Flame prank

Last Thursday, that infamous Sydney Olympic flame finally arrived in Australia. After the embarrassing start in ancient Olympia last month, when the daughter of IOC vice-president Kevan Gosper replaced a Greek-Australian schoolgirl as the first Australian to carry the torch, it now begins an epic 100-day tour of the island continent ending in Sydney on September 15th.

This week, however, most newspapers in Australia were recalling the student prank that so enlivened the 1956 torch relay. Some 30,000 people cheered wildly as Barry Larkin bounded up the steps of the Sydney Town Hall and handed the 1956 Olympic torch to Lord Mayor Paddy Hills. The Mayor then launched into a speech welcoming the flame to the harbour city only to be quietly told that the torch, a burning plum pudding tin nailed to a chair leg, was a fake. The real one was still 10 minutes away.

So who was Barry Larkin? He was one of eight students from Sydney University's St John's College who had heard enough about the sacred flame and wanted to earn the annual prize for the university's best prank. As the crowd filled up central Sydney, the group slipped through unnoticed, lit their torch, and sent Larkin heading for the Town Hall, necktie swinging in the wind.