ALTHOUGH living and working in Cumbria, I remain a Yorkshireman at heart. And the said ticker has swelled with pride after a colleague - also a proud Yorkshireman - pointed out fascinating Olympic info.

It appears that if Yorkshire’s London 2012 athletes had represented their county rather than their country, the beloved land of the Tykes would, as I write, be standing 11th in the Games medal table.

On Wednesday, our national medal tally had gone up to 48, putting Team GB third in the overall table. Of these gongs, Yorkshire could celebrate five golds, two silvers and three bronzes as their very own.

By highlighting this, I don’t wish to take anything away from our national effort. When you work it out per head of population, Britain and Northern Ireland can celebrate an astounding achievement. Yesterday, while China with a population of 1.3bn had one gold medal per 38m people and the USA, with a 314m population, had one per 10m, Britain’s population-medal ratio was a remarkable golden gong for every 2.8m souls.

However, if you do the same calculation for Yorkshire, with a six million population, the ratio works out at a gold for every 1.2m.

In my humble opinion, this puts God’s Own County up there are the top of the Olympic world.

It also reinforces my long-held view - previously expressed in this column - that Yorkshire is big and resourceful enough to survive as an independent country.

In my ‘home rule for Yorkshire’ moments I’ve envisaged a new national coat of arms (two rampant pit ponies under an arch of rhubarb) and our own currency (the Tyke).

However, I’ve always proposed we keep the Queen as head of state (so long as she’s prepared to dump the Corgis in favour of Yorkshire Terriers).

In view of our Olympic medal success, she might actually agree that independence for Yorkshire is a fantastic notion - although probably not in any other sense than it can only ever be a fantasy.