Closing Ceremony

After the brilliance of the Opening Ceremony, and the fantastic games inbetween, this was something of a disappointment.  All the more so because I reckon it was only a decent edit away from being belting.

The main problem was that it was a concert featuring different performers, unlike the Opening Ceremony, which was a performance that wasn't about individuals.  When one individual did get up to sing (Macca), everyone groaned - so they were on the back foot from the off by making the Closing Ceremony almost entirely about individual performers. Twitter was full of people slagging off each and every perfomer appearing, with countless moans of "why couldn't they have X or Y instead?"  You can't please all the people etc.

I'm assuming that the line up was confirmed before the Olympics started, when it was all a bit of a worry whether GB would actually be able to put on a decent show, so I can imagine the bookers had a torrid time trying to get some of our big names to appear;  when George Michael said "yes, I'll do a couple of songs, but one of them has to be my latest single", instead of "do one", they probably sobbed "yes please" down the phone at him.

Anyhoo, if you were to give me the licence to change things about and a handy time machine to travel back about a week, I'd make the following changes:-

For me, it was a matter of pace.  It was too long by far and I'd trim at least an hour off the running time.  The stuff with Stomp and Timothy Spall and the Nandos ballet dancers and people sweeping up would go - it wasn't needed, it was just too slow and uninvolving.  The floats going round the stadium really worked, apart from some issues with the sound (the Massed Bands playing Parklife had me in stitches) but Emeli Sande slowed things down way too much.  She got her shot at the Opening Ceremony, she wasn't needed here.

There was some griping that they replayed stuff while the athletes filed in instead of finding new stuff - I suspect this was just an oversight and that the athletes were expected to be in while Elbow played their two songs.  Again, the pace of the Elbow songs was too slow and I'd have shifted them to the end while they extinguished the torch and instead had the athletes filing in to a medley of songs by some of the bands/singers who weren't performing.

I quite liked the Kate Bush thing prior to the medal ceremony, but the David Bowie/Fashion montage would go - it was rubbish, unrelated nonsense and it stuck out like a sore thumb.  Likewise, Russell Brand - he's not a singer and he's definitely not the Walrus.

For me, what worked worked well.  George Michael (new single and all), Annie Lennox and Liam Gallagher all sang their songs well, and I particularly liked things that had an element of spectacle to them - the entrance of the Kaiser Chiefs and the giant rave octopus with Fat Boy Slim in the middle.  Even the Spice Girls on top of their taxis was something to see (if not listen to), and I liked Jessie J, Tiny Tempah and Taio Cruz arriving in their mini Rollers (even if singing that it wasn't about the price tag from the back of one was rather ironic).

And the final bands, Take That and The Who were great.  I like both of them, I make no apology, and unlike Macca, Daltry can still belt out a top choon.

So that's what I would have done.  Made it faster, more of a spectacle, and kept the music playing.  I'm sure there's probably an old showbiz maxim about not giving the audience time to think, and this was the trick that was missed here.