Someone just told me they introduced Prince Harry as Prince Henry, during the closing ceremony.

Anybody pick up on that?

OK, now it's done (all IMO,obviously)_...

Highlights
The Opening Ceremony
Team GB's performance
Helen Glover & Heather Stanning - the spark that lit the firework
Super Saturday
That American who finished the relay race on a broken leg (Say to yourself today 'my job is not that hard')
Sir Chris Hoy's farewell
Eric Idle
The volunteers

Lowlights
The badminton 'controversy'
The first half of the closing ceremony
Empty seats
The tabloids panicing because we hadn't won a gold medal by day 3
Some of the BBC's interviewing
Phillips Idowu (talked the talk, couldn't walk the walk)
The fact it's over

Yes that's his official name. A bit like Bill Clinton is called William on official papers.

Up to the Eric Idle piece I'd definitely agree. It thought it improved after that. Still not up to the standard of the opening ceremony even at it's best.


It was never going to be anything other than mainstream though was it? You're making a show for the entire planet, the temptation is to go for things the majority will be the most familiar with. Agreed, it's a lazy option - which the opening ceremony conspicuously avoided in the main.

As to all the music being done by old fogies, that may be more an indicator of the current state of popular music in the UK than anything else. That might be an equally lazy 'all modern music is rubbish' admittedly but then even so the opening ceremony had the better lump of what modern music there was to get - I'd take Dizzy Rascal over Tiao Cruz any day.

Being in the wrong time zone, not having anything other than the worst imaginable TV coverage, and not being able to stream/DL content due to the cost per MB, I have not seen anything more than a few minutes of the Olympics.

I was not looking forward to it, but I am glad it appears to have run so smoothly, and especially that Team GB has done so well. Great work from all of the atheletes!

My main gripes with the Olympics are based on the types of corporate sponsorship, ticketing and petty rules relating to sponsorship, basically financial concerns. I'm sure it would be possible to run a successful games on the cheap, just as cinema can produce blockbuster cheap movies, and terrible movies with massive budgets. I hope that this formula can be found for future games.

I also hope that the regeneration of the area used for the games is worthwhile. Sydney, Athens and Bejing now all have redundant and under used sporting locations going to waste.

Surprised you didn't know that Spreadie

I always thought Harry was short hor Harold.

Edit: Does that mean we can now call the Prince of Wales Chuck?

all of the above plus
Mark Cavendish telling a reporter to stop asking stupid questions
Sophie Hosking & Katherine Copeland winning Gold and saying " were going to be on a stamp"
Mat Baker commentating on the gymnastics, (even after telling some people why he was doing that) his total enthusiasm!
The badminton federation having the balls to DQ those who were failing to play properly
Eric Idle swearing to billions
Roller skating Nuns
Lowlights


Paul McCartney (just retire for gods sake your voice is gone!)
Seeing teams more interested in someone not winning a gold than their own teams sprinter getting a medal.
Not seeing the mens worlds no 1 taekwondo taking part due to the pettyness of UK taekwondo.
the inevitable people being caught doping (though thankfully it was a small number)

Biggest failing of the games, bar none.

Mark

How the BBC ended it's Olympic coverage

The BBC has it's faults, but they do give good montage.

Jon

They still dragged out One Direction though, that band who've been toiling away in obscurity for years, working on their musicianship, before being finally finding the fame they deserve.
Where was Radiohead? Imagine Optimistic being used in the closing.
[LIFTED], I'd even let Coldplay on the stage for a bit.
Plan B? The Chemical Brothers? The KLF?

The musical side was boringly predictable and apparently recorded by a chap with one mic running about the stadium from the sounds of it. Most of it was a single live vocal track and they still couldn't get it sounding good.

Did that 'band' actually sing live?
If if they did, then the sound engineer gave a huge bias to their sound quality compared to every other artist playing/singing.

Mark

The KLF would have been a very nice choice.

Mark

The Chems were used in the opening ceremony. There was more chance of Freddie Mercury turning up in person than the KLF being involved.

Jon

More montage
And more

BTW, it hasn't been widely mentioned but it was announced the Beeb are going to make all the footage they showed on all 24 channels available via the web until at least January next year. That's a heck of a lot of data...

Jon