Love us or hate us, you can’t ignore us! And Danny Boyle’s extravaganza confirmed all we have always believed about ourselves. We’re inventive, self-effacing, humorous – and bloody good value! How marvellous to celebrate the real milestones in our history – the human race! Like the industrial revolution, votes for women, mass immigration, the NHS, the WWW and our musical heritage. And M (for Monarch of course) behind the whole thing – with a bit of help from 007.
There’ll be the usual post mortem, yes. No creative enterprise ever gets through with a perfect 10. But it’s satisfying to think that every 50 years or so Britain can make such a proud statement to the watching world.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Was it good then?
I didn’t watch, I think one of the family PVR’d it, I might watch it later but of course there’s rugby later, perhaps tomorrow!
Nothing wrong with being proud about giving the world a good show, we still talk about the 2010 World Cup, one of the proudest and most enjoyable months of my life.
G’morgen, Soutie. It was spell-binding. Of course the cherished detractors of everything English watched only to spot the messages they obviously deplore. How cheap!
How bizarre Janus that you should pick a photo of Mr Bean in a skit about cheating after you made so much of your tax cheating post! Weird. All right for them but not for us?
PS I hate to prick you balloon but Women’s suffrage was achieved in 1920 in the USA and not until 1929 in the UK. Not one of our inventions at all!
I don’t think it was a proud message, more a confused one.
The end was good, Janus, and there were some memorable bits, but I absolutely cringed through most of it.
Thankfully, it seems to have been well-received by the press at home and abroad.
A curate’s egg, in fact. How very English! Some bits, like the pop music, went on too long. Some bits, like Macca, should have been cut altogether. And I didn’t like HM’s headgear.
Listening to the BBC this morning, I found it rather typical that the Times’ chap filed two entirely conflicting opinions, a scathing one in the early edition and a rather more favourable one in the later edition.
I intended to record it – and forgot. I have since tried to find something other than photos – and gave up, admittedly after a not too thorough a search. You most certainly did not pick the right image to convince me that the the opening ceremony was ‘Great’ – since I find Mr Bean utterly unappealing – but that is, of course, just my opinion!
What shocked me was that the opening ceremony cost some $40,000,000 – and the British Government is busily cutting services to its citizens. Excuse me – just what gives any Government the right to raise taxes and spend them on such frivolities when their citizens could do with help?
Boa, the whole effort has enormous public support – excluding Daily Mail readers of course. The cost is a drop in the bucket to generate enormous goodwