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“OLYMPICS LOGO TRIGGERS EPILEPSY,” announces the Sun’s front page.

Olympic logos are like World Cup songs and official mascots, the marketing department’s way of leaving their soggy imprint on sporting events; something that should not offend the corporate partners.

The only people who buy official logo-endorsed mascots are parents of small children at motorway service stations. (The word “official” suggest something routinely anodyne and overstuffed. It rarely disappoints.)

The London 21012 Olympic logo will be easy to forget. Although Anorak reader Laurence Lemon observes this latest design by committee resembles Lisa Simpson giving oral relief. Not a pleasant image but, nonetheless, a statement. Not for nothing is the logo named The Wistful Piper.

As such, it’s not the kind of thing you want impressionable children to see, nor an epilepsy sufferer. You see this logo is not like all other logo because it flashes on an off.

It’s not enough to have London host the world’s biggest sporting event, what’s really needed to enliven the thing is a spot of strobing, a logo that will speak to people in America, Romania and Angola.

But there is trouble. The Sun reports that people afflicted with the photosensitive form of epilepsy are collapsing after viewing the logo on the internet and television. So the animated version has been removed.

And now the Mail says the static version should also be consigned in the same bin as Olympic mascots Izzy (Atlanta 1996), Millie the echidna (Sydney 2000) and logos like the Barcelona cow lick (1988) and the Montreal clenched fist (1976).

In “THE OLYMPIC LOGO REVOLT”, the Mail hears Tory MP Philip Davies say that he plans to table a Parliamentary motion calling for the Lisa Simpson Whistle to be scrapped.

Says he: “It is incredible that someone has been paid £400,000 to come up with this load of garbage.”

Indeed. It sounds unreassuringly cheap. The Millennium Dome cost £789million. Davies is right – let’s get the politicians onto it. If money needs to be wasted on official rubbish, the least we can do it make is spectacular…

Posted: 6th, June 2007 | In: Back pages. Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0