Forget the Olympics.

Clacton is where it is at!

As this week’s carnival has proved, despite monsoon weather on the Sunshine Coast we get big crowds and don’t have to bus in hundreds of “official supporters” to fill in empty seats.

Nor do we need to lavish our participants with Lottery cash to get results. While not everyone participating in last night’s beer hunt had the physique of athletes, there appetite for beer was certainly Olympian!

Nor do we need to spend millions of pounds on an opening ceremony when we have Peter De-Vaux Balbirnie, a former chairman of Tendring Council, made up as the Joker from Batman – which was spectacle enough.

Our sincere congratulations to Cllr Balbirnie – he does a lot for the district, and it is fair to say he gets the Tendring Talk gold medal for community spirit.

It also got us thinking that council affairs could be a lot more interesting if councillors dressed up as superheroes for meetings, but they would only end up squabbling over who was Superman.

You can send in your suggestions as to which heroes councillors should be to our usual postal address, e-mail cf.gazette@nqe.com, or add your suggestions to the bottom of this article on our website.

If Cllr Balbirnie could just get in touch with Batman and ask him when he is finished cleaning up Gotham City if he could then start on Clacton – which would probably be just as challenging.

However, it is fair to say there have been a couple of eyebrow raising incidents worthy of comment!

For a start, some of the people who threw 101 foreign coins into collecting buckets need to examine their sporting ethics.

You can see them now, giving it the “look how big I am, throwing in handfuls of change” smile to people standing nearby.

Thankfully, the coins will be passed on to Clacton Lions Club and so will not be wasted.

Secondly, we have heard whispers there could be a steward’s inquiry into the Donkey Derby.

Our man (or woman) at the Tote tells us one of the donkeys was more like Shergar than the other Dobbins, and obviously had a natural advantage as it was twice as big. Our tipster actually suggested it was a horse with big ears stuck on.

Our stewards are studying the video evidence.

More seriously, once again our sincere thanks to all those on the carnival committee and all the other volunteers for their sterling work. They all deserve medals.