Opening Ceremony?
It’s Party Conference time again and the politicians and policy makers are sound-biting and persuading, flag-waving and chest-beating, egotistically eulogising and I’m afraid I just cannot take it seriously.
I tried to listen as Tessa Jowell ‘bigged-up’ the looming 2012 London Olympics with her assurances that the event would employ gerzillions of people and bring trilligerzillions’ worth of investment, interesting and financially-rewarding tourists, pan-cultural benefits and glittering success to this tiny island of ours.
As she spoke I remembered with awe the vivid and professional pageant that was Sydney’s 2000 offering; I recalled Athens in 2004 at which the organisers achieved the unachievable and bettered Australia’s show; better still was Beijing’s jaw-droppingly spectacular display (marred only by the bit at the end when a rubbish London Bus carrying a helium-voiced Footyballer trundled round the stadium and some lumpen groovesters hopped about with brollies).
Even as Tessa’s emotive and persuasive words rang in my ears, I soon found my rheumy eyes had glazed over and I pondered how we might expect to see Great Britain championed at our own Opening Ceremony….
A pogo-stick display by The Cirque du Solihull? Dog-fights in a Lidl car park? Concentric circles of youngsters queuing at the Job Centre? Morris Dancers? A display of synchronised stabbings? Politicians helping themselves to fistfuls of money from the public purse as Royal Mint canons fire Quantitatively Eased monopoly money into the crowd? Speed cameras? Tony Blair?
I have a sneaking suspicion that the grand procession of athletes will be held up by extensive roadworks half way round the stadium and I shouldn’t be surprised if the ubiquitous Myleene Klass gets asked to plonk smugly away on the piano while the equally over-promoted Katherine Jenkins warbles a medley of Rice/Lloyd-Webber numbers. We’ll probably get a whole day put aside to celebrate The Beatles…..
Suggestions on a postcard please, before it’s too late ….
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1
September 30, 2009 at 9:16 pm -
I expect we will have Ant and Dec hosting, Britain’s Got Athletic Talent.
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2
September 30, 2009 at 9:20 pm -
And Brucie hosting “Strictly Long Jump”
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3
September 30, 2009 at 9:22 pm -
4
September 30, 2009 at 9:25 pm -
and Gok Wan doing “How to look good Knackered”….
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5
September 30, 2009 at 9:43 pm -
Fencing sponsored by B&Q.
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6
September 30, 2009 at 9:54 pm -
For some reason, I can’t get the image of Boris Johnson hunched over the Olympic flame with a box of Swan Vestas out of my mind.
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7
September 30, 2009 at 10:02 pm -
Cycling. And then Recycling.
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8
September 30, 2009 at 10:08 pm -
Aysemetric Bars doing a two for one special.
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9
September 30, 2009 at 10:16 pm -
and we are decidedly average at most things and embarassingly awful at others…….
where’s what the papers say????
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10
September 30, 2009 at 10:27 pm -
Maybe we should just get Derren Brown to hypnotise the British Isles for the day so that we all think it’s great and the rest of the world watches in stunned silence….. the papers would have something to say then, that’s for sure.
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11
September 30, 2009 at 10:45 pm -
Its too late already.
Its going to be a teeny colloquial sports stadium surrounded by the highlight (I kid you not, they were very excited when they announced them) of coloured “Pods” surrounding it. No doubt these pods will reflect the “lefty” input thus far and won’t be selling unhealthy burgers and the like, but healthy, vegan choices that will put everyone off.
I’ve said ever since we got the Olympics that we lack the vision and calibre of management in this country to make it spectacular. It will be a tour de force of mediocrity.
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12
September 30, 2009 at 11:15 pm -
The only reason we campaigned to get the Olympics was to stop the French getting them.
Come on, when he said, and the Olympics go to ………London!
Didn’t you all say….. Yeah! Up yours , you French T*ats.
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13
October 1, 2009 at 1:04 am -
Sorry Saul but my reaction was London will never be as good as the display the Catalans put on at Barcelona. As far as I’m concerned that was the display that started everything. It was breathtaking being there.
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14
October 1, 2009 at 5:51 pm -
Also sorry, Saul, but my heart sank when I heard the next games were to be staged in London. The athletes will perform wonderfully as always but as for the opening and closing ceremonies? ??
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15
October 1, 2009 at 6:31 pm -
Just me then.
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16
October 1, 2009 at 6:48 pm -
I have posted already on the likely security bill and all the inherent problems. There is a nightmare scenario here that other Olympics have not had to face. There is also a fable that is not for the faint hearted, but should I post that? It is a bit long.
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17
October 1, 2009 at 6:54 pm -
18
October 1, 2009 at 8:50 pm -
Who are those people, waving the white flags?
Taxpayers?
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19
October 2, 2009 at 12:30 am -
Joe Public! I feel that a mass white-flag waving may well take place at London’s moment at the World’s central-media-stage. I hope we give one helluva ‘Give up, you Win’ and we all sit quietly down and do what our next government says. Once we have finally given up, we don’t need to fight this futile battle any more. Sighs of relief all round.
The rebel in me hopes that the unpaid-throng filling the stadium will instead reach under their seats and hold aloft co-ordinated coloured squares which together make a picture for the world’s TV cameras of one huge Hospital Bingo-collage of inedible meals; I hope then that the BBC and ITV and Sky will keep the unspeakable image on screen while running a banner under whatever else they are pretending to cover, while inviting viewers to phone in to guess the nutritional value of each and every unappetising and pea-strewn plate they see on their screens; I hope that 2010’s equivalent of Traction Man is lowered, tied to his bed, by a black helicopter, a pus-filled leg waving in outrage. And I hope that finally the NHS will get the point.
Ha! As if!
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20
October 3, 2009 at 9:22 pm -
It has become an habitual movement with me to sling me teeth into their weekend Dettol-bath and at the same time reach for the nose-clip in an attempt to ameliorate my spouses objections to what he calls “your raucous hooting” of a night-time; I insist that cutting off the air intake to my nasal passages will allow an easy and snore-free night’s sleep providing my toothless jaw is allowed to hang slack. He says the nasal clip is a step too far. So I got to thinking .. is the nasal-clip the step beyond which the already-repellent wife must not go? Is the nasal clip such a ‘turn-off’ that even the spectacle of a team of Olympically-fit but oxygen-starved women in swim-cossies isn’t enough to make the average and not necessarily in tip-top condition 50+ bloke watch it? After all, Women’s Beach Volley is a popular and oft-broadcast spectator’s sport which I have found Old Smuddy watching at some extremely unlikely hours of the day and night, yet Synchronised Swimming seems to be relegated to 3.4 minutes on BBC Channel 500 on the third Thursday of June if it’s a leap year. I confess I am stumped; both sports feature scantily clad women at the peak of fitness required to execute the particular physical manouevres and yet one sport is on the TV a lot and the other isn’t. One sport is irresistible to men, the other isn’t. Hmm. The Smudd confesses to being both stumpy and stumped.
My money’s on it being the nasal-clip. Make the Beach Volley Ball birds wear nasal-clips to ‘maximise their breathing capabilities’ and I reckon you’d see the male viewing figures go right down …
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