Crossing the street last week I was almost pulverised by a four-wheel drive

Crossing the street last week, I was almost pulverised by a four-wheel drive speeding along on the wrong side.It screeched to a halt just in time, but before I could raise my hand in an obscene gesture, several Ukrainians shouted insults at the burly driver and passenger, both with the crew-cut look favoured by dodgy businessmen and gangsters. At first in the post-Communist new order, those offended by the arrogant driving of the powerful in their flashy cars would quietly grumble. The city is becoming trendy: two young diplomat friends of mine, based in Prague, regularly travel to Kiev for the entertainment scene.And a rebellious defiance of the heavy-handed economic and political authority is growing. They indulge all tastes – for a price – such as the restaurant where naked women chefs prepare and serve sushi at your table.Ordinary Kievites also like to go out, however, and there are great places to feast very cheaply on nourishing borscht and shashlik kebabs, washed down by great beer or horilka – Ukrainian vodka – while listening to live rock bands singing in Ukrainian or English. In the Ukrainian capital everyone knows who has the power: it is the “oligarch” businessmen, crime bosses and politicians.

They make the laws and are above the law – and above even many of the “democratic” politicians. They are easily recognised as their menacing four-wheel drives or Mercs with tinted windows overtake lesser vehicles at red lights and speed past traffic cops with impunity.
Since a substantial middle class has yet to emerge, it is not hard to guess whom most of the new restaurants cater for. The menus are international, the food is good, but the prices make eating in London seem reasonable. The Formula 1 magnate was waiting, movie camera in hand, at her starting point.We had all been asked to nominate someone to act as a marker, a recognisable face to send you on your way I chose my son.

It happened to be his birthday, but actually it felt more like mine.. “I don’t know if I can even run 400 metres these days,” she laughed.But of course she did, as did Jonathan Edwards, Floella Benjamin, Davina McCall from Big Brother, a host of unsung heroes, and Bernie Ecclestone’s missus. These are fuelled by gas, and the flame has to be extinguished as soon as your run is over.Astonishingly, I found myself besieged by spectators wanting to shake my hand and pose with them for photographs, even though they did not know me from Adam Ant (though someone did ask if I was Jimmy Greaves). One young mother even asked me to kiss her baby while holding the torch.The flame had been passed to me by Parvez Ahmed, 18, one of 17 youngsters nominated by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, because of their community youth work. They get to keep the torch, unlike the rest of us who have to fork out £240 if we’d like it as a souvenir.You have to have it, of course, as a reminder of something really special in your life, something that for me had begun with a humbling experience the evening before, when I stood in line at City Hall to collect the uniformed running gear alongside the likes of Sir Roger, the former boxer Michael Watson, now bravely recovering from brain damage, and Dame Mary Peters, who I saw win her pentathlon gold medal at Munich 32 years ago. “From Bulky to Beefy,” I smiled as I stopped in front of the former England captain, but he didn’t see the joke. He was too busy wondering how to light his torch from my flame.

“What do I do now?” he asked anxiously.One of the dozens of escort runners accompanying the huge convoy of cars and outriders moved forward to remind us that we had to touch torches, rather like boxers touching gloves for the final round. I shuffled my portly frame towards Botham, doing my best to hum the opening bars of Chariots of Fire while glancing at the flame to ensure it wasn’t singeing what is left of my hair. I had watched it lit in a moving ceremony at ancient Olympia on a sweltering April noon. Since then it has been making an unprecedented global journey, embracing, for the first time, all five continents.London is the 21st of 33 cities on the 4,800-mile route before the Athens Olympics begin on 13 August. In all, some 11,000 torchbearers will have helped it along its way. All previous Olympic host cities will have been visited as well as those that hope to stage the Games in the future. Today it is in Barcelona and tomorrow Rome.My own run-on part in this epic happened, by sheer coincidence, in Harleyford Road, Kennington, where I was born 66 years ago, thenbombed out during the Blitz.Nostalgic yes, and personally moving, too, although I suspect I did not move as fast as some of the fit and famous, such as Audley Harrison, Matthew Pinsent, Colin Jackson and Sir Richard Branson.It probably took me more time to complete my allotted 400 metres than it still takes Sir Roger Bannister to run a mile.