Portrait of the week | 18 August 2012

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The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games, watched by an average of 22.9 million people in Britain, included a mixed choir of deaf and not-deaf children singing: ‘Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try’; Pete Townshend (67) and Roger Daltrey (68) singing ‘My Generation’, omitting the line ‘Hope I die before I get old’; and Eric Idle, surrounded by Welsh women in national dress, Scottish pipers and rollerskating nuns, singing: ‘Life’s a piece of shit when you look at it.’ David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that the primary school curriculum would in future include competitive sport; but requirements for schools to provide stipulated space for playing fields were relaxed. Great Britain and Northern Ireland had finished with a total of 29 gold medals (10 more than in Beijing), 17 silver and 19 bronze, third in the tables after the United States (with 46 gold) and China (with 38).