Last Friday, the ominous 13th, brought the news that branding "police" are to make sure that no one, unless they have paid a tidy sum for the right, uses any of the terms that might create an association with the Olympics. Don't even think of selling a cupcake with the Olympic rings piped on top unless you've forked out to be the official cupcake provider.

It's understandable that having paid a fortune to sponsor the event, large firms expect the organisers to keep their end of the bargain. But it's bad news if you live in London or are alive during the year 2012; apparently using London and 2012 together could be a breach of the rules. To get around this you'll need to resort to euphemisms as one non-sponsor did while filling my email inbox the other day. Novotel wanted to let me know it had hotel rooms available for the Games (a word it couldn't use) and resorted to the subject line "Limited rooms now released for London's summer of sport", referring to "London's Big Event".

Will you need a room for 'London's summer of sport'?

Which reminded me of all the other euphemism-laden messages in my email inbox from penis enlargement spammers who want to help me "enhance my male tool". To get round the Olympic branding police, you just have to think like a peddler of dubious pills and devices, and, perhaps, follow up with a Monty Pythonesque "Sporting Fun in Stratford. Nudge nudge. Wink wink. Know what I mean? Say no more … know what I mean?"

But actually there's a simpler solution: swap one ancient civilisation for another. Toss out the ancient Greeks and ask ourselves: "What have the Romans ever done for us?" Well, for one thing, they called London the non-copyrighted term Londinium and they also didn't use Arabic numerals. So, let's all support our sportsmen and women taking part not in London 2012, which is a term controlled by Locog, but Londinium MMXII. There can't possibly be any brand confusion because no one's going to mix up those two ancient civilisations. Any confusion, just ask classically educated mayor Boris Johnson. Users of Twitter wishing to show their support can add the hashtag #mmxii to messages about our sporting heroes. Of course, Londinium MMXII is going to need an official logo and anything resembling the Olympic rings is out. So I've designed an official Londinium MMXII logo based on the five interlocking hexagonal benzene rings found in the chemical benzopyrene.

Although benzene's odour is the sweet smell of victory (take my word for it, inhaling it could be bad for you) benzopyrene is a nasty chemical that stops DNA transcription (or copying). The Londinium MMXII logo is itself a reminder not to copy any of London 2012's DNA unless you want to end up in court with Locog (which sounds more like a nasty character from Lord of the Rings than a committee of anything). And finally, Londinium MMXII is going to need a motto. The official Olympic motto is citius, altius, fortius (faster, higher, stronger) but that's a little vague. Londinium MMXII's official motto shall be much clearer: pacta sunt servanda (contracts must be honoured).

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