It sucked.
The sound technician should be beaten with sticks for completely failing to do anything remotely resembling his job.
In no particular order, these bits were the bits that, on their own, would have got marks slightly more than 3/10.
1) Boris Johnson waving a large piece of flammable material close to an open flame and potentially sparking an international conflict: 8/10 (Boris just gets voted in as mayor so that we can rely on free standup at the end of any major event).
2) Eric Idle and his completely random dancers: 6/10 - it made no sense, but it was colourful and I may have laughed a little.
3) The Spice Girls (I'm so ashamed) - 8/10. Much as I hate to put crappy celebrities up there with the Boris, they were - unusually - making less about themselves and just playing their (awful) music as though they had a good sense of humour. Infinitely more enjoyable than expected, but that might have been because all the stars that people wanted to see were... not there.
4) Jessie J and "Queen" with... I can't even remember. Because it was less of a let-down than realising that neither David Bowie nor Kate Bush would actually be present, but instead some wierd people would do something symbolic yet completely irrelevant while their music played. 5/10
[(also entertaining because it ran at the same time as my discovery that: a) My sister did not know who John Lennon was; b) She thought he died recently; and c) she didn't know that Freddie Mercury was dead (and yet has every Queen song ever on her computer)]
5) The bit at the beginning where there was an interesting set which was on screen for what, three minutes? Meanwhile a reliant robin was exploded by an amusing but tired Italian Job quote and Stomp was being entertaining (but seemed as though they were lid-synching). 6/10
And now, because the thing that we Brits do best (apart from the rest of the olympics) is moan, these were the very worst bits of the ceremony...
1) Beady Eye being so awful that for a moment I thought they were actually a cheesy cover band of Oasis. 1/10 (mark for showing up at all)
2) The sound technician being so bad at his job that you couldn't even hear half the acts. (Annie Lennox, Emili Sandé and the Who all seemed to be singing without a real microphone. Kaiser Chiefs were also difficult to hear, not sure if that's a bad thing, though). 0/10 for mucking up so many other things that could have been at least half decent otherwise.
3) The moment when you realised that the tap-dancing sound wasn't actually coming from Renato Sorriso's feet, but canned on the speakers. 2/10 for having such great choreography but faking it (the rest of the Brazil stuff gets a 5 or a 6, I'm not sure)
4) Fatboy Slim DJing when the octopus was infinitely more interesting and, frankly, a bit of Mighty Boosh, David Bowie or perhaps Yoko Ono's severed head would have been a more appropriate centrepiece to it. 3/10 because at least the sound was working and the octopus had so very much potential.
5) George Michael being on stage at the beginning and by his turning up assuring us that it could only get better when it didn't, really. 0/10 because he seemed to think that it was all about him and it never seemed to end...
6) The exploding tightrope dummy. Just.... made no sense... why??? 2 points for randomness, -1 for lack of closure = 1/10.
One good thing about the awful ceremony was that the dull Belgian man (Jacques Rogge) who seems to turn up at all these ceremonies and talk into amusingly shaped microphones for too long seemed interesting by comparison.
And the final thing that I am very pleased with is that I said during the ceremony that it seemed an appropriate transition from the public-spirity goodness of the Olympics, focusing on all those people acheiving greatness through hard work, to the typical UK grimy, cheesy, unimpressive celebrity culture, underwhelming events and mind-numbing dullness. Today, quite a few reviewers seem to agree. Not least the awesome Lynne Truss.
I have considered the possibility that the off-the-mark feel of the closing ceremony was an intentional but tongue in cheek reference to public expectations for the olympics, but I doubt it.
It isn't really worth lynching Kim Gavin over, and Yoko Ono's hugely irrelevant Lennonface (ungraded) is not worth decapitating her for (and the piece could have been hilarious if it was a massive Lennonface-palm instead). But after the sheer awesomeness of the rest of the Olympics, it felt like it had been rushed together with no real thought, and as though Mr Bean had been asked to handle the artistic direction and forgotten to hire a choreographer.
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