Former Dome chief offers to lead London's Olympic bid for 2012

P Y Gerbeau, the Frenchman who became the public face of the Millennium Dome, is offering to head a bid by London for the 2012 Olympics against his home city of Paris. "I would be delighted to be chairman," he said yesterday.

M. Gerbeau is currently on the board of the property company Capital & Regional and runs its snow centre business, X-Leisure. He also lectures at the London Business School.

Some government insiders believe having a French speaker could be an asset when lobbying for international support for London. Some Whitehall officials believe, though, that ministers would not want to appoint a Frenchman to the post.

In the next few weeks, the Cabinet is expected to agree to support a bid to stage the 2012 Olympics in London. Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, appears to have won round cabinet doubters by proposing a new Olympic lottery game to raise £750m towards the cost of staging the games.

Camelot, which runs the National Lottery, has told the Government the game would revive flagging ticket sales.

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