CONGRATULATIONS to the athletes who threw their heart and soul into the Commonwealth Games.

It would have been nice for the Closing Ceremony to also thank them, but we all know how that went.

No, instead we exposed the rest of the world to a horror of Australian society instead - the long-winded speech.

In a way, this is good. Why should we be the only ones to suffer? Maybe the athletes who went missing well before this debacle were the smartest of us all. According to live blogs, the speechifying went for more than 30 minutes.

From another angle: they couldn't find time to show us the athletes walking into the stadium, but they made sure we were practically chained to the chair when Peter Beattie began talking. Stephen King couldn't dream this up.

We should have seen this coming. We've all been at an event which the organisers believe was made specifically for them to speak, rather than what the people actually came to see.

Which, unless it is an advertised speaking engagement, is not a bunch of people speaking. This has got to stop, and maybe the fix is easy.

When we extend an invitation, we politely ask people to "say a few words". There is a hint in the request.

But it seems that's too subtle, so perhaps we should start asking people to say "very few words" instead.