballet-style to bad techno. Barry did use the word moshpit a lot though, which was a little unsettling.

One of the highlights was creatures dancing up a rope wall in elaborate costume.

As far as can be recalled, they were representing industrial energy cells as they discover the Olympic spirit hiding in a cupboard somewhere. Kicking yourself for going to the pub now, eh? "Forty one dancers, 41 spiders, that is, other dancers. . . , " assured Barry, lest any arachnophobes in the audience thought they had awoken to their worst nightmare.

The countries entered to the soundtrack of the cheesiest tunes this side of a Roman disco bar. But as bad as most of it was, they did play Van Halen's seminal 'Jump', absolving all that went before. The Irish team were led out by Kirsten McGarry, who secured a top-five spot in flag-waving against some admittedly poor opposition. Man we do a good flag wave. Iceland were languishing in our slipstream.

After Van Halen, the obvious progression was a large-scale depiction of Dante's Divine Comedy. It was all genuinely impressive in a pretendingto-know-what's-going-on type of way. Unfortunately what followed was a tribute to the "beauty of speed", which was some goon doing skids in a Ferrari F1 car, a noise that must have been appreciated by all those inside the same stadium.

Soon the rubbish really started piling up. Yoko Ono appeared, squawking on about doves before hilariously asking everyone to fill the world with 'piss'.

Then an extra large Peter Gabriel put down the fork long enough to sing the creepiest, least uplifting version of Imagine ever as pacifists around the globe thumbed their phone directories for a local armoury.

It all ended, as ever, with the flame being lit and the place going wild as the real big man Luciano Pavarotti waddled out of retirement to belt out one last 'Nessun Dorma' and show that lightweight Gabriel how it's done. The BBC, shocked by a rare show of Italian efficiency, had to talk to Colin Jackson again. Still excited. Just about.