Mandeville and Wenlock. They’re good names at least. Strong and British, if not entirely conventional. And do you know what, they’re not awful, aesthetically, I think they’re pretty good.

Okay, they look a bit phallic, quite phallic, okay very phallic… they’re basically two walking cocks, but once you get past that, and I can fully appreciate that might take a while, they’re not bad are they? I mean really?

It’s seems a little preposterous to me that adults are pouring scorn on them. They’ve got a decent back-story, and the kids seem pretty fond of them. “I like them because they’re really tall,” said one eight-year-old Londoner. It’s as a good a reason as any.

I do wish they weren’t just anthropomorphic blobs though. I do find that a tad taxing. There is something a little cloyingly acceptable about how devoid of actual character they are.

I hear ‘mascot’ I think World Cup Willie (granted that name would have to change now), or Man United’s Red Devil, I certainly don’t think Gunnersaurus. Fucking Gunnersaurus.

Design Company London — Meeting to discuss Arsenal Mascot design commission

“So what should the Arsenal mascot be?”

“A north London Jew?”

“Well, no, because that’s a, too brilliantly ironic for football fans to appreciate, and b, the suit might seems a bit xenophobic.”

“Okay, dinosaur?”

“Got it! Great — lunch?”

The thing was you knew with World Cup Willie what he was all about the second you saw him. Arms crossed and broad square shoulders, he was a no-nonsense lion who lived for football and probably coached his cub’s Sunday league side.

You don’t get that immediate sense of character from these chaps/things/its — making them harder to identify with, or even like.

Mascots and logos aside, because ultimately they’re just extraneous vestiges and the only reason the media or anyone else gives two hairy hoots about them is for fear of looking foolish to our international neighbours, the thing that’s most laughable is how little the Olympics means to people outside London.

Yes they’re two years off still, and yes I appreciate they’re the London games, but it’s really became painfully apparent since I moved to our capital how much public money is spent here relative to the rest of the country.

And yet while Northerners are left to fend fend for themselves, the sense of community that one might expect would arise from the collective spoiling of Londerers is nonexistent, while that politically hallowed notion, “community spirit”, abounds t’up north. As do, I will admit many other not so nice things, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, xenophobia and fat people.

With my Northern brethren in mind I have made this, an alternative Olympic logo. Drum roll please… May I introduce Ian the bemused Northern taxpayer.

Related articles

• World Cup 2010: Lionhearted Willie led the way for mascots in the World Cup (telegraph.co.uk)
• London 2012: Why spend money on a new mascot when we have Boris Johnson? (telegraph.co.uk)
• Mascots quiz (news.bbc.co.uk)