BACK by popular demand — or by some kind of demand, anyway — Channel 4’s The Games stages its opening ceremony tomorrow, amid hullabaloo befitting the third celebrity Olympiad of the modern era.

And even if we cannot bank on seeing the kind of high-tech, launch-night spectacular recently experienced at the Winter Olympics in Turin, it is clear that, this year on The Games, just introducing the athletes to the audience is going to be a project of a unique complexity, logistically speaking. For, even if these celebrities were to enter the arena waving a giant flag with their names on, a large proportion of us would still struggle to identify them. Anyone for Ebony, the “former glamour model”? Jade Jones, anyone?

In the interests of clearing up at least some of the likely confusions, Bernie Nolan is, in fact, a woman, JK (a DJ) is, in fact, a man, and MC Plat’num is, in fact, a rapper. Anything can happen, of course, over the ensuing fortnight, but Plat’num already looks a shoo-in for a podium finish in the redundantly abbreviated name event. Great things are also hoped for him, however, in the javel’n.

Entirely unabbreviated, and looking good in training, is Peter Duncan, the former Blue Peter presenter and heir to the John Noakes have-a-go-hero throne. At 51, Duncan is, by six years, the oldest celebrity to have taken part in The Games and is technically mature enough to be MC Plat’num’s grandfath’r.

Write the Blue Peter man off at your peril, though. Duncan once ran the London Marathon in a check suit designed for him by Blue Peter viewers. He is also, in his capacity as Britain’s Chief Scout, the country’s leading figurehead for the scouting movement.

Accordingly, there is little anyone can tell him about trying out as an athlete in a high-pressure television environment, nor, indeed, about building a campfire afterwards, and if he doesn’t win a medal, he will make one for himself, using the top off the bottle of a well-known brand of washing-up liquid.

My analysis, based on a close appraisal of the nightly build-up programmes on E4, is that the only thing Duncan needs to guard against is complacency. He should remind himself that he is surrounded by younger and hungrier celebrities who are ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness and my feeling is that Plat’num, in particular, will be there to clean up if Duncan experiences a wobble — or, as they call it in scouting, a woggle.

Among the women, Javine clearly has the motivation to do well, coming off the back of a number of personal disappointments. “Recently, I haven’t won a lot of things,” last year’s UK representative in the Eurovision Song Contest, whose Touch My Fire limped home 22nd in Kiev, said.

Keep an eye out, too, for Michelle Gayle, the former EastEnders actress and pop singer, who seems to have her head in the right place — or did, until she fell off in the cycling and badly damaged a fingernail.

Surveying the damage with a seriousness normally reserved for the more touch-and-go cases on Casualty, The Games’ resident doctor announced: “There is no way of knowing what the nail will grow back like.” Here’s my guess: it will grow back like a nail. But, hey, I’m not the doctor.

Meanwhile, Julia Goldsworthy, the Liberal Democrat MP for Falmouth and Camborne, looks promising in the token person-with-a-proper-job role. Goldsworthy has stated that business in the House comes first, a woefully careerist misreading of priorities for which she may well pay when competition begins in earnest — or, at any rate, in Sheffield.

One also notes, with concern, that Goldsworthy’s preparations were badly disrupted by the resignation of Charles Kennedy and the subsequent leadership battle within her party. Look no farther than that for an explanation if the plucky MP goes belly-up in the white-water kayak slalom, a new event for this year.

Similarly struggling with commitment during the build-up is Darren Day, the former TV game show host, who has been excusing himself from training because of what the programme referred to as his “hectic panto schedule”. Oh no it isn’t. Oh yes it is, etc. But, busy being Buttons or not, Day can ill afford to decline specialist instruction where it is offered, especially given that this year’s roster of male events includes — another first — kendo.

Nothing whatsoever to do with a well-known brand of instant coffee, kendo is that martial art in which you dress up in a sinister black robe and a mask and wave a stick around. But in a good way.

The sight, during a training run, of Goldie, the alarming club DJ with the expensively reinforced mouth, wearing a hood and raising a thick lump of wood over the head of a former Blue Peter presenter will live long in the memory of all those who saw it, possibly in the form of a recurrent nightmare. Expect similarly indelible scenes when the action gets under way for real, or thereabouts.