Beleaguered British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan has enlisted an army of heavy hitters to help fight his corner in the increasingly bitter battle with fellow peer Lord Coe and 2012 organisers, which has now seen him and the chief executive Andy Hunt banned from the Locog board until their Olympic cash dispute is resolved.

There are three British athletes occupying pole position in the continental rankings going into the European Indoor Championships next week at the Palais Omnisports in the Bercy district of Paris. Dwain Chambers leads the way in the 60m. Mo Farah does so in the men's 3,000m. And then there's Helen Clitheroe in the women's 3,000m. The remarkable Helen Clitheroe.

Chris Evans is no stranger to car crash television but Famous and Fearless (C4, Sunday to Friday) hasto go down as one of the slowest-motion wrecks of all time. The first episode was fully two hours long – 20 minutes tops would have sufficed – at the end of which Kelly Holmes performed a daredevil car-rolling stunt. She had just won a street luge contest despite being sent tumbling off the track halfway through. It was a case of the Dame meets the Dukes of Hazzard, and though she's no Daisy – more a shy, retiring violet – Evans was doing a fine impression of Boss Hogg, hogging the TV schedules for an entire week.

Olympic champions Dame Kelly Holmes, Daley Thompson and Sally Gunnell are among a host of former British athletes who have made a passionate plea in an open letter for the Olympic Stadium to retain an athletics track after the 2012 Games.

In Inside Sport – The Princess Royal at 60 (BBC1, Thursday) John Inverdale said to Princess Anne that the monarchy had become much more open in recent years. But Princess Anne has long seemed to be the public – if ever so slightly equine – face of the Royals.

Sometimes it's really hard to be a parent. I'm very keen that my kids have decent taste in music, so I try my best to expose them to a wide variety of what I consider to be good stuff. I make monthly compilation CDs that I slip into my wife's car so that they can osmose it on their way to origami class. Whenever something terrible and hideous appears on telly, such as the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana, I'll try to get them to boo and put their hands on their ears. Basically, I do my best – but a lot still gets through. Part of the problem is television. You only realise once you're a parent that there are very few shows that a family can all watch together and enjoy. Sadly, most of the ones that fit this remit are Simon Cowell products. I like Cowell and do enjoy watching things like X Factor as it's well-produced televisual fodder. The problem is that the music is such unadulterated crap, and I feel as if I can see it seeping into my kids' suggestible brains.

I've always fancied watching an election unravel from the "inside". When I got the call asking me whether I'd like to be on the BBC boat party, moored underneath the London Eye, I jumped at the chance. I suppose, in my mind, I expected it would be like being in JFK's hotel suite (not alone, not dressed as a lady). We would all be huddled around the telly swapping insider gossip about what was going on.

Thousands of people will get an exclusive look at the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell announced today.

She wasn't quite travelling at 90mph around the tightly-banked 200m track in the National Indoor Arena, but like her one-time age-group rival Jenny Meadows, the 5ft 1in Pocket Rocket, sped her way into the record books yesterday. Not that it was much of a rivalry between the burgeoning star of the indoor track and field season and the new golden girl of British sport.