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Last night's TV: Olympic Dreams

Even if you hate rubbish sports like diving, you'll love watching our Olympic hopefuls
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Olympic Dreams
'Tom Daley is only 14 but he's going to Beijing' ... Olympic Dreams (BBC1)

Diving - now there's a funny old sport. It's all over in approximately one second. All that practice and training for one poxy second. And then no one can properly appreciate it; you can't see what goes on during that second because it all happens so quickly. And the scoring is a total mystery. I doubt even the judges understand what they're doing. So why would anyone get into diving? Because of their diving hero? Who is the Cristiano Ronaldo of diving? Who is the anyone of diving? OK, Greg Louganis, but that was as much about what he got up to away from the pool as how he got into it.

But now there's Tom Daley from Plymouth, one of the young stars of Olympic Dreams (BBC1). Luckily Tom ignored all of the above, and got into diving. Because he's brilliant at it. He's only 14, but he's going to Beijing. Come on, Tom.

Tom's mum can't bear to watch her little boy up there, and his dad's in tears most of the time. Well, dad did just have a massive tumour removed from his brain, so he's understandably a bit emotional. His own near-death experience, coupled with his boy diving for Britain, is all a bit much. God, it's all getting a bit much for me, too. I have zero interest in diving; I don't have a brain tumour I'm aware of; and I am not even distantly related to Tom. But suddenly his dives seem like the most important thing in the world. I'm choking up. It's that sport thing again - it gets me every time, even the crap sports. Thank God we don't have anyone who can do any of the good sports - like running. OK, we do, but one's a drug cheat and the other is always injured and poos in the street.

Anyway, this is about the kids, the future stars. As well as Tom, there's Ashley McKenzie, a phenomenon in judo, another baffling sport that no one outside it understands. Who cares, though? Ashley has a lovely hang-dog expression, and naughty eyes. As well as fighting his opponents, he's had to battle the odds: ADHD, epilepsy, a hole in his heart. And he lives just down the road from me. Go Ashley, do it for Willesden.

Then there's 11-year-old gymnast Venus Romaeo, from Cardiff. Venus's main problem is her father, an ex-stripper with a wild look in his eye. "I'm not a pushy parent," says Tony. Most of the time he's got a stopwatch in one hand, and a whistle in the other. Almost the moment his wife pushes out a baby, which she does often, he's training it up for future Olympic glory, with special diets and rigorous exercise programmes. Does that make you a pushy parent, Tony? Does Paula do in the street what bears do in the woods?

But Venus (middle name Valentine), who currently tops the list of Romaeo Olympic hopefuls (ahead of Romeo Casanova Valentino, Angel Aphrodite, Isis Ise, Achilles Spartacus Mars and Caesar Augustus Constantine), seems remarkable unfazed and unscathed by the pressure.

All the kids in the programme are lovely, as is the show itself. My only complaint is that, given that it's about children and so may possibly be of interest to other children, it should have gone out a bit earlier than 10.35pm. Not that any of the kids featured would have been able to watch, whatever time it went out. I don't think television features in Tony Romaeo's training regime.

Here's more diving, in Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage (BBC2), from Mostar bridge in Bosnia, the one that got blown up in the war. Two local lads are going to do it for our guide, Francesco da Mosto, to prove their manhood ... oh, they don't dive, they jump. That's pathetic. No medals for Vedra and Damia. Check out the proper Mostar bridge dives on YouTube - they're much better.

Francesco's impressed, though. "You werrer greater," he practically sings, to the dripping boys in their Speedos. I still don't know if Signor da Mosto is for real. This smooth-talking lover of art and beauty with his bouffed silver mane is as cheesy as a ripe gorgonzola. He's like a Mills & Boon hero, or a character in a 1970s soft-porn movie (I'm guessing here, I promise) - surely he's some kind of elaborate spoof? Quite funny, though. Does Chris Morris have something to do with it?

I do like Francesco's elegant yacht, the Black Swan. And it would work in either Mills & Boon or a porn film. Eeetza vary beeoooootiful.

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