Dom Joly: Fight on the beaches? Gym'll fix it

I've never understood bodybuilding. Obviously, I understand the concept – scrawny, unhappy man gets sand kicked in his face by bullies and decides that this will never happen again. Scrawny man goes to gym, meets a curious mentor called Charles Atlas and starts spending inordinate time in said gym pumping iron and turning himself into a bulging human vein. If it was a movie, the ex-scrawny guy would return to the beach, pick up all the bullies at the same time and say something like: "Now I have your attention, I think you need to cool off..." and hurl them into the sea while beach babes in itsy-bitsy bikinis start stroking his pulsating breasts. This, basically, is the Arnold Schwarzenegger story, although I don't think there was too much beach life in Austria so maybe change the location to a strudel- baking camp.

What I don't get about bodybuilding is that, to me anyway, they don't look attractive. They're so hampered by their overdeveloped muscles that, as with Daleks, simply going up a couple of stairs would defeat them, so it can't be about being powerful. Women always say that they don't find these veiny hunks attractive, but that's probably the same thing as them claiming that the most attractive thing in a man is his sense of humour. I have found that to be complete bollocks as well.

It'll come as no surprise when I tell you that I have very little experience in the world of bodybuilding. The closest I ever came to it was in Costa Rica. I arrived in San Jose after missing my connecting flight from Miami due to an "internal examination" from overzealous immigration officials. As a consequence I'd lost my bag. I was off for five days in the rainforest and needed some clothes. It was a Sunday and almost everything was closed. My driver had a brainwave and told me that his gym sold clothes – so off we went. On arrival I realised that this wasn't really a gym – more a "body-sculpting studio" full of scrawny Costa Ricans dreaming of being sand-kickers on the beach. The "shop" as it was, was pretty limited. On one wall sat rows of huge plastic tubs that contained every steroid under the sun. On the other was an assortment of bodybuilding gear. I ended up in the middle of the rainforest, alone, wearing incredibly tight, shiny yellow shorts and a sleeveless blue singlet that accentuated all my bad features. Every morning at breakfast I would have to put up with the stares from the other residents who assumed I was a sex tourist.

Last night, as I was surfing the galaxy of channels available to the couch potato, I came across a competition for female bodybuilders. I'm sorry, but if the male version is wrong, the female version is totally wrong. It's not for me but, I can just about understand that some men might want to look like Conan The Barbarian, but what possesses a woman to want to look like that? One after the other, greased-up uber-ladies paraded about on the stage flexing their non-existent breasts. In fact, it all seems to come down to breasts. While the women lose whatever breastage they had, the men develop huge ones that they seem to enjoy make move of their own volition. Every time a breast does a little pump then a weird whoop comes from the audience. I'm trying to recollect whether the shop in Costa Rica had man bras because these seem to be an all too necessary accessory for the fashion conscious "pumper".

Enough... I'm nervous now. I just remembered what happened when I was rude about Greco-Roman Wrestling at the Beijing Olympics. It started quietly with the three wrestlers who could manage to work out how to email sending me abusive messages, but then it got weird. An effigy of myself in a leotard being throttled by a handbag was left in my garden. I was never sure if the handbag was a sign of my supposed homosexuality or whether it's a recognised "kill" move in afternoon wrestling.

What can I expect from the bodybuilding community? Is there a bodybuilding community? That would be a frightening place to be a resident in. Imagine the neighbour disputes. Two men in tiny shorts and ripped to the tits on steroids, kicking off because one has borrowed the other's olive oil and not returned it. I'd better get ready – where's Charles Atlas's telephone number?

Armstrong's spoke sets wheels on fire

Change of Sporting Tweet Watch – this week it's Lance Armstrong... yey!!! Here he is tweeting about a bicycle race: "At one point today we reached 110kph. That's almost 70 mph. CRAZY!"

Crazy indeed.