There are more than a billion people in China, and they still can't find 200 who want to watch Croatia play Brazil at handball. And this, apparently, is surprising. On the BBC Ten O'Clock News, Mihir Bose was very sad. “Handball,” he sighed. “A sport foreign to the Chinese...”

Well, yes. Because they'd have been packing the aisles over here, wouldn't they? It could be a question from a pub quiz, or from Who Wants to be a Millionaire? “Football, headball, handball, softball - which of the above is not an Olympic sport?” Quick, phone a friend. Although not one in China.

I'm no Olympic cynic. I do get the point. This is raw, physical competition at its finest. Man runs. Man swims. Man throws spear. But handball? I'm not saying it's not thrilling to watch. In Germany, indeed, I gather it is the seventh most popular sport around. But is it the stuff of Mount Olympus? The best a human can be? To be better than anybody else... at handball?

This is the great branding problem of the Olympic Games. The theatre of it all can take your breath away. The opening ceremonies are awe-inspiring. The heroism of the podium can make you weep. And yet, in the middle of all this, normally keeping their heads down a bit, you have the actual sports, which are either a 19th-century re-imagining of the minor hobbies of half a millennium before Christ, or the games we dimly remember from playtime at Beavers. It's weird. Everybody knows it, but nobody says. And then we are surprised we find it hard to care.

Olympics updates direct to your mobile

Put the Beijing Games in your pocket

Pinsent's message for his Olympic heirs

Gold medallist is confident the coxless four following in his wake will emerge as Olympic champions on Saturday

• Ben Ainslie’s shot at hat-trick delayed by bad weather

• Time to invest emotions in imperfect Paula Radcliffe

• Peter Cousins missed three drug tests, but made the Games

BACKGROUND

• Emms and Robertson bow out amid sea of tears

• Saunders second to punch in shock defeat

• Adlington takes aim at Evans' record

• Ohuruogu is lucky to be here, says rival

Multimedia

• Simon Barnes in Beijing

• Bring back the tug-of-war

• Top 100 Olympic athletes of all time

I know I sound like I am sneering, but I am sneering for a reason. It is our turn next. Do we want empty seats strewn across Stratford? Think about how sad Mihir Bose would be then. Think about the brave, disappointed tear in the eye of Lord Coe.

It is too much to bear. For them, let us learn. Let us upgrade our Sky Sports packages. Let us watch that German handball league. Let us learn about mountain biking and trampolining and hula-hoop, too. Not sure about that last one? Me neither. Phone a friend.

Crankwatch

I have no strong views about Nicholas Witchell, and my hunch is that alternative medicine only works on people who have nothing wrong with them. This aside, I cannot help but think that the Prince of Wales is always right. Or at least, he has the knack of being wrong about the right things. Consider this, alongside his views on GM foods. He has radar.

When the Prince speaks out, the instinct is always to deride him as a crank; to sneer at his double-breasted suits and his weird habit of putting one hand behind the other elbow and going “errrrr”. But we called him a crank when he spoke about the environment, and architecture, and organic food, and how scary the Chinese Government was. Years or decades down the line, he never seems so cranky after all.

Georgia on my mind

I was supposed to be in Moscow this week. That would have made for a good notebook, eh? “The mood is tense,” I would probably have written. Then I would have thrown in some stuff about gleaming golden domes and unsmiling women in hotpants. Then maybe a thought-provoking conversation about nationalism I'd just had with a drunken taxi driver, who had so much vodka pickling his gut that my eyes withered from the fumes. It would have been great.

Obviously my trip had nothing to do with Georgia, but even the fluffiest of hacks can dream. “Rifkind is in Moscow!” somebody would have said on the Foreign Desk, where they all still wear ties, and their shirtsleeves get pushed ever higher throughout the day. “Thank God! Tell him to get down to the border, pronto. Sketch the war! What sort of pets do they own in Georgia? Do they have an amusing national dish? That's what this hideous conflict needs! Whimsy!”

Some cleft sticks, and a pith helmet, possibly a collapsible canoe, and I'd have been away. It could have been the making of me. Scoops aplenty. Up to a point. Etc.

The cancellation of my trip had nothing to do with Georgia, either. It just didn't work out. But now I am left mortified, as perhaps only a Brit could be, that the people I was to visit might think otherwise.

How to explain? “May I assure you that...” Too formal. “Obviously, as Tbilisi is hundreds of miles from...” Too needy. “What a coincidence! Just as your tanks were rolling into...” Far, far too mad.

Scooped

A largely measured response to last week's diatribe about the idiocy of dogs, and I am now thoroughly ashamed of myself for having expected anything else. Pity, disdain and disagreement, but nothing stronger. No photographs. “As Billy Connolly said,” writes Jack, from New Zealand, “have you ever seen a dog step in human poo?” Touché.

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone