London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton was “very sorry” so many people missed out, but insisted that, by the end of the three-tier sales process, at least two-thirds of those of applicants would have a ticket. Marvellous, but what kind of ticket? One puzzled chap rang a radio phone-in to say that he had applied for the opening ceremony and ended up with synchronised swimming.  Still, you might ask, why doesn’t he enter the second round, which starts at 6am tomorrow? Answer; because if you got any tickets in the first round, even ones you don’t want, you are disqualified from round two. It’s a farce. No one who bids now has a snowball’s chance in hell of seeing a major athletics event. In fact, snowballing in hell is probably the only sport you might get into. But only if you’re best mates with an international despot.  Muhammad Gaddafi, son of that fellow we’re bombing, was allocated 1,000 tickets because he was head of the Libyan Olympic Committee. His tickets were only withdrawn after a public outcry.  Another chap to befriend is Lakshmi Mittal. The businessman, worth £29.8billion, has been allowed to buy 5,000 prime seats in return for services to Locog. They include rental of the Orbit tower, located between the stadium and the aquatics, which has splendid viewing platforms.  This is just a wild guess, but somehow I doubt that the taxpayers who are funding this extravaganza will get an invitation to the Orbit. After all, there are so many more deserving people in the queue ahead of us – billionaires, war criminals, politicians, IOC leeches, sleazy freeloaders on the international sports gravy train.  Look at the seats for the men’s 100m final. Some 3,600 have gone to “Olympic family and friends”, 10,500 to UK and EU public at between £725 and £295, 10,500 to the same group at lower prices. Outranking them all are 30,500 to “corporate hospitality sponsors and international public”.  It’s not just the synchronised swimmers who’ll need nose-pegs. A rank stench is starting to come off a Games that should be a great celebration for Britain. It looks to me like London 2012 is importing the worst practices of kowtowing to elite interests. We should be told exactly how many tickets for the main stadium events were genuinely available to the British public. And how many were allocated to the Games’ “official travel agent” Thomas Cook, which is now advertising expensive packages? Let us also hear why it was possible to buy specific seats in other countries, while Britons were obliged to play a bizarre lottery; one, it is now clear, which was barely worth entering.  After tomorrow’s second round, I for one will not be surprised when it emerges that the following have managed to bag tickets: Robert Mugabe, Sepp Blatter and 500 squeaky-clean Fifa officials, Sharon Shoesmith and the Haringey child protection department, Lord Lucan, the creditors of the Duchess of York, President Assad and the crack Syrian Shotgun squad. And not forgetting the girlfriends of Ryan Giggs.  Oh, and by the way, if you know of anyone who has managed to get a seat inside the Olympic Stadium, please let me know. I may be able to let you have some top-notch water polo tickets. Yours for only £20,000.  How fitting that Kim Cattrall, who played the lusty Samantha in Sex and the City, was at Wimbledon yesterday watching Venus Williams’s match against Japanese veteran Kimiko Date-Krumm. Every time Venus served, she unleashed a titanic groan that sounded remarkably similar to one of Samantha’s more boisterous orgasms.  A joy in the bedroom does not play so well on Centre Court. Ian Ritchie, the head of Wimbledon, spoke for us all when he said that grunting women tennis players are putting off opponents and spoiling the game for spectators. He blamed younger players such as Belarus’s Victoria Azarenka, who is famous for her frightful wails. On Monday, Miss Azarenka out-climaxed even Samantha with a level of 95 decibels, which perforated the eardrums of innocent fans two courts away. “It’s just natural,” Victoria has explained, “[It helps] me put more power to the ball.”  Oddly, the diminutive Miss Date-Krumm manages to get the ball across the net without sounding like she’s in labour and is craving the epidural. So did the great Billie Jean King and Steffi Graf.  How glad I am that dear Dan Maskell left us before having to commentate on the Grunt Gals. Dan’s famous “Ooh, I say” could deal with a flicker of temperament from the sublime Evonne Goolagong, but Lord only knows what he would have made of the ballistic baseline belles, who seem to come off a production line in some secret armaments factory in eastern Europe.  Let’s face it: women’s tennis has become charmless beyond belief. It’s full of sound and fury, dignifying nothing.  I’m not surprised to learn that people are giving up online grocery deliveries and rediscovering the old-fashioned pleasures of entering an actual store. On the rare occasions I have done my supermarket shop via computer, the milk and meat that arrived were already on their sell-by date. I felt cheated. One of the many thrills of being in a supermarket is that you can surreptitiously shove aside the sausages the store displays at the front of the cabinet to find the freshest produce at the back.  Instead of feeling like a passive consumer, you can swell with all the pride of a hunter-gatherer who has brought home a fresh kill for her young. Well, that’s how it feels for Waitrose Woman. Online shopping can be terribly convenient, but nothing would persuade her to drop her weekly visit to the celestial high temple of groceries. Why?  1. Supermarkets are an excellent place to hide from your children and spouse. You can do this with a clear conscience because you are “working”, not loitering in front of the cook-chill cabinet in a complicated reverie involving George Clooney and half-fat fromage frais. Fathers are happy to be left in charge of offspring once they are told you are off to do a shop and there is a chance you will bring them back a bag of warm doughnuts. Some women go to spas for me-time. I go to Waitrose.  2. Clicking an online item lacks the sensory pleasure of, say, goosing the rump of an avocado. Too soft and your mozzarrella and avocado salad will be green bird-poo mush. Too hard and it’s like sawing a bar of soap. Such fine judgment calls can only be honed with hands-on practice. If humans come to rely on online grocery shopping, eventually vital survival skills like the furtive Bread Squeeze, passed on from mother to daughter, will die out.  3. Supermarkets, unlike computers, have people in them. Most of what remains of my social life is conducted in the Waitrose café where many marriages have been salvaged and terrible teenagers put back on track over a consoling large cappuccino.  4. Waitrose Woman doesn’t know what she wants until she sees it. A mere list of items on screen will never satisfy her contrary needs. That is also why it is disastrous to send a man to shop. Even if he buys everything on the list, the poor bloke will still have got the wrong things. For Waitrose Woman knows in her heart that she would have bought better things; not different, just better.  The Small Boy will be appearing with the choirs of Jesus College Cambridge and the Britten Sinfonia at St John’s Smith Square in London on Sunday night. They are singing Faure’s Requiem and other treats. Considerably cheaper than Olympic water polo and, at their best, capable of making you feel you are on the first rung of the stairway to heaven. If you’re in the area, do come along. The Small Boy will be the one picking his nose during the Pie Jesu and wiping his finger on his cassock.
Allison Pearson on the disappointment of discovering which Olympic tickets she    has won, why grunting is putting her off ladies' tennis, an insight into the    psyche of Waitrose woman - and a most special singing event.