LONDON 2012: It's official, beach volleyball will be the hottest ticket at Olympics

OKAY so I was wrong and when you are wrong it sometimes pays to be a lot wrong and make sure you get your mea culpa in early. It's what journalists like to refer to as a reverse ferret.

ENCOURAGING: Denise Johns and Lucy Boulton settled for fourth at the London 2012 beach volleyball test event on Horse Guards Parade

Perhaps I was thrown by the swathes of empty seats when beach volleyball was staged in Beijing, by the limited hopes of our home players or the belief that us stuffy Brits just wouldn't get it.

So here's a revised Olympic prediction that is a guaranteed banker. Beach volleyball will be the hottest ticket at next year's London 2012 Games.

This week's test event has been a total triumph, Great Britain just missing out on the medals aside, and the combination of an iconic location, slap in the heart of the city, and blink and you'll miss it, easy to understand, easy on the eye, action is a nailed on winner.

The test event used only a third of Horse Guards Parade and the stands could only accommodate 1,500 fans. Next year that number will increase ten fold, a giant open air amphitheatre that's even bigger than Wimbledon's centre court and is already totally sold out.

True many of the crowd this week didn't really understand all the rules and would struggle to pick a spike from a flipper and a sprawl from a shank.

However, they seemed to cheer in most of the right places and really went crazy when the Benny Hill theme tune was played between points.

And the cheerleaders .... well I witnessed at least five men get jabbed in the ribs by their respective other halves after their gaze averted from the sporting action to the sideline distraction for just a little too long. Note to fans - bring sunglasses.

By the way Brazil's Liliane Maestrini and Angela Vieira won. At Rio 2016, they are staging their Olympic beach volleyball on the Copacabana.

However, with a nod to Barry Manilow, don't back London's 'beach' not to match the 'hottest spot north of Havana' next summer.