Want some recognition for all that elbow bending at the bar? Well, head over to Jermyn Street’s Cavendish Hotel, sidle up to Lobby Bar and ask the bartender for the “Gold Medal”. Created by Cavendish’s head barman, Robert Gaggl, the “Gold Medal” – available now and through the rest of October – commemorates the Beijing Games and welcomes the Olympic Victory Parade on 16th of this month. Combining Kahlua, Finnlandia Vodka, espresso and milk......

Boris did us proud today, waving the Paralympic flag for 2012 like a pro. Clearly having taken notice of some of his critics from the closing ceremony of the Olympics 3 or so weeks ago, our Mayor appeared buttoned up, smartly tied and confident in his handling of the flagpole. The double decker bus made a second appearance too, sans dubious celebrities but featuring a tea lady and Nelson mounting his column. Thus, Beijing......

You were warned the Olympian scammers were starting early. Seems it's not only ticket tykes and touts that are getting ahead of the Games, though. One East London fraudster appears to have lured 550 Slovakian workers to London on the promise of jobs on the Olympic site and accommodation aboard 3 cruise ships at George V Dock, Stratford. Nigel Lewis protests his innocence, in the face of BBC London's report, claiming personal heartache that......

Working at my first ever Paralympic Games in Beijing, this Londonista heard and understood the maxim: 'Heroes are born at the Olympics; Heroes come to the Paralympics.' The Paralympics are the equivalent of the Olympics for athletes with physical, mental, and sensorial disabilities (so you'll see athletes with all sorts of disabilities, amputations, blindness, cerebral palsy etc). Each sport's heats and finals are now well under way, building up to a finale this Wednesday......

We've long been fascinated by our childhood memories of Monkey Magic (was the monk a boy or a girl?) and were morbidly curious about Albarn's hand in bringing Monkey: Journey to the West to the London stage earlier this year. But we never got round to getting togged up for the Opera House. Then along came the Olympics and the Beeb indoctrinated us with the specially commissioned song and an fabulous Hewlett animation featuring......

Buy and sell any tickets. Any tickets to spare? Buy and sell any tickets. If you hear these phrases being muttered on the tube and at bus stops over the next few months, don't be alarmed – it's just the nation's ticket touts and scammers warming up early for the 2012 Olympics. American lawyer Jim Moriarty (cool name, huh?) has warned that the biggest ticket frauds of Beijing 2012 are already being targeted at early......

Returning from the Beijing Olympics a gold medal bearing hero, boxer James DeGale must now face another kind of battle - that within himself over whether to stick it out with Team GB for London 2012 and defend his title in his hometown or to capitulate to the admittedly attractive and lucrative professional career that could instantly make him a millionaire and an even bigger celebrity. Amir Khan barely lasted a year after his......

Like a London bus, you wait for a great Londonist photo gallery and then three come at once. Well, in Beijing, there definitely was a bus. There was also a Beckham. There was a Boris. There was an apparently ununfurlable and tricky-to-wave flag. There was a football. There were two little girls. There was a funky film. There was some dancing. There was a Leona Lewis and some guy from Led Zeppelin. And suddenly, there......

Pictures below from a sneaky preview visit to the site for tomorrow's 'Visa London 2012 Party' on the Mall, which is happening right in front of Queenie's Front Room. Feverish activity seems to be going on to get the stage, the set and back-of-site operations built in time. If you got your mitts on one of the 40,000 tickets through the public ballot for this, then enjoy the celebrations to mark the handover from Beijing......

Barging through the throngs of camera-wielding tourists in Leicester square of a Saturday afternoon, it might not seem that London is in dire need of more visitors. But Visit London is aiming to do just that, by launching a £4m advertising campaign this weekend to attract more sightseers to the capital. The worldwide campaign launches as China hands over the Olympic cycle to Britain on Sunday, and will highlight London’s virtues as a holiday......

Team GB's dominance in the Olympic cycling events was consolidated yesterday with Victoria Pendleton's women's sprint victory and Chris Hoy's third gold medal of the Games (fourth of his career) closely followed by team mate Jason Kenny with the silver in the men's sprint. Come the victory parade in October, there will be an impressive retinue of medal holders from the cycling contingent and we're holding out for more to join their ranks following......

Must Britain take any more? We are so unfamiliar with the feeling of national sporting success that the past surprising fortnight has tested the nation's cardiac capacity beyond reasonable limits. Now, we have more excitement in store on Sunday, at the handover ceremony in Beijing. Not only will Leona Lewis and Jimmy Page perform a duet, but David Beckham will enter the stadium on a London bus, before staging a kickaround with children representing......

If you, like the people above in Trafalgar Square, kicked back in front Olympic TV yesterday you will have enjoyed Saturday's festival of British medal winning which included "Team London" adding significantly to Emma Pooley's silver. Top of the bill was the men's four who stayed true to the tradition of Redgrave and Pinsent in delivering gold. The image of Chiswick's Andy Triggs-Hodge trying to celebrate through utter exhaustion will endure to London 2012......

If you don't already welcome Diamond Geezer into your RSS reader, stick him there now. One of the foremost chroniclers of our fair city, the Geezer should be permanently on the required-reading list of anyone who loves London. This month, he's surpassing even his own high standards with a series of posts about the road from Aldgate to Stratford. At the London Olympics, the marathon's last stage will pass along this ancient thoroughfare, to......

We may not have a freaky medal machine like Michael Phelps up our sleeves, but there is one activity the English will never be bettered at: moaning. While China explodes in a really quite over-the-top performance of national pride, a new survey shows that Brits aren't that bothered about the 2012 Olympics taking place right here in the capital. While a sizable section of the population has been whinging about it from the outset,......

