I watched the London Marathon on telly and it was exactly the same as it always is. Let’s own up – it’s hardly a spectator sport. For sheer, mind-numbing tedium, it’s one rung below Crown Green Bowling and only one above Formula One.

By the way, have you ever wondered about Formula 2? I suspect it’s so cosmically dull, it has to take place secretly under cover of darkness, like badger baiting and sex.

As for the Marathon, the only interesting sections of the field are the first five runners and the last ten. There you will witness respectively the breathtaking, bestial brutality of high-level athletics, and the spectacular type of incontinence associated with a total lack of training and a diet of Pot Noodles.

They should equip the last 5000 competitors with brooms or, better, those sticks with spikes on. If they insist on keeping the marshals hanging about ‘til midnight, the least they can do is pick up the litter. This is a purely personal view, of course.

Talking of spectator sports, the spectators always seem to me far more interesting than the runners. They’re even more pitiful than those vegetables who, like me, switch over from the Paint Drying Channel (number 136 on Freeview) to watch the race.

Imagine standing in the front row for three hours with your lumpy headscarf and no teeth, screaming, ‘Gaworn! Get them knees up!’ while you thrust pork pies and semolina pudding at dehydrated, near-delusional runners.

Then imagine being in the second row.

What makes them do that? What faint glimmer of counterfeit enjoyment can it possibly afford them?

Mind you, I did notice something extraordinary this year. At first I dismissed it as a hallucination, but there was simply no getting away from it. There, flaunting herself to the world, was a runner dressed in shorts, trainers and – wait for it – a running vest.

I must tell you, friends, that I was shocked and appalled. Call me old fashioned, but where was the rhinoceros head? Where were the stilettos and the tray of martinis? Why wasn’t she running backwards in a clown outfit?

I suppose it was beyond the boundaries of her stunted imagination to don even the simplest set of Thracian gladiator’s armour? Or to knock up a rudimentary replica of Neil Armstrong’s moon suit? Or even to crochet a bog standard Aztec chariot to drag behind her?

Standards have slipped since my day, I can tell you. Judging by the state of some of the competitors, you’d think this was a running race.  Frankly, turning up for the London in skimpy athletics kit is like attending a Royal Garden Party in a bikini.

If we’re to accept that henceforth the London Marathon will be relegated to a monstrous fancy dress party with sweat, then the least they can do is organise it properly.

Instead of dividing up the competitors according to their predicted finishing times, they should be classified by costume.

‘Sorry, mate – this is Lord Of The Rings. You want Giant Rodents, over there behind the Hitlers.’

The winners will be decided on a point system. A small number will be awarded for speed, of course, but the majority for Visual Originality. Thus the Redcar Trotters’ Tsunami will beat Deirdre Jenkinson’s Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

After the race, all the competitors will be required to attend a convention in Hyde Park, which will be captured for posterity by Luis Bunuel, the Surrealist film director.

Noone will be allowed to leave until Lloyd Scott arrives.