Armageddon' out if Kim auditions for Countdown

Like any other reader of the sports section, I wouldn't normally pay a blind bit of notice to the thick protective wad of paper it comes wrapped in - you know the one: covered in pictures of men waving guns or wearing suits and filled with stories about, oh, I don't know, stuff. The other day, however, as I was laying the dog's dinner down on it, I couldn't help noticing that the North Koreans have just set off an atomic bomb. From what I could judge they did it in their own back yard, which is something football pundits might say was "a wee bit naive, defensively".

Because while I can't say I'm much of an expert on modern warfare, one thing I do know is that when you explode a big bomb you're supposed to do it in someone else's country, not your own. I mean, those funny old England fans wouldn't be humming The Dam Busters March if the Lancasters had dropped their load on Birkenhead, would they?

Whatever, the fact that the president of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, had chosen to carry out nuclear tests just days after the England manager, Steve McClaren, announced that Wayne Rooney was "ready to explode" is surely more than mere coincidence. After all, the threat of our own WMD (Wayne of Mass Destruction) drifting into that hole behind the attackers that is so difficult to defend against, even with tanks and surface-to-surface missiles, was bound to strike fear into all those that George W Bush has so eloquently identified as "the axis of evil" - a group which, if memory serves, also includes Iran, Iraq and Glenn McGrath.

Aside from that, the reasons for Pyongyang's nuclear detonation are complex, but from what I could intuit from the rest of the report (or at least the bits that weren't covered in chunks of meaty goodness), they basically boil down to the 5ft 4in autocrat's peevishness over the fact that he is not even on the shortlist to be the next host of Countdown.

Admittedly, anyone might get vexed at the thought of being passed over as Des Lynam's successor in favour of Gyles Brandreth, though even Nicolas Anelka would probably regard reducing our planet to a smouldering cinder the size of a kidney stone as a hissy fit too far.

Kim's supporters will point to the fact that the West has sorely provoked him already. Not least amongst the insults being the BBC's decision to shelve an episode of Celebrity Dictator Swap in which the beloved leader was to have exchanged places with Wigan Athletic's chairman Dave Whelan for a month. "Jong-ilo was really looking forward to working with Paul Jewell and the lads at the JJB," a North Korean insider told me. "I mean, obviously there were doubts over whether such a maniac should be let loose in a civilised country, but the Koreans seemed willing to accept Dave and his range of trenchant, no-nonsense opinions, so that should surely have been the end of it".

To outsiders, the threat of Armageddon may seem to have little to do with sport, beside the obvious fact that a nuclear winter will result in an awful lot of work for Tony Green and the rest of the pools panel. In reality, the international community is moving to harness the dynamic power of games in what many see as the only way to put a brake on Kim Jong-il's machinations.

While appeasers called for mediation and the possibility of Kim replacing Gabby Logan as host of ITV's Uefa Cup coverage, the Japanese last month made a pre-emptive strike by barring three North Korean synchronised swimmers from entering the country to take part in a World Cup event.

Not since 2003, when North Korea's appearance at the World Student Games in Taegu was marred by an incident in which the team's management claimed "reactionary forces" had broken into the hotel rooms of the 270-strong cheerleader squad and stolen items of underwear, has Pyongyang's resolve been so severely tested.

The North Koreans were reduced to impotently raging against Japan's bid to host the 2016 Olympics Games. According to the state-controlled Korean Central News Agency, Japanese attempts to convince the world that they could organise the Games were "enough to make a cat laugh" while Japan's Olympic committee were "political dwarfs and dregs" who "resort to any despicable and clumsy method for achieving their dirty political aims".

Splendid stuff, but then this was the same agency that branded the James Bond film Die Another Day as "a dirty and cursed burlesque" and said the film was proof that the United States was "the headquarters that spreads abnormality, degeneration, violence and fin de siècle corrupt sex culture".

Frankly, Die Another Day is nowhere near as exciting as that makes it sound.

Now, as tension mounts between the North Koreans and the rest of the world, two key questions remain unanswered: will the synchronised swimming embargo bring Kim Jong-il to his knees, and if it does, how will we tell?