As any regular reader will know, I am not the World's greatest sports fan. In fact I am no type of sports fan at all.
However, I just had to watch the much-vaunted opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games, just out of curiosity - and we were utterly stunned!
It had everything - a history lesson for stupid people (Britain's progress from rural greenness to the Industrial Revolution and Empire), James Bond and the Queen jumping out of a helicopter, Usain Bolt, Dame Evelyn Glennie, British pop music through the decades, smoke and explosions, Mary Poppins, flags, Sir Simon Rattle, Mr Bean, 5000 performers and dancers, flying bicycles, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, visual effects created from digital lights behind every member of the 60,000 audience, David Beckham driving a speedboat, (a very frail) Muhammed Ali, Glastonbury Tor, horses, Mike Oldfield, massive fireworks, Tom Daley, and the most amazing Olympic flame cauldron I have ever seen...
In all, it was an incredible experience.
Once again, I felt truly proud to be British!
If you can, you really must watch it. You will be impressed. Here are the video highlights on the BBC (not embeddable, and probably not available outside the UK unfortunately)
JUST IN! - The "Children's Nightmares" segment (Voldemort vs Mary Poppins!):
And here, with original music by Underworld, is the Isle of Wonder opening countdown video:
The opening ceremony BBC article
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