Before we go any further let this column give up a "Hip! Hip!" and a whopping helping of "Hurrah!" for Emma Pooley's silver medal ride in yesterday's individual time trial. Regular readers will know that we are by no means arrivistes where Emma is concerned having brought her to your attention on no fewer than three occasions before now, particularly in relation to her selfless front running on behalf of gold medallist Nicole Cook......

Our first duty today is to apologise to Bryony Shaw that we somehow neglected to mention her embarking on her quest for a medal out at Qingdao (above) in the Windsurfing event. Our slight obviously hasn't perturbed the Wandsworth native unduly as she's already manoeuvred herself into the bronze medal position after 2 races of a total of 11. Her class is listed as RS:X, but actually only one class is ever used at......

After some good old British summer weekend weather had outdoor athletes scurrying for cover (except for Nicole Cook and her fellow cyclists who somehow largely avoided skidding into brick walls fronted by ditches) our first representatives on show today are the men's hockey team led by recent Londonist interviewee Ben Hawes, who get their campaign underway at 3:30am (all times BST) against Pakistan, a traditional hockey superpower, but currently ranked only one place above......

While the capital's track and field hopefuls quietly build up to their first events next Friday, our rowers dive into action straight away, though by the time they get going at 7:50am (all times BST) boxer James DeGale could already be packing his bags. The Commonwealth Games bronze medallist and recent silver medallist at European Union level, known as "Chunky" to anybody who'd be comfortable sparring with him, faces 2007 African Champion Mohamed Hikal......

Watch Friday's Olympic opening ceremony closely and you should see the broadest smiles in the whole parade on the faces of British flatwater canoeing pair Jessica Walker (left) and Anna Hemmings. Based in London, the duo provide the classic partnership of youthful talent and accomplished experience as they prepare to take on the world over 500m of breakneck paddling. "We call it sprint racing," says Hemmings, "but 500m is a minute and forty seconds,"......

Astonishingly, London's only 10m diving facility in Crystal Palace whose club is busy fast-tracking talent for 2012, and was responsible for the discovery of 3 of the diving team currently getting the jitters in Beijing, is facing closure due to rent arrears. It was already in trouble when it shut last September when asbestos was found and an alternative dry training facility had to be found. The club lost thousands on membership fees, as......

On Friday, the best place to watch the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games is probably in the Bird's Nest Stadium. If you've mislaid your £373 ticket down the back of the sofa, there are still heaps of other options beside vegging at home and picking at a warmed-up chinese ready meal in front of the telly. The ceremony kicks off weeks of Olympic and Paralympic sport, with the BBC promising to......

A tedious survey from a government department we'd barely heard of has concluded that kids in the UK know little to nothing about the 2012 Olympic Games coming their way. The Olympic bad news yawnarama continues. Considering it's 4 years off, the whole Beijing thing's yet to explode and that the research was mostly conducted almost a year ago we're really not that surprised and care even less. 4 years is an inconceivably long......

After yesterday's interview with men's captain Ben Hawes, today it's the turn of women's skipper Kate Walsh to talk exclusively to Londonist from the Olympic hockey squad's base in Macau. Kate has amassed multiple club and international medals across a distinguished career which has seen her win three domestic Player of the Year honours as well as being shortlisted for the World Player of the Year Award in 2003. Born in Manchester, she has......

Ben Hawes made his international debut at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and has now made more than 140 appearances for England and Great Britain. He scored in Britain's opening 3-1 win over Egypt at the Athens 2004 Olympics, but the team could only go on to finish 9th. Having tasted club hockey in the Netherlands he's now back playing for Surbiton and has fought his way back from injury to be named......

As you might expect, excavation work at the 2012 Games site in Stratford is yielding all manner of buried treasures: a cobbled street, graves of early eastenders (though Reg Cox has yet to be disinterred), even radioactive doohickies. Here's the latest haul: a collection of firearms found on the site of the aquatics centre by workmen. The stash comprises a replica Colt, two single shot rifles, and two sawed-off barrels, and are thought to date......

In today's tale of Olympic overspend: it seems a clutch of consultants, hired to wrestle the budgetary reigns and keep costs under control, have trousered some £87 million in the process. According to a government report, the consortium CLM, a regular Olympic opportunist which has found work helping the Sydney and Beijing Games, was appointed to oversee a number of construction projects and ensure that costs were managed diligently. Yet that remit didn't preclude......

With the flood of recriminations about its cost and suitability yet to subside, work begins today on the aquatics centre at the Stratford Olympic site. Despite final blueprints yet to be agreed, concrete piles for the building's foundations are being installed, nearly two months ahead of schedule. The centre, with its distinctive sloping roof, has gone from being the darling of the design community to a metaphor for Olympian overspend, an initial projected cost......

Fears that UK tourism won't be funded well enough to take advantage of the 2012 Olympics were broached today in a report from the Parliamentary Committee on Culture, Media and Sport with the £9m cut to Visit Britain's budget coming in for criticism. The report tells us that tourist trade isn't anticipating a major influx for the Games itself but the presence of 20,000 journalists in town to cover the event certainly provides an......

With waiting lists for London allotments spiralling into 6 years or more, the new report Growing Round the Houses, from food and farming charity, Sustain and the Women's Environmental Network, is very welcome. It advocates planning communal food growing into social housing and transforming unused estate ground into fertile kitchen gardens with huge growbags. Which is a lovely idea, of course, as long as there's genuine community buy in, the local kids don't vandalise......