And the winner of the overspend gold medal is . . . .

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. When the Government announced that the Olympic Games in London could be paid for out of petty cash, all right £2.4 billion, I predicted that the final bill would come in at nearer £20 billion.

It seems Sky Sports has now calculated that the actual spend could be closer to £24 billion which is only 10 times the original estimate - but then there are still six months to go.

You suspect that if the Government decided to buy a packet of chocolate digestive for that morning's elevenses it would probably end up costing about £40 million, involve a couple of hundred consultants and dodgy private/public delivery companies, the order would be outsourced to a bank-financed offshore PPI biscuit consortium who would change chocolate digestive to own brand rich tea because of budget constraints and IT systems incompatibility and when the biscuits finally arrived three years late they would be soft and stale.

Oh, and the bloke in charge would get a knighthood as would the chairman of the PPI biscuit consortium who, by happy coincidence, had also donated some half a million to the party funds of whoever was in power just before the contract was awarded - and we would be told that this was the best deal possible for the taxpayer.