If the producers of the Olympic wind-down bash did not want to compete with Danny Boyle's Olympic opener, blimey, they sure failed. The closing ceremony – part concert, part circus, all loud and rollicking good fun – was slickly produced and as successful in its own quirky way as Mr. Boyle's own extravaganza and the Games themselves.
Kim Gavin, the concert producer and former ballet dancer who spun the show, can be forgiven for ripping off some of Mr. Boyle's playbook. Both events were, after all, celebrations of British culture. But Mr. Gavin trimmed out the dark satanic mills and the sly political references, like the dancing National Health Service Nurses. Instead, he treated us to a virtually non-stop and upbeat celebration of British music and dance, an adrenalin rush supercharged by Britain's extraordinary success in the Olympics.
The show's producers were clever. While much of Mr. Boyle's deep drilling into British culture was lost on the vast foreign audience, the one British export the planet understands, and cherishes, is British music, from the Pet Shop Boys (West End Girls) and Ray Davies of the Kinks (Waterloo Sunset) to the Spice Girls (Wannabe) and Fatboy Slim (Right Here, Right Now).
Those performers were all there, in the flesh. The surprise act was The Who -- Peter Townshend and Roger Daltry. They closed the show with rousing renditions of See Me, Feel Me, Listening To You and My Generation.
It was not, of course, all about music, because Britain is not all about music. Brit pop art was represented by a Union Jack turned into a massive centrifugal explosion of red, white and blue created by – who else? – Damien Hirst.
And cinema. There was the voice of Michael Caine in the iconic British film The Italian Job. "Five, four, three two, one," he says, then kaboom! "I only told you to blow the bloody doors off." The audience roared with delight, though it didn't quite match the Queen making her first film appearance with Daniel Craig as James Bond in Mr. Boyle's opener.
What was best about the show? Judging by the reaction of the audience, some of whom had forked out more than 1,000 pounds for a ticket, it was Lazarus-like resurrection of famous artists who have absent from the stage for many years.
The fans went mad when George Michael, who almost died of pneumonia last year, treated the audience to one of the greatest video hits of all time, Freedom 90. One of the stars of that video, bad-girl model Naomi Campbell, was among the nine British supermodels who strutted their stuff on a shimmering catwalk (and, yes, Kate Moss is still dazzling).
The rumoured appearance by Kate Bush turned out to be rumour, sadly. But – oh bliss! – what a line-up of in-the-flesh superstars. They included Annie Lennox, Russell Brand, Nick Mason, Richard Jones and Jessie J. The Spice Girls, reunited for the evening, brought down the house by dancing and singing on the roofs of London black cabs, an impressive feat in four-inch heels.
Sporting Bradley Wiggins-style sideburns, Liam Gallagher, minus his Oasis brother Noel, delivered the audience back to the mid-1990s with a fine Wonderwall performance. Monty Python's Eric Idle sang Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, although Canadian Twitterers were clamouring for the Mountie song.
To bring this array of talent together was no mean feat. The Olympics' global drawing and the opportunity to celebrate Britain's dazzling success at the Games – 65 medals, 29 of them gold – evidently proved irresistible to stay-at-home stars.
"Never again in their lifetimes will these performers get an opportunity like this," said Tom Marshall, 23, a film student at Westminister University who was among the perma-grinned spectators. "This is the biggest show on the planet."
The athletes thought the same. They filled the stadium. A few had spun their legs, and won gold medals, on the stadium's track only a few days before. Ugandan marathon champion Stephen Kiprotich received his gold medal during the closing ceremony itself, in front of 80,000 fans. Talk about peaking.
To be sure, Mr. Gavin's show lacked the superb pacing of Danny Boyle's opening ceremonies. There were are a few too many slow spots, and the throng of athletes stuck in the middle of the stadium for two hours must have wondered why they were paraded out so early in the show.
Late in the evening, under a clear sky, the arena exploded in sexy and contagious mix of samba, carnival music, Afro-Brazilian dance and, in one of the big surprises of the evening, an appearance by Brazilian soccer star Pele, considered one of the last century's top players. This was the handover to Rio de Janeiro, the host of the 2016 Games. Rio has an exceedingly hard act to follow.
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