How much would I pay NOT to go to Olympic Swimming?

I have just had it explained to me what attending the Olympic swimming involves. I am trying to work out how much I would pay NOT to attend.

Apparently you have to start with a train journey through the parts of London Lucian Miers knows well. The tubes will be jam packed, sweaty and horrible. You then emerge and form an orderly queue before entering an arena you cannot leave until lunchtime and even then only for a brief interlude before the swimming resumes.

There is no smoking in the arena. And no movement lest you disturb the swimmers. You cannot bring in your own food and drink but must pay hugely over the odds for refreshments provided by sponsoring companies. Unlike at Lords, I fear that attempts to smuggle in decent quantities of decent wine will be unsuccessful. Watching swimming is mind-numbingly dull at the best of times but under such conditions it sounds like sheer torture – surely there is something in the Geneva convention about this?

Forget Guantanamo Bay – send any captured Taliban off to London this summer with a threat that they must watch every single swimming event in both the Olympics and Paralympics. They will all be squealing within minutes as the realise what awaits them, willingly handing over the identities of every sleeper terrors currently working as a social worker in Wolverhampton in order to avoid the water torture.

Lucian Miers reckons he’d pay £1000 not to go to a day at the swimming. I tend to think the same way.