My first broadcast Thought for the Day, and in retrospect it seems remarkably free of Islamic content or context, but I always did feel that one of the most important aspects of being a muslim on the radio was trying to give the impression that a muslim wasn't only interested in Islam, but the whole range of human experience. Not only that, but to suggest to the listeners (the vast majority of whom knew little or nothing about Islam apart from what they see on the news) that a muslim might actually be a reasonably intelligent, concerned person, not lacking a sense of humour. Even as with Sarajevo being shelled and the appalling pictures of Somalia in the papers at that time, I think that if you can deal with such issues using a light touch, it is sometimes possible to get through to people in a way that you can't if you just confront them with a situation, the full horror of which is so dreadful that they need to close their eyes and ears to shut it out.

Finally it's Barcelona no more.

At last an end to the saturation media coverage of the glories and tragedies, the world nightly enthralled by the struggle and the suffering of those prepared to break the pain barrier to achieve individual sports supremacy, followed by a tearful identification with the flags of their individual countries.

Not an easy task to get so many and varied peoples together in harmony and safety in one place. Not just the competitors from an olympic record number of countries, but also the numerous world luminaries attending and sitting in the crowd. John Major, Assorted Royalty, Pop stars and New East European leaders, Fidel Castro and Jack Nicolson.

The statistics that have been fed to us over the weeks - the years of construction, the thousands competing, the hundreds of thousands of tourists attending. It was clearly an enormous undertaking for the one and threequarter million Barcelonans, and a triumph of organisation for the International Olympic Committee, who not only achieved all this on the ground in Barcelona, but managed to relay the situation instantaneously to the radios, TV's and newspapers of multi-millions around the globe.

Considering the IOC's success in the operation, perhaps we should broaden their remit. Why waste their obvious organisational and diplomatic talents on something that only comes round every four years. If they can handle the Olympics, what else might they be capable of if called on to come up with a solution. Suppose a couple of well armed warring local factions had suddenly put Barcelona under siege, shelling the inhabitants and reducing the survivors to eating grass and dying of starvation live on camera, how would the IOC have handled it.

Sarajevo was the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics. Half a million people who like the Catalans opened their city to the world. A third of the population of Barcelona now being starved and shelled into non-existence, If Sarajevo were still the Olympic city would the world leave it to the IOC. If the struggle for human survival were given the attention we give to the struggle for gold, would it not shame those who organise the world on our behalf into rapidly coming up with a solution.

But perhaps the complex military cauldron of Bosnia is not the only problem the IOC might handle. They could practise their olympian efficiency somewhere easier, like Somalia where smaller groups of not so well armed men hold an entire population under siege.

Unless those who watched the Olympics can show enough interest to prompt some action, at least three and a half million Somalians, twice the population of Barcelona will also shortly starve to death, a slower death than a city dying in the blast of modern weaponry, but just as painful and just as final. So if Somalia seems far away, and the numbers too great to imagine, think of how the news might have been in the last few weeks if it were truly Barcelona no more, and then again Barcelona no more.