Opportunity knocks

Tony Hall tells Michael Prodger about how he transformed the Cultural Olympiad into the London 2012 Festival

The most obvious gift possessed by Tony Hall, or Baron Hall of Birkenhead to give him his proper title, is for cleaning up an almighty mess. When he joined the Royal Opera House in 2001, after a long career at the BBC where he had been director of News and Current Affairs, the place had just chewed through five chief executives in four years. Under his aegis turnover has more than doubled, the number of new operas performed is up, and he introduced £10 student tickets while lowering its reliance on the government grant. However, when he was asked in 2009 to take over the running of the Cultural Olympiad as well, the mess he faced was of even more Augean proportions.

Here is an event that most people have heard of but few can define and that Sir Christopher Frayling, the former chairman of the Arts Council, branded as ‘comical’ and bedevilled by acronyms: ‘one called LOCOG, one called ODA, one called the IOC, one called DCMS, one called the Mayor’s Office, and one called the Arts Council’.