Phew. So we survived. Like being best man at a wedding there were plenty of pre-gig nerves, but just like being at a wedding, everything went by in a brilliant blur, Boris played the embarrassing uncle and there was a party at the end that went on too long and left you feeling slightly grubby.
The BBC did their stuff as well as we could hope for, offering a comprehensive coverage of every corner of the event, whilst avoiding the banal lows of the Jubilee commentating debacle. It was interesting to note that the two best commentators of the games turned out to be Michael Johnson in the athletics and Ian Thorpe at the pool, both of them showing that actual experience of winning a gold medal will always trump hollow postulating and a pre-prepared Shakespeare quote. As always for me the favourite moments were those bits when the camera cut to a family member as their loved one took the gold, and the worst bits were the mawkish montages and the closing ceremony’s line up of stale old has-beens, bringing us back to earth with a bump whilst showing the world that the UK can be condensed down into the cast of Hi-de-Hi! gurning to a scratched CD of Now That’s What I Call The 90’s. In truth I think that the closing ceremony was everything we feared the opening ceremony was going to be.
The most interesting question of how we will come to view these games in the future may be whether this was the last time that we performed together as ‘Team GB’, and whether the Scots and the Welsh will go their own way for the next ones. If they do decide to leave then we can be sure that our haul of medals will never again be repeated, and these two weeks will become a milestone event similar to the ’66 World Cup – a high point from which we will forever aspire to but never again attain, becoming increasingly breathless and ululatory in our demand for an endlessly compounding pile up of slow motion montages. All in all though I think we can rest easy in the knowledge that when it came to our moment in the spotlight we really did a rather grand job.
The cast of Hi-de-Hi?! Please tell me you’re making that up.
I’m afraid I went to bed when it became clear that George Michael was going to do a second number.
Yes you’ll be pleased to know I did make that up, but only just…after all it did open with that most cringe inducing entrance of del boy and rodney, who must have completely mystified about a billion people around the world.
It was George who stopped me in my tracks too, and I was terrified that they might unleash McCartney or Cliff Richard at the end so off the TV went, cynicism fully restored
One especially admirable thing – from what I’ve heard – is the way that, despite the fact that the whole thing must have been nail-biting for security people from beginning to end, there were no reports about bureaucratic and irritating checkpoints and searches and so forth (or have I just missed those stories?)
That is a very good point Z – despite all the endless tales of security breaches and surface to air missiles and things in the run up to the event, it actually passed without a single dodgy incident
My thoughts in both the opening and closing shows was, think how bad it would have looked without the spectacular light show.
Aren’t you people taking your national aversion to self-congratulation a little too far? To the point of unseemliness? They were a bloody marvellous success on all counts. The shows, the welcome, the security, the facilities, the tension, drama, heartbreak and triumph, etc. Your ability to pull off gargantuan spectacles will now rank with the presumption of innocence and the great British breakfast as gifts to a grateful world.
The only disappointments were that Canada underperformed and that, despite all your efforts, the rich are still getting richer and the poor poorer.
Those of you who switched off after Del Boy and George Michael missed a great show. My only regret was that I was watching from my armchair and not from a ringside seat.
Not much coverage on German TV at the weekend, or in the newspapers, one English wag in the Sünner Brauhaus last Saturday evening suggested it was because the medal haul didn’t include the Iron Cross.