Inclusivity Day

With Ian still in hospital, the rising tension between Fi and Kay, the return of super organised Sally and Siobhan Sharpe attempting to chair ODC meetings, the games are almost literally afoot!

This was yet another cracking episode of the fictional ODC and this week they couldn’t decide on what to do for Inclusivity Day (or what it meant) and even their shambolic attempts to plant a tree were fraught with various problems. The episode started with an amazing interview on the BBC News from Siobhan regarding Ian’s accident, after being shot in the foot with a doctored starting pistol. Whoever let that woman onto the news, no, whoever gave that woman her qualifications in PR was clearly not thinking straight at the time as she made a complete hash of it as always. With phrases such as “totally routine accident” and “the fact that he was prepared to have that accident shows you just how far guys like him are prepared to go to, like, test security measures ahead of the games” it was a truly stunning and yet terrifying performance that led to Ian having to clear up after her as usual.

Siobhan and her team at Perfect Curve are trying to re-brand women’s football to help sell more tickets for the games and the team have come up with the idea of using a rising star of women’s football, Carey Taylor, in the campaign. Outwardly this seems a great idea but the way that they want to promote women’s football is by not talking about it. This may have worked well for the film Fight Club but frankly it was a misfire for the Perfect Curve team. Their idea was to show parts  of Carey like her legs getting out of a taxi, lips putting on lipstick etc then to reveal who the girl was at the end of the campaign, making it about her rather than the football itself. The team thought this was an awesome idea and felt the need to high five to prove it but Carey seemed less than impressed with the team as a whole.

Ian was still in hospital with an infection in his foot, losing his grasp on what was going on with his team and now losing his PA as Daniel was going to be Seb’s PA. Thankfully good old Sally stepped into the role easily and slid straight back into her mother hen role, looking after Ian and wistfully waiting to see if he would ever realise her feelings.

With Ian still in hospital, laughing in the face of the incompetence in his team and the irony of his foot shooting incident, the remainder of the team decided to have their heads up meeting as usual but with Siobhan trying to lead the meeting Nick was not impressed. Realising that they needed to host an event called Inclusivity Day the team then had to work out what that was, why they hadn’t got an Inclusivity Ambassador and come up with ideas for events with few days to go. The friction between Kay and Fi was increasing by the second with the two women completely fed up of each other by the end of the episode. With a choice between releasing doves (which Kay said was ‘not fair on the pigeons’) or planting a tree, Graham was forced to make a decision between the two as the others were ruled out in the interest of fairness. His choice of planting a tree didn’t exactly go smoothly either as Kay and Fi attempted to find ground for said tree planting and hit a brick wall due to planning. Boris Johnson also had to pull out of  the ceremony meaning that things had to be altered at the last minute. Eventually the ceremony was ‘planned’, and I use the term very loosely, with a box of earth beside the Thames with Kay handing the acorn to Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson who then handed the acorn to Carey Taylor who planted the acorn to a small amount of applause. Coupled with Siobhan Sharp arranging a group of school children who were wearing T-shirts that spelled Inclusivity in the incorrect order and the fact that the ‘acorn’ was actually a chocolate brazil nut as they seemed to have lost the acorn, it was pretty much a disaster. Then again, would we expect anything less from this fictional team?

All in all the episode was a hoot and the sheer chaos that surrounds the team is always entertaining. I would love to see these people in their interviews for the jobs they hold. As the Olympics fast approaches in real life, I’m sure that things are going a lot more smoothly for the real organisers. It’s almost a shame that the Olympics will start soon and we will lose these fantastic characters to zeitgeist but lets enjoy them while we can. Great episode.