OLYMPIC TV VIEW:ALTOGETHER NOW: "What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours, brought the sun and the flowers, where there used to be raaaain."

A day ago we'd all but given up hope of ever seeing our flag hoisted up an Olympic pole, but by mid-afternoon we were dripping in medals. Well, two of them. Bling-orama. Paddy Barnes and Kenny Egan, worth their weight in gold those fellas. At least bronze, that is.

Not that it should only be about medals, but still, all we wanted was the one. And now we have two. As the Cuban boxing coach Oscar De La Wildez once put it, "To be sure of one bronze Olympic medal may be regarded as good fortune; to be sure of two looks like the boxers are well up for it."

And they were too, "the handsome Dubliner" and "the wee man from the Ardoyne", as they were billed.

When Katie Taylor, in the RTÉ studio, said Barnes would "just be thinking about going out and enjoying himself", Mick Dowling and Bernard Dunne nodding in agreement. It made us realise these boxing folk truly are a breed apart. How, we wondered, could you think about going out to enjoy yourself when there was a possibility you'd have the head boxed off you for four whole rounds?

As it turned out, though, it was Lukasz Maszczyk who got little enjoyment out of the bout, especially in those blitzy spells, as they rarely say in the boxing trade. "Barnes lets it all go as though somebody dropped a coin in his slot, one that made his arms go flash, flash, flash, flash, flash," as Jimmy Magee described it.

The man from Poland showed most resistance between rounds, refusing to sit on his stool - "Big men don't sit down when they have big jobs to do," said Jimmy - but, needing God on his side, Maszczyk discovered the Holy Family man wasn't for stopping.

Jimmy reckoned, appropriately enough for the sport that was in it, that Barnes had made Ireland "proud as punch".

And that was only the half of it. Next up: Egan against the man from Brazil, Washington Silva.

"Egan looks taller. He is taller," said Jimmy, and by the conclusion of round four the man from Neilstown had grown another foot or three.

"Here I am in the semi-finals of the Olympic Games. I've no injuries, I'm still handsome, I'm flying," he told Marty Morrissey.

He conceded, though, he was a bit of a late developer, not least with his admission that "I was eight years of age, I was still going around in nappies" when he watched "Mick Carruth on the TV winning an Olympic medal".

Unlike his potty training, though, Egan's Olympics have been progressing without a hitch, his beauty undisturbed after he conceded just four points in three fights. Most of us would concede more than that while queuing up for a batterburger on a Saturday night.

Next up?

"What fun and games, an Ireland v Britain semi-final in the Olympics Games," said Jim Neilly over on the BBC when Sunderland's Tony Jeffries made it through to fight Egan, to whom he lost earlier this year.

Was Bernard Dunne worried?

"If you told Kenny he'd be in the Olympic semi-finals fighting Tony Jeffries what would he say to you?" he asked Bill O'Herlihy.

"What," asked Bill.

"I've just won the Lotto," said Bernard, suggesting he's a bit confident about that flag of ours being hoisted up the Olympic pole at least another notch.

Carruth was no less hopeful.

"He was eight years old watching this old, fat man," he said, insisting Egan was capable of matching his golden achievement.

How would he feel about that? "I've been privileged to be the first ever; I don't want to die the last one," he said. Ah, pure gold.

Boxing, then, has saved us.

"We were looking for Eamonn Coghlan today so we could slag him, but not in a bad way," said Carruth. "But how many kids are going to join a boxing club over the next couple of weeks?"

Too true.

On the CBS Evening Newsthey told us that half of America had flung itself into a swimming pool since that Phelps man did his thing, eight times over, so, inevitably, we'll be jabbing, hooking and uppercutting like there's no tomorrow from here on in. Even the man cooking the batterburgers was wearing a green, white and gold gumshield last night.

In Scotland, meanwhile, the cars and buses will be emptied; they'll be paddling everywhere. As the awe-inspiring headline in the Daily Starput it when Aberdeen's David Florence won silver, 'Och Aye Canoe!'