Five-star lobby groups join the blazer trail

Letter from Singapore: For once the right people in the right place. In Singapore, the island which turned itself into a shopping mall, the International Olympic Committee, a sports body which turned itself into well, a shopping mall, is meeting to listen to offers from bidding cities.

Ah! Those who don't get regular postcards from the Olympic family often make the mistake of thinking the Olympic Games are the high point in the Olympic cycle. Rookie error. All that focus on athletes, all those drug scandals, all those day trippers doing their vulgar Mexican waves? No thanks.

Nirvana is here. The ultimate blazer buzz, the high of highs, the rush of rushes is the IOC bidding meeting. It is true times have changed. The IOC panjandrums are no longer borne around the world from bid city to bid city risking lumbago from carrying all their free gifts and gout from all their fine free meals, but come the bid meeting they can expect to be fondled and schmoozed by an A list of celebrities, politicians and royals.

This week in Singapore is the decathlon of brown nosing, the blue riband of ass kissing. The IOC members make themselves as comfortable as they can in the five-star Raffles Hotel and wait to be pleasured. Outside a sizeable chunk of the Singaporean army (who worryingly all appear to be adolescents) stand guard as the gentle hum of top level, world class fawning wafts through the windows into the tropical air.

There are 116 IOC members. There are about 1,000 bid delegates. There are close on 2,000 of us journalists. Never have so many devoted themselves to reading and catering for the whims of so few.

There are strict ethical guidelines laid out these days, so that no elderly IOC members injure themselves in tragic tumbles from mountains of free gifts, but there are no official advisories on dignity.

Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, is followed everywhere in Singapore by a tall good looking woman who has been painted green and who poses as the Statue of Liberty any time the Mayor pauses to talk. Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, wanders around in the heat wearing a Jackie Healy-Rae style cap. Even the Queen of England has bellied into the action, releasing an outrageously colourful statement to the troops. "As a nation we share a great passion for sport and a desire to see a greater participation in sport, especially among younger people." Crazy.

For the five cities involved in the schmoozefest the task is twin pronged. When not schmoozing they are spinning. The Raffles City Convention Centre sits between two glitzy hotel lobbies and is dwarfed by a massive shopping mall and all parties, press, bid delegates and IOC members are expected to be diverted periodically by the sight of a celebrity backer walking from one lobby to another or merely shopping in the mall. An oligeanous army of spinners will then explain what it all means within minutes.

Tony Blair has been here since Sunday, his hands cupping soothing balms of warm oil to relieve the stresses of IOC members who come out to the High Commissioners to be rubbed up the right way. Help is at hand for Tony.

David Beckham, that other heavyweight of world affairs, has slipped into Singapore and may perhaps be yet persuaded to dig out his old sarong in a bid to stir interest. Speaking of heavyweights of world affairs, Sven Goran Eriksson is here too.

London has undoubtedly gained a lot of momentum in the past few months and if access to the full roster of Hello magazine celebrities is a good measure by which to judge a city's ability to host the Olympic Games, well London could romp home.

For glitz they are matched of course by the poor hapless New Yorkers, whose bid has been reduced to three days of sizzle but no steak and no certainty over a stadium. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton bolsters the bid as does Muhammad Ali.

Clinton, Beckham and Eriksson in the one place. Heavens forefend and all that but one well-placed explosion could cause mass redundancies in the tabloid newspaper industry.

The Parisians have virtuously made themselves almost celebrity free as the their goody-goody bid reaches it's last wholesome stages. Moscow have done their best to drum up some glitz with, uhm, Alexander Popov, Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Alexei Nemov. When your celebs have to wear name tags you know you're in trouble.

Madrid have brought Raul and Queen Sofia and Miguel Indurain to walk purposefully across lobbies and tell people how intoxicating they find the Spanish capital to be.

Sadly however, the celebrities will not get to rigorously debate the issues of urban planning and social infrastructure between now and Wednesday's vote. Everything will hinge on the glad-handing and the series of presentations to the IOC by the bid campaigns.

That all goes down tomorrow with Paris making the first presentation and their principal rivals London going fourth. Yesterday, the highlight was a little spat between the London and Paris bids when the Stade de France came in for some criticism by experts attached to the London bid. Ignoring the fact the Stade hosted the 2003 World Track and Field Championships, Rod Sheard, a principal designer on the Sydney stadium, noted the Stade was built for soccer and rugby, not for track and field.

"It still has sight-line problems," he said. "I think the Paris stadium is a wonderful stadium, I really like to go there to watch rugby, but unfortunately rugby's not part of the Olympics. There's fundamental compromises when you introduce other sports . . . into an athletics stadium. We've all seen it."

The Parisians replied with looks of low-intensity hurt, declining to rat Sheard out to the IOC ethics commission who have strictly forbidden such attacks. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe placed a small pat of butter on his tongue before announcing his city would not be responding.

"On our part, it will be fair play throughout. We will not be belittling the others. We have no comment on other bids because that's the rules of the IOC and that's the Olympic spirit." He finished speaking and the pat of butter was still unmelted.

It all steps up a gear today with more and more IOC members flying into Singapore for foot massages and toe-sucking sessions. Will the austere presence of Jacques Chirac trump the chirpiness of the Blairs, who have approached the affair with the enthusiasm of a couple hosting their first Tupperware party? Will Ali , Parkinson's Syndrome and all, outwit Becks in a little extemporaneous debate?

Can Eriksson work his magic on sufficient numbers of female IOC delegates with those "hey, how you doin?" eyes of his?

They reckon there is literally a handful of votes in it. They reckon as many as a fifth of voters are undecided. Trouble is, nobody is sure which handful or which fifth to be whispering sweet nothings to. More exciting than the Olympics? You bet.

Less predictable? Sure. Sorry, have to go. Minor Spanish royal sighted in the Swiss hotel lobby. Press stampeding.