Who’d have thought just a few weeks ago that the Olympic Games in London would go so smoothly? The troubles with security arrangements with G4S, worries about overloading the public transport and of course keeping away the rioters were thought to be too big a challenge for London but these barely became an issue. The games themselves went off quite smoothly and on Sunday night were drawn to a grand closure with a spectacular after party that went on through the night.

The closing ceremony was a spectacle, something to look at with pride and the directors of the ceremony had a lot riding on them as they needed to give the historic London 2012 games a fitting goodbye and they did. To a large extent the ceremony was brilliant, for most of the time, it did not bore us and did not drag on, however, at the end it did feel like the ceremony was never going to finish but by then, the fun had been had and the brilliance had been shown. The ceremony was not so much of a ceremony, in fact it was barely relevant to the Olympics but more of a grand concert with some of the biggest names in British music…and some of the lesser names as well.

The performances started off with Emeli Sandé performing her hit ‘Read All About It’, followed by Madness, Pet Shop Boys, One Direction, Spice Girls, Jessie J and many, many more. The list in quantity was phenomenal but in quality, it was lacking and even with a large number of artists, some songs were played twice and some singers such as Jessie J were seriously overused.

I have to dedicate one paragraph to Ed Sheeran for his dismal performance, wrecking Pink Floyd classic ‘Wish You Were Here’. Could the organizers have bothered to get Tom Gilmour, or someone with a bit more fervour than Ed Sheeran. His voice does not suit music in which you actually have to sing as he showed in the ceremony, his voice did not stand out and always remained a background noise to the music. The organizers could have done much better and I’m sure there are many angry Pink Floyd fans who’d say the same thing.

There were other problems as well, Tinie Tempah took up the place of someone probably more deserving than him, someone who could actually sing and had a legendary stature. There are countless people like that but they could have picked anyone but him. Adding rap to a Bee Gees classic should only give him an honorary title such as ‘The Butcher of Classics’ and I think that is all there is to be said about Mr Tempah.

With the minor faults aside, the ceremony really did exceed the expectations of many and a fantastic ballet dance show, followed by a preview of the Rio games and some splendid fireworks ended the games with a well deserved bang.

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