O archery, archery! Where art thou, archery?

01:30: Be brave, for we bear ill tidings. Are you sitting? Good.

All archery competition in the XXIX Olympiad has ceased.

Deep breaths now. We knew you would be upset. We hadn’t even got started on the Robin Hood jokes.

01:37: On reflection, it may be no bad thing the bows-and-arrows game is over. We had begun to question the wisdom of continually goading Ireland’s highly-armed archers. It wasn’t really fair on either of them. There is only so much ridicule a proud marksman armed to the teeth with arrows will take before reprisals become inevitable. One minute you are complacently jesting about archery, the next a hail of arrows crashes through the double-glazing.

01:52: ‘Let’s hope there’s no major pile-up on the track like there was in the steeplechase yesterday,’ says the BBC’s Hazel Irvine. On the contrary, Hazel, major pile-ups are just the sort of spectacle we crave at three in the morning, malevolent through sleeplessness.

02:00: ‘It’s not everyone’s cup of tea’ says Ms Irvine of the race about to get underway. This event is known to race walkers as the 20km walk. To everyone else, it is the Funny Walk. Sadly, John Cleese was a late withdrawal from Team GB in this event.

02:01: ‘I’m told it’s not going to be quick,’ says the BBC commentator. No, that would be because they are walking.

02:08: ‘You don’t normally associate the Kenyan nation with walking.’ How do they get around? Rollerskates?

02:19: We never thought the simple act of walking would be humorous. We are put in mind of a group of penguins following an aerobics video playing on a screen on the back of a very, very slow-moving truck.

Seriously, the funny walk is a goldmine of potential humour. We have already forgotten about the archery. Oh, fickle heart!

02:37: A Japanese competitor has been disqualified from the funny walk. By IOC rules, his gait was adjudged to be insufficiently comical.

02:58: The funny walkers are still at it. Still walking, still funny.

03:05: Zimbabwean Kirsty Coventry wins the women’s 200m backstroke final. Tediously, she breaks the world record.

03:10: The men’s 100m butterfly final is about to commence. Serbian Milorad Cavic and Alien Michael Phelps have a staring contest before the race. In a dramatic finish, Cavic takes gold, setting a new world record for staring.

3:11: Phelps, smarting from his defeat in the staring contest, wins the swimming by a margin so tiny it can only be measured by abstruse Swiss technology.

03:15: The women’s 800m freestyle final begins, but no cares because Michael Phelps is back in the changing room.

03:21: Unfunny Russian Valery Borchin, who tested positive for EPO in April, takes gold in the funny walk. Having been ejected from Russia’s team, he was then mysteriously allowed to rejoin.

Ah, proud Olympic spirit.

03:22: Corkman Rob Heffernan finishes as eighth funniest walker.

03:25: Rebecca Adlington, who - as you will doubtless be reminded four or five million times in British media outlets today - is with Team GB, wins the women’s 800m freestyle.

03:58: The word ‘Trampolining’ has appeared on BBCi screen five. We have never seen this word in print before. We prefer the appellation ‘boing gymnastics.’

04:12: A group of boing gymnasts are lead out by an official bearing a banner which says ‘Women’, just to clear up any ambiguity left by the procession of leotards and sparkly hair clips.

04:38: We were about to make a crack about a women’s 100m sprint, but the entire race happened in the time it took us to change channels on BBCi. Accursed digital TV.

04:57: Breaking news! The Serbian team is to launch an appeal over Phelps’ win earlier. Cavic, though, who was beaten by a fingernail, does not want the result challenged. He is presumably happy enough with his glorious defeat of Phelps in the staring contest.

05:00: Nope, Phelps is the official winner. Now he can relax and start chowing down on the whole cow he consumes each day to meet his 12,000 calorie quotient.

05:07: There is a men’s disco on in the Bird’s Nest.

05:07: We misheard. Discus. Men’s discus.

05:21: The pole vault makes us nervous. We keep waiting for the poles to split.

05:23: We’ve just been watching a Pole vault. Welcome to the Worst Pun of the Day, ladies and gentlemen.

05:30: Men’s pistol: Even on television, the shooting of pistols at half five in the morning should be banned.

05:32: A large Russian man is crying bitterly at his nation’s failure in the pistol competition. He looks angry and upset. Somebody hide the guns.