OLYMPIC TV VIEW:ONE WORLD, one dream and one tremendously long opening ceremony.

"There's still so much of it to come and we've been at it for three hours and 20 minutes," said Jimmy Magee at a point when it was looking like Beijing 2008 might run into London 2012. In fairness to him, though, Jimmy maintained his enthusiasm right until the end, when Li Ning lit the flame to signal we were up and running and jumping and the rest, although we felt his sidekick, George Hamilton, wilted a little.

For example: "Here's Bermuda. They're wearing Bermudas. Well, of course they would." George, in his defence, had been complaining of feeling a bit peckish soon after we started, largely because he'd been unsuccessfully trying to use chopsticks since he arrived in China, so by the time he bid goodnight from Beijing, with but a single grain of rice lodged in his tummy, he must have been ready to eat Jimmy's "Book of Fascinating Facts About Each Competing Olympic Nation". He'd already eaten his own, so that's probably why his facts - see Bermuda, nation number 75 - became a little less fascinating as the ceremony wore on.

Earlier, when the Central African Republic appeared, the 25th nation out of the traps, George told us it was a place that had been "beset by quarrels in its time" and had an old saying that concluded thus: "When elephants fight the grass suffers, when elephants make love the grass still suffers."

For perhaps the first time in his broadcasting career Jimmy was rendered speechless, so George's revelation about jiggy jumbos was left hanging in the air until Jimmy finally broke the silence when he noted that nation number 28, Mauritius, was "yet another holiday destination".

By then we'd been treated to the opening part of the opening part of the opening ceremony, and very brilliant it was too. Fireworks, 2,008 drummers (sort of Riverdance meets the Artane Boys Band), a few thousand musicians, acrobats, singers and suchlike. The aim, apparently, was to fit 5,000 years of Chinese history into 50 minutes. "It's really a case of how many thousand years you leave out, but what they've left in is impressive," said Jimmy.

We liked that very enormous scroll (or "large carpet", as Jimmy described it) that unfurled magically before our very eyes, and upon which all kinds of mystical things were performed by dancing people, including the drawing of pictures with some kind of ink-soaked implement.

"Well, if you invent paper you've got to put something on it," said Jimmy. True enough.

The Cha and Miah of RTÉ's Olympic team were awestruck by what they were viewing, repeatedly insisting there was no modern hocus-pocus going on. Jimmy: "This is not done with computers, it's human beings." George: "No computerised walkies-talkies or anything like that." Jimmy: "No."

Time for 2,008 Tai Chi performers, not a computerised walkie-talkie in sight.

Jimmy: "Not too much spare fat on these guys." George: "If you and I had to use chopsticks . . . do you still go with the knife and fork?" Jimmy: "Just a fork." George's Tummy: "Rumble rumble."

The parade of nations was finally upon us, and as Jimmy greeted the first athletes, all the way from Greece, he reassured us they and their fellow competitors wouldn't be polluted by their spell in China, there having been "no sign of smog in the last week" - certainly "nothing worse than LA on a summer's day".

This went slightly against Gary O'Toole's suggestion later in the programme that smoggy stuff had even been spotted in the Olympic swimming pool, but we'll see. We've a feeling, though, that the Hong Kong-based horses are well out of it.

George broke the bad news. We wouldn't be going by alphabetic order, instead by the number of strokes required to write each country's name in Chinese. This meant Ireland would be 159th out, after 80 per cent of planet earth. "The parade is scheduled to last one hour, 50 minutes - what's 80 per cent of one hour, 50 minutes?" George asked Jimmy. "A lot," he said.

Never mind. Off we went. Greece, Guinea, Turkey . . . Yemen were serenaded on to the track by bagpipers from Dundee. Seriously.

"Six tourists per inhabitant visit the Bahamas each year," said Jimmy.

"Ecuador with a proud history in the ecological sciences," said George.

"Slovenia, major producers of mercury used in thermometers," said Jimmy.

Jimmy, though, remained determined to keep informing us, noting, for example, that Belarus, like Chad, had "gone through their turmoil too with the old Chernobyl thing".

"Ah, who'll ever forget Katrinova Janisovskivilliova, the great fencer from Burundikistan?" Jimmy would sort of say when each nation we'd barely heard of appeared, but by now George couldn't summon up the energy to sound impressed.

He tried when Ireland finally appeared, squeezed between Peru and Estonia (what's the story with these Chinese strokes?), but they disappeared so quickly he drifted off again.

Finally, Jacques Rogge and Liu Qi declared the Games open, Jimmy reckoning "the perspiration must be dropping from them" as they swam to the stage, and then Li Ning lit the flame and that was that.

"That was some marathon, a bit of an endurance test," said Bill O'Herlihy back in the studio. "Perhaps a little bit too long alright," agreed Eamonn Coghlan.

Back in Beijing George was attempting to shovel a second grain of rice into his mouth with his chopstick, while Jimmy was off for a walk in the fresh air, possibly serenaded by bagpipers from Dundee.

The Games have commenced.