With preparations for the London 2012 Olympics reaching fever pitch, Ian McMillan is somewhat disgruntled that everyone seems to have forgotten that it all started right here in Yorkshire.

Well, the modern Olympics did anyway. Or at least that’s the premise Yorkshire poet Ian uses for T’Olympics, his rib-tickling take on the world’s biggest sporting event.

According to Ian, the first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Yorkshire in 1892, four years before the event in Athens “commonly supposed to be the start of our Olympic Games”.

In his introduction to the book, Professor Walt Blenkinsop of Cleckheaton University’s Department of Folklore claims there are several reasons why T’Olympics, as they came to be known, have faded from public knowledge.

Firstly, they weren’t very well organised. Then there was the small matter of the missing gold medals, later discovered by a whippet called Chutney.

Only three teams – Yorkshire, Lancashire and France – took part, and the provisional wing of the Yorkshire Dialect Society insisted the programme was printed in a version of the local tongue known as Deep Tyke, (only comprehensible to 15 people in Mirfield, according to Prof Blenkinsopp).

Despite all this, T’Olympics “remains a highlight in Yorkshire’s sporting and cultural history” and is celebrated as a brave endeavour that, were it not for “a bit of rain, some unfathomable language, a paucity of entrants and the disappearance of some precious metal”, could have been Yorkshire’s finest hour.

Illustrated with comic cartoons from Tony Husband, the book offers a guide to T’Olympics sporting events such as Curd Tart Tennis, Coal Sculpting, Rhubarb Forcing and Arguing and Sulking. In the latter, two teams of players line up facing each other and at a signal the first subject for argument is announced. A fierce verbal ding-dong ensues, until each team member begins to sulk, one by one, until both teams are engaged in major sulks leading to immobility and a form of hibernation. This event can go on for days.

Then there’s Getting Thyssen Up Them Stairs, involving teams of four players climbing a set of specially-constructed steep, rickety stairs as fast as they can. With competitors describing the event as “like running straight up a cliff or a brick wall”, this was said to test athletes to the limit. Peppered among the chapters on events and collectable cards – introduced in the 1920s during a revival of interest in T’Olympics thanks to the musical Yorkies Running and Jumping – are profiles of the Stillness and Slowness League, the Holmfirth Donkey Stoning Team in training, and Saint Derek of T’Olympics, beatified in a secret ceremony in Hebden Bridge.

The book also pays homage to great T’Olympics medal-winners, including Frank ‘Chuck It’ Muldoon and champion Shouter-In, Meg Mason.

A bit of fun to dip into when the worthiness of the London Olympics starts to grate.