I’m very happy to endorse the campaign for Aunt Sally to be a demonstration sport at the Olympics.

Aunt Sally may only be played in Oxfordshire, yet it is the world’s best sport because it is so accessible. This all hinges on the fact that it is quite ludicrously difficult. You lob six batons (like a rounders bat) underarm down an alley, attempting to strike a white peg, suspended about a meter above the ground. The spinning batons are wildly inaccurate. On a good day, I can hit one of my six shots, whilst some of the best players I know only manage three. A three to one skill premium is lower than any other sport I’ve heard of, and it’s no disgrace at all to miss all six.

Aunt Sally is also the world’s greatest sport as it is only ever played in pub beer gardens. Much of the time, therefore, it is played in a state of inebriation, happily with no visible effect on the randomly bouncing batons. Good beer gardens are in tragically short supply outside of Oxford, so I’d hope that once Aunt Sally goes global after 2012, we’ll even start to see a few more bucolic boozers cropping up in London to accommodate the sport.

But possibly the best thing about Aunt Sally is you just can’t go on and on about it. You chuck the sticks and then you pick up your pint again and the next player has a go. I’m a very keen sport-hater myself – have been all my life. That’s a bit of a drag in the labour movement, where every speech or meeting seems to start and end with a football joke, so the speaker can make a cheap connection and get the audience on side. Added to that, there’s many a good blog ruined by a preponderence of cricket or footy stories lurking like icebergs in the RSS. Aunt Sally – no nonsense – problem solved.

You know it makes sense.