After the Fantastic summer of sport generated by the outstanding London 2012 Olympics, the Mayor stood in front of the Queen Victoria Memorial, the athletes behind him, and he thanked them for making people talk to each other on the Tube and for bringing the country together. “You not only inspired a generation,” he tells Victoria Pendleton, Sir Chris Hoy, Ellie Simmonds et al, “but you probably helped to create one as well.”

One midwife at the Manchester infirmary stated that there are a lot of new women registering, she tells us at our “booking-in” appointment, far more than normal. What is going on? Is there something in the water? No, it simply has to be an Olympic Baby Boom – or, as one friend put it, “babies conceived in the love bubble that was created by the Opening Ceremony”

Janice Hillier, a consultant clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, explains that a national sense of optimism can act as an aphrodisiac. “When you experience feelings of novelty, interest and motivation your brain releases dopamine and noradrenaline, which in turn increase levels of oxytocin and vasopressin – chemicals associated with arousal. On a neurobiological level, the Olympic baby boom makes sense.”