91Èȱ¬

I was scheduled to be in Johannesburg on Monday for the Commonwealth Broadcasters' conference. But my travel plans have been scuppered, like hundreds of thousands of others, by the .

But we're still making the announcement we'd been planning about one of our big ideas for .

My previous blog was about the UK television series Olympic Dreams which follows our 2012 hopefuls.

But it struck us some time ago the 91Èȱ¬ is in a unique position to tell a much bigger story. We're the national broadcaster in the host nation for the Summer Olympics. We have the biggest newsgathering operation in the world. And we offer global services that reach 233 million people in every country on the planet.

So we've been working on the idea of following not just the British would-be medal-winners but athletes from across the world as they enter the closing stages of their endeavour to get to the London Games. The obvious title emerged for the project - World Olympic Dreams - and in recent weeks we've been firming up the ideas we're now able to unveil.

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I've just been watching a preview of - the series following some of the UK's hopefuls that returns to 91Èȱ¬ One next Tuesday. Jolly good it is, too.

Now I recognise that '91Èȱ¬ boss thinks 91Èȱ¬ programme is great' isn't a hold-the-front-page headline, but you'll be able to decide for yourself - and comment here - when you've seen the film (it will be slightly later than in the original billings because of extended election coverage, so it's now at 10.50pm on 13 April).

What I like about Olympic Dreams - which is produced by the 91Èȱ¬'s in-house factual department - is that it captures the ordinariness of our athletes as well as the extraordinary things they want to achieve.

In the first of the two new episodes, is as embarrassed by his father's singing as much as any 15-year-old would be; and the film shows a mature reaction to his dad's intrusion into a press conference. "Not cool", says Tom, ruefully.

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