It was Sue Barker who presented BBC One's coverage of the Olympic torch relay through London, but surely this was a broadcasting mission that screamed out for Stuart Hall. Formless jostlings in sports kit, blokes in uniform tumbling from bikes, lots of hurried climbing on and off buses, explosions of compressed sodium bicarbonate, chanting, flags, snow ... all that remained was for Hall to give it that great, gutsy It's A Knockout guffaw - “Ha, Ha, Haaaa!” - and then take us over to Eddie Waring “at the marathon”.

OK, you could argue that Hall historically lacks Barker's political gravitas. It might have proved beyond the bizarrely loquacious Radio 5 Live football reporter to address the camera, as Barker did, with carefully calibrated concern, as if to say that, although this was all extremely disappointing and, clearly, the corporation disapproved in the strongest possible terms of strangers wrestling with Konnie Huq in Ladbroke Grove. At the same time, it didn't mean that the BBC wasn't standing full square behind freedom of expression because this, after all, was Britain. Which is an awful lot to express with your face, least of all while standing next to Lord Coe on a wind-lashed podium in Greenwich.

Nevertheless, although there were other messages emerging from the relay, surely the loudest was how poorly fans of slapstick in a sporting context have been served since Knockout went under. On a busy afternoon for spectacle, the Chinese “flame attendants”, in particular, caught the eye. Is that a full-time position? If so, where can one apply? Here's an opportunity to become part of a proactive team providing round-the-clock, tracksuited muscle for a slightly fancy Bunsen burner. The successful applicant will be a jogger who has seen Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard and would be prepared, in a worst-case scenario, to step in and take a fire extinguisher on behalf of Tim Henman. I'm probably deluding myself, but I couldn't help but feel that here, finally, was the job I was born to do.

The use of the fire extinguisher, incidentally, was by some way my favourite moment in all of this. Not that either myself or Sue Barker is in any way condoning it, of course. It was, however, undeniably a classic instance of the determinedly literal thinking that distinguishes the best kind of political protest. “It's a flame. What are we going to put it out with? I know. One of these.” Brilliant.

It didn't work, of course, but it arguably had more in its favour than the rawer, more ambitious attempt to grab the torch by hand. I caught this portion of the action on the radio, where (even more than on Sky News, with its “Sky-copter” scrambled and clattering overhead for the day) it was reported with gripping, paramilitary urgency. Konnie Huq down!

But no: Konnie Huq very definitely up, as it happened. You picked the wrong celebrity torch-bearer there, my friend. With Henman, you might have stood a chance. With Kevin Pietersen, certainly. When was the last time an England batsman showed some genuine mettle in a fight?

Huq merely displayed the tenacity for which Blue Peter presenters down the ages have been famous. She clung on. Not on her watch, pal. And even if the protester had got the torch out of her hands, Huq would, presumably, have reached under the desk and produced another one that she had made earlier. The Blue Peter legend has taken a battering in recent years, with those disheartening revelations about presenters combining a public interest in labradors with a private interest in Class A drugs. On Sunday that legend was restored to glory.

Yet, looking at the bigger picture, surely the planning was all wrong. Big Sir Steve Redgrave was handed a secure jog across the grass at Wembley Stadium when the obvious thing to do was deploy him (and not Henman) in the Notting Hill region, where it was all kicking off. Denise Lewis can handle herself, too, and yet she was given a cordoned-off, extinguisher-free dash up Downing Street. Did nobody sit down and think about this tactically?

Sir Trevor McDonald looked, to my eyes, dreadfully exposed, setting off across Trafalgar Square. There's no arguing with the newsreader's authority in a studio, but, in this context, out of his comfort zone, he was always going to be vulnerable to a smartly aimed fire blanket, or worse. Nothing like that happened, blessedly - and we would have been among the first not to condone it if it had. Yet, at the end of a dark but, at the same time, superb day for London, you couldn't help but reflect that, in many ways, the organisers had got off lightly.

The Olympic torch then headed to Paris where it was attended by French policemen on skates. Seriously. Jeux Sans Frontières, or what? Over to Arthur Ellis for the final scores.