Not many readers will know of a very direct connection between Malta and the Olympic Games that took place in London. The 1976 Games in Montreal were a financial disaster and lost over one billion dollars. The 1980 Games were similarly loss-making. Had the same thing happened to the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, the Olympics would have come to an end because no city in the world would have wanted to host them.

On the contrary, the 1984 Games were a huge success. The organiser, Peter Ueberroth, was made Time magazine’s Man of the Year and the Games made a profit of $250 million. The ideas used in those Games turned them from a disaster that no city wanted to something which cities competed to get (even, allegedly, resorting to bribery to do so).

In an interview, Mr Ueberroth had recounted how he had used this “special thinking” called lateral thinking.

He had learned this from me at a short talk I had given to the Young Presidents Organisation in Boca Raton, Florida, in 1975.

Before the Games in Beijing I was asked to give a special day’s seminar to the Olympic Committee in that city. So it was a thinker from Malta who was responsible for the very continuation of the Games.