London 2012 Olympics: Stadium rocks out to musical wing of Team GB

Before last night’s starting gun, artistic director Kim Gavin had suggested his Olympic closing ceremony would be like “the disco after the wedding”.

It conjured visions of Mo Farah leading the 80,000-strong stadium crowd through the spelling-bee chorus of YMCA. But if the closing ceremony never quite matched the broiling heights of Danny Boyle’s industrial overture, it was a megamix of hits from the musical wing of Team GB, past and present. After two weeks of watching washboard stomachs, though, it felt flabby in the middle.

The ceremony opened with Emeli Sandé on a flatbed truck, singing the sombre Read All About It amid a diorama of London landmarks wrapped, fish-supper-style, in newspaper. Reprising his Winston Churchill from The King’s Speech, Timothy Spall recited The Tempest atop Big Ben, a bold start to a medley that conspired to make the performances of the Pet Shop Boys and Ray Davies sound worse than the over-produced One Direction.

The 10,000 demob-happy Olympians threaded into the stadium through the crowds, a nice egalitarian touch even if they were then kettled within a gigantic Union flag-shaped stage for the promised “Symphony Of British Music”. The reconstituted Spice Girls sang atop blinged-out black taxis. There were tractors, mod scooters and a sailing boat with Annie Lennox on the bowsprit too, but George Michael – in decent voice for Freedom – was wisely kept away from all forms of transport.

Ed Sheeran sang with Pink Floyd in a scruffy hoodie. There was a giant inflatable octopus. Russell Brand got to wear a stripy top hat and mime to I Am The Walrus. Overall, it was an experience that, at times, felt perilously close to a jukebox musical in the host city’s Theatreland. But afterwards, with the baton officially passed to Rio 2018, this was one symphony of British music that couldn’t help but be a little bittersweet.