An Olympic triumph

What a superb closing Olympic ceremony. Normally, government chokes the life out of any arts project it takes on and I’d expected the Olympic Stadium ceremonies to be the Millennium Dome Live. How wrong I was. The gathering of the thousands of athletes reprised the theme of the opening ceremony: that this is about people, not a massive Chinese-style display of state power. And the concert was not about musical purity but entertainment, of which there was plenty – from the Spice Girls’ surprisingly strong performance to the Boris Dancing (now trending on Twitter as #BorisBoogie). There was, or course, plenty I could have done without. George Michael’s dire new single. Beady Eye’s just-as-dire cover of Wonderwall (some achievement, given that Liam Gallagher was the singer). But it was outweighed by what went right: the Indian dancers that David Cameron likes so much, Jessie J, Annie Lennox, The Who – all of it projected a carnival atmosphere.