Do you remember? A couple of years ago, Fandango used to publish this prompt every Sunday. I used to enjoy taking part, and tried to highlight news stories from the UK. At some point during the week, there was always some story or other which won the week, either literally or tongue-in-cheek.

It was always a good idea, and I miss taking part in those posts. Now that I have some more time on my hands, I asked Fandango if I could revive them. So each Sunday evening I’m going to post some UK story which struck me as either admirable or totally crass. I’ll leave it to you to decide which.

A bit of silliness this week. Did you all enjoy the World Cup? Okay, okay, it had its flaws, but at least they got through the tournament, with 104 matches being organised successfully, and one team eventually crowned champions.

Spare a thought for the even-more-recent Asian Games.

A mostly-athletics tournament. the same kind of thing as the Olympic games, this was just held in the Japanese city of Nagoya.

Now, Japan has a pretty good reputation for staging big sporting events. Until now.

In line with current trends, the games were run on a budget, but still used the massive events company GL Events to organise the affair. Now, these guys organised the Paris Olympics in 2024, so if you’ll excuse the pun, they have a decent track record.

But in terms of the “budget” aspect, for example, a decision was made not to create a bespoke athletes’ village, but instead to use local accommodation like hotel rooms. A village, of sorts, was created, however – using shipping containers. Thrifty. eh?

But from that point, things started to go wrong. For one thing, the accommodation that had been secured was not quite enough. Accommodation was provided for a massive 15,000 athletes, but organisers were shocked when more than 17,000 turned up, first telling the extra athletes to make their own arrangements, then backpedalling and hiring a 1,500-berth cruise ship to help cover the shortfall.

For another, accommodation wasn’t quite suitable – you can imagine that a basketball team might have, er, special requirements when it comes to the size of beds.

And it didn’t stop there.

During the course of the games, buses laid on for the athletes would take them to the wrong venues.

And the Sports Minister of Taiwan, who I suppose must be considered a VIP at such events, all of a sudden had his security pass revoked and was barred from a flag-raising event.

Even worse, on one occasion, the South Korean Men’s Hockey team actually had the North Korean national anthem played at the start of one of their games. As if it weren’t bad enough just to have the wrong national anthem played, organisers happened to choose the anthem of a country with which South Korea is still, technically, at war!

And the South Koreans must surely had felt somebody had something in for them, when during a medals ceremony, their flag was raised “improperly”. Now, I’m not sure how one can raise a flag “improperly”, but the event contributed to the organisers issuing a a formal apology to South Korea.

Then, as the games drew to a close, organisers emailed event volunteers, inviting them to come along to the closing ceremony free-of-charge. A nice gesture, except the email was sent prematurely, resulting in yet more confusion.

After what must have been an immensely stressful period, the deputy director of the games, Takaaki Omi, reflected, “we also listened carefully to feedback from the athletes who were actually using the facilities and responded promptly with necessary improvements and measures.”

I think I want this guy doing my PR!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvze414811jlo

What about you? Do you have a story, perhaps from your locality, that you’d like to share with us? If you’d like to join in, just tag it FWWTW (this was the original tag which will help you find the earlier posts) and/or ping back to this post, so we can all read it.