A cow approaching a moderately high pole vault bar and shifting modes from comic to epic with an expertly accomplished clearance. And back to comic as it waves its hoofs clumsily at the heartily amused spectators.

Now brown cow - how? - clears a set of respectably high hurdles, prancing legs suddenly neat and clipped as Swiss timing. And the same flux of characteristics occurs.

This of course is Cooly, the "cool Cow", mascot of the 2014 European Athletics Championships in Zurich. Oh how we loved Cooly in the Letzigrund.

Three years on. London’s 2012 Olympic Stadium, hosting the World Athletics Championships. And there is a lunatic on the loose. 

Now this errant individual is water-sliding on a giant pink donut. Now it is are executing extravagant forward somersaults down the arena’s concrete steps, eliciting nervous advice from the commentary box that such efforts should on no account be tried at home.

We’re talking about, as you must surely know, Hero the Hedgehog.

Hero also had a childlike playfulness which manifested itself by launching plastic ducks on the surface of the water jump or setting to work with a bucket and spade in the sand of the long jump landing pit, accompanied by a little helper from the stands.

There was wit too, as evidenced by strange messages brandished and displayed as runners circled around him. Examples: "Always give 100 per cent except when giving blood."

Or during the men’s 10,000 metres: "Only a TON of laps to go."

Oh, how we loved Hero in London.

Olympic mascots? Honestly and truly not many come to mind. I remember my children appreciated the Cobi-related gifts I brought back from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Cobi being a play on letters on the initials of the Organising Committee - and also a rather sweet little - checks - Catalan Sheepdog in Cubist style. Ah yes.

Atlanta 1996 - a computerised no-no that didn’t even have a proper name. Sydney 2000 - er. Bunch of creatures. London 2012? Two freakish Cyclops figures - Wenlock and Mandeville. Or was it Manlock and Wendeville? Children run screaming out of the room...

Older colleagues reminisced about Misha the Bear, mascot at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, who proved hugely appropriate and popular.

Me, I like the lunatics. But maybe there won’t be too much lunacy at the Paris 2024 Olympics judging by the mascots revealed this morning at the headquarters of the Organising Committee here in Saint-Denis.

After the intriguing introduction of a logo that can be seen either as an Olympic Flame or a foxy mademoiselle, Paris 2024 has once again resisted the obvious by becoming the first Games organisers to choose, not a cuddly animal, not even a masterpiece of an esteemed designer, but an ideal.

To be precise, the ideal of liberty, of freedom, symbolised since antiquity by the Phrygian Cap, a cap worn by Marianna in Eugene Delacroix’s celebrated and Louvre-domiciled painting celebrating the 1830 Revolution and entitled Liberty Leading the People.

As a choice, it’s very French. Very fitting. And if the Phrygian Cap fits - wear it.

Exactly how the general populace will wear this latest Olympic and Paralympic flourish just under two years away from the Games’ Grand Depart remains to be seen.

The seriousness of the Games organisers was so ferociously Frenchly strong at one point that, rather than create something that was nothing in particular, they seriously considered going without a mascot.

I’m suddenly reminded now of the plaintive cry of an early British arrival at the Seoul 1988 Olympics who greeted his compadres with the mournful news – delivered in a broad Brummy accent – "Welcome to the No-Bag Olympics!"

The idea of a No-Mascot Olympics, which would break a run established at the 1972 Munich Olympics with the multi-coloured and likeable dachshund Waldi, was eventually deemed a flourish too far.

Instead, the ideal idea emerged, floating free from the imaginations of the thinkers.

The Phrygian Cap will certainly be familiar to the host nation. As Julie Matikhine, brand director of Paris 2024, pointed out, as well as the Delacroix reference there are hosts of everyday instances of it in civil society.

"It is present in all the institutions here in France, in the schools and the city halls," she said.

"It is more than the symbol of freedom, it is also the symbol of our Republic, of the way of living together that we share here in France.

"It is also in our daily lives through stamps and also the old coins, in francs.

"And most importantly it is also something that is taught to the children in schools."

Ah yes. The Youth.

To paraphrase Sham 69, and with apologies to Jimmy Pursey: "If the kids, are excited, mascots never, will be slighted…"

These little Phryges, these animated little red caps, one sporting a nifty prosthetic blade on his right leg, they will be busy and whacky and cute, no doubt.

But they will be deep also. Well deep.

In speaking about their purpose - their meaning, sorry - Matikhine conceives of them as the latest incarnation of a muse-like presence that has helped shape minds at critical points in the French history. That is, at revolutionary points.

"Those Phryges - at an imaginary level - have been found alongside the French people for centuries, even millennia," she mused. 

"We used to say that each time French people have had a big rendezvous or an important rendezvous with their history, there were Phryges.

"For example at the beginning of the 12th century when we built the Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, it was like an incredible architectural revolution and the Phryges were there to assist.

"Same in 1789, the French people they make this famous political revolution and there were Phryges with them to accompany the movement.

"I could also talk about the artistic revolution at the beginning of the 20^th century, for example the Impressionists, there were Phryges of course with them in Giverny.

"And more recently there were Phryges as well during May 1968 when the students were in the streets of Paris protesting.

"So we have a new generation of Phryges that have arrived now, those Phryges are sporty, because we, the French, are about to start a new revolution after the architectural one, the political one, the artistic one and the cultural one - it is the sport revolution that will start with the preparation of the Paris 2024 Olympics."

I hear that. I do. But I still want some mischief en route…