Question: What was your reaction to the Downing Street strategy report into sport and hosting major sporting events?

Craig Reedie: We've known about that for some time because it was so comprehensively leaked about four months ago and the first version was idiotic - and that's not to put too fine a point on it.

I assume it was the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that leaked it. The end result was that the team of economists and consultants who were producing it were stood down and it was finished by government.

It avoids most of the idiotic suggestions. They got to the stage of suggesting for example in the first draft that sporting heroes didn't do anything to encourage young people to take up sport. Well I wasn't sure what David Beckham was doing with the rest of his life.

What they've done is to analyse much more accurately the complex sporting system in Britain and they've made some more general comments about what should be done but it's now up to government to decide.

Question: What did you think of the report's comments on staging big sporting events?

Craig Reedie: The first section of stage 'mega events' was very anti the holding of them at all because they produced very selective evidence, particularly from a man called Preuss, who wrote a book on the economics of the Olympics. They used all of the doubtful comments he made to justify their view.

If you read his book, you can take the more confident comments he makes to justify an entirely different view. It wasn't particularly meritorious and there's no doubt that section has been re-written in the light of the fact that the government are looking at a London Olympic bid.

Question: Do you think there is enthusiasm in government for a 2012 bid?

Craig Reedie: I do. I think there's increasing enthusiasm. Whether that means the cabinet will sign up to it at the end of January or not I don't know. That's the battle.

Question: What's your message to Tony Blair and the cabinet who are going to make that decision?

Craig Reedie: It's simple. The sporting case for doing it is unanswerable. The whole of sport is signed up to it. It's interesting that over the last few weeks all of the political parties have signed up to it with the exception of the government. Even the Scottish National Party has signed up to it for God's sake.

We have over the last two or three weeks increasingly brought the London business community on board. I can't think of another major project that has had quite such unanimous support.

The Treasury having now agreed a method for calculating for budget purposes the costs and benefits of the exercise are now trying to change the methodology to be used.

Rather than us say our figures are right and then them say their figures are right, what we've agreed to do is to co-operate to produce one set of agreed figures before the matter is debated on January 14 and before the cabinet takes their decision at the end of January.

Question: Was that one of the key problems involved?

Craig Reedie: It appears now to be the problem. I think the Department of Culture, Media and Sport are nervous about going to cabinet and saying 'here is an independent report done one way'. People in the cabinet will instinctively say 'ah but lots of other public sector projects that we've been involved in; the Dome, the Commonwealth Games, Wembley, Pickett's Lock, have all been disaster areas. I think they need a little bit more financial comfort and we will co-operate in getting those figures correct. It doesn't do any favours for us to say 'we think the independent figures commissioned by the government are correct'.They've changed the rules of the game but I suspect governments behave that way.

Question: Do you think there is a hesitancy by government to commit to the bid because of projects like the Dome?

Craig Reedie: Of course there's hesitancy and we have to overcome it. We're well on the way to doing that. That's why independent reports have been commissioned. If the government wants the reports validated and the numbers changed we will co-operate in changing them. But we will do it reasonably not just to allow people pull £5 billion out of thin air.

Question: Do you think lessons have been learnt from the Dome and Wembley?

Craig Reedie: Oh yes. First of all the government have learnt the lesson that they don't want it to happen again. Secondly we learnt that lesson too and that's why we've spent six or seven years properly researching this project and doing plenty of analysis before we even start. Nobody will be able to turn around to us and say we didn't do this properly.

Question: What's at stake if the government decide not to go for the Olympic bid?

Craig Reedie: There are a unique set of circumstances at the moment. There is ground available in East London as part of the whole development project. It would put sport as part of the regeneration of that part of the capital. It's there now but it will not be there in 2016.

Within the Olympic bidding process there is a reasonable chance that the 2010 Winter Games would be won by Vancouver and Whistler which means that geographically the 2012 summer games might be a European city.

The IOC are pretty keen to slightly downsize the games - that will take a while to do - because they want to take the games to more places in the world. If that happens and we do not bid for 2012 then the opportunity to bid again will be so far in the future that I am likely to be pushing up the daisies.

This is not a small window of opportunity; it's the only opportunity. The message to Tony Blair is simple: be bold.

Question: What are the odds of Britain actually winning the bid?

Craig Reedie: London is a great and well-known international city. It's a global city in the world's fourth biggest economy. We're terribly down on ourselves. We keep saying we can't do it. Compared to most countries in the world we can do it with ease. We have to get around this rather negative view of our ability to run major events.

I don't think we've been particularly good at bidding for major events but if you look at the Commonwealth Games, which was a huge success, you can see that we can run them.

I think the rest of the world understands that. I think there is a decent bedrock of support for London which keeps us in the race.

Question: Who else are we up against?

Craig Reedie: Moscow has declared, although they've been very quiet recently, New York has declared. There's a contest in Germany and we expect an announcement at the end of the winter. There's a contest in Spain between and Madrid and we expect Madrid to win that and there is a possibility that Rio might bid.

Question: What are the key problems for London?

Craig Reedie: If you look at the Arup report, we can do it now with what we have. We need to build a stadium near Hackney marshes making use of the Stratford rail development. If we put in place proper transport networks we can do it now. If the Crossrail development was finished that would be a great help.

Athens running the Olympic games as a small city has accommodation problems. London at the moment has roughly 200,000 hotel rooms. So there are pluses and minuses.

Question: Is there a danger of London being left with 'white elephant' facilities that no one uses when the games are over?

Craig Reedie: That's the easiest one to deal with. The IOC as part of the downsizing exercise has got a study group and they're coming heavily into the business of sustainable development on sports facilities that can be used afterwards.

In the village in the East End of London where we would put all the athletes we would build two swimming pools; the second of which can literally be a tank in the ground that can be taken away after. That would be a huge asset to the citizens of East London - there's only one 50-metre pool at the moment and that's out at Crystal Palace and that needs to be knocked down.

The main stadium will have an athletics track and a base capacity of about 25,000 which we would take up to 80,000 for the event. There's absolutely no reason why a second or third division football club couldn't take it over.

If the games budgets work out, 60 per cent of the profits must go back into sports facilities in the capital. And it would all be at a level that could be supported by a local authority. We're not building another Wembley without an end user.

Question: What are the deadlines for the bid?

Craig Reedie: We must indicate to the IOC by July that we are in the field. The cut off point after that is May-June 2004 when you would move hopefully to candidate city.

Question: Do you think the public are behind a bid?

Craig Reedie: The first question we will be asked by the IOC when we move from being an applicant city to a candidate city - if we get to that stage - is public support.

The Evening Standard ran a poll that found 69 per cent in favour. That's not a bad start. I think this country could do with a really good national project that we could be successful at. What better than the Olympics.