The association between Mike Oldfield and the NHS might have caused some confusion worldwide. Giving rise to the impression that Great Ormond Street Hospital is devoted to the treatment of demonic posession, which seems surprisingly widespread in the UK, especially given the Harry Potter interlude.
"Tubular Bells" apparently sold particularly strongly to users of recreational chemicals, so maybe all those kids were just in rehab. They looked pretty healthy, bouncing on the beds and stuff.
Michael Hann in the Guardian was struck by the same thought.
Mike Oldfield played Tubular Bells to accompany – bafflingly – the children and staff of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Given that the last time that music accompanied shots of children in beds, it was a satanically possessed girl with a revolving head in The Exorcist, the possibility was raised that the ceremony might enter new heights of WTF?, but it was not to be.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/27/olympic-opening-ceremony-musicZoe Williams was quite funny on the politics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/28/zoe-williams-olympic-opening-ceremonyI'd like to have seen some sort of reference to emigration fom the UK. We had the Empire Windrush, but the tidal wave of flags with the Union Jack in the corner, that followed the ceremony could have done with some acknowledgment. Replicas of the Mayflower and Cook's Endeavour leaving the stadium would have been even more confusing though.
I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, the 'name the intro round' was a classic.
Agree completely. We've just watched the repeat as the original was on at 430AM our time.
Marvellous stuff especially the Brunel bit and the flame. Oh, and the Olympic flag. No Dr who though?
The Dr Who theme featured somewhere around the reference to Wayne's World that followed the ghostly hologram of Queen doing Bohemian Rhapsody. I was taken with the fragments of the past, such as Michael Fish's forecast of 15th October 1987. The whole spectacle was designed to be a theatrical presentation of a Google-bot gone off on one. The Tolkein meets Dickens aspect of the landscape transformation scene was interesting.
I'd spent Friday doing some maintenance work on the site of a reclaimed colliery a couple of miles from where Wiggins lives, which has been returned to something pretty much like the Teletubby land that started the show, I spend my working life making Britain look like that, so I felt included.
I'm surprised that no-one has commented that the NHS was formed in 1948, at the time of the last London Olympics.
