“Are you a baby? Or the parent of a baby? Well give me all your money or fuck off.”

That’s the latest slogan from the team at London 2012. Not content with ballsing up ticket allocation, parking, general infrastructure and local housing, the powers that be have now decided that babies will have to pay for a ticket should they attend the games with their parents, even if they weren’t born at the time of the ticket purchase.

Put another way, if, when their parents bought the tickets, the little scamps were just a glint in the Father’s eye and two tequilas away from existing, they’ll still have to pay, in what I’ll tentatively refer to as the first ever case of foetus-ism.

So, pushed into this cruel world with fingers, toes and a unexpected Wonga account, it’s not just Tories, rain and crushing mortality that these babies will have to look forward to, but an expensive seat watching an incomprehensible blur.

And I do mean ‘babies’. You know the nappy-shitting, thumb sucking, soft headed morons? The very same ‘babies’ that chew plastic for pleasure, piss on Lego and are happiest with a sock in their gobs; yes, them. They have to pay; pay to sit on a knee and watch vague shapes zip around a running track as their Mums and Dads kiss, wave flags and feign concern for an African with a sore leg.

Due to the ‘Pay Your Age’ scheme, tickets will only be £1-£3 for toddlers, but with many of the ‘better’ events not accommodating for children, it means that parents will have to either buy a full price ticket or leave their cute, little munchkins with a babysitter, who we all know are either slutty or evil. You can see the dilemma; risk your child either:
a) being abducted;
b) receiving a striptease, or perhaps worst of all;
c) waste money watching the javelin.
Quite the dilemma.

So where will it end? Can we predict that this farcical ticketing revolution is only one in a long line of wacky additions to traditional practice? Between now and the summer expect to see at least one of the following deranged ideas come into force: ‘Bearded People Get In Free’, ‘Anyone Over 80 Can Come In But Only If They Bring a Bucket’, ‘Anyone Who Can Prove They Are Directly Related to Sebastian Coe Gets A Half Priced Chicken Burger’ and ‘John Day Day – a day solely reserved for people called John Day’.

All seem more reasonable than making a Mum pay so her fleshy ball of snot can sit, tear at her necklace and drool on her cardigan during the national anthem.