Ladies and gentlemen, decadent Westerners ... welcome to the Games of the XXIX Olympiad here at the People’s Republic of China.

Of course the amazingly superior opening ceremony you are about to witness here in the awesome and edible Birds Nest National Stadium should have been coming to you in 2000.

We have forgiven Sydney for stealing our glory, and we are trying to stop our comrade state North Korea from pointing its intercontinental missiles down there.

If you are foreigners to our fair city, do not believe any of the stories you may have heard about environmental degradation. The delicate brown haze you see everywhere is Beijing mist, an aromatic restorative. By blanketing the city it helps to block out not only the sun, but harmful UV.

Before our most glorious opening ceremony starts, we wish to take this opportunity to advise all international spectators here that you will tell all that what you are about to see is the greatest show on earth. Otherwise, you may find you will be enjoying our hospitality a bit longer than you anticipated.

We remind you that this unsurpassed entertainment is being broadcast to absolutely no one around the world due to our strict overseas image control program. Selected scenes may be shown once our wise leaders have deemed it fit for viewing by imperial dogs.

Now we must remind any Buddhist monks, no jumping the gun with the torch lighting ceremony. Self-immolation is strictly prohibited, as is attempted scene stealing for the sake of political grandstanding.

Now to get you all in the right frame of mind for the cultural indoctrination, we have a gift from the Glorious Republic. Under every chair is a copy of former Chariman Mao’s The Little Red Book. Open it and read the bit about “Imperialism and Reactionaries are all Paper Tigers”.

Instead of introducing the athletes from the participating nations in alphabetical order, we will be first parading our collectively owned, but strategically directed national arsenal, including our nuclear capability that we usually dust off on May Day.

This, we feel, will help discourage any spoil-sport nations from deciding at the last minute to not join in this marvellous sporting symbol of international co-operation and harmony – just because in the past few months we have decided to shift the Olympic target shooting venue to Tibet.

Now, before we get the program underway with a rousing musical re-enactment of the student uprising and re-education, featuring Tiananmen Square Dance ... with the climax of the reworked stand-off between the student and the tank … where the tank wins, a word about the closing ceremony.

That will be held in Taipei – once our peace ambassadors in the Red Army have welcomed back Taiwan.

Anyone here not happy with any of this will join one of our special Olympic cultural events set to surpass the Torch Relay – the restaging of The Long March. May you compete in interesting times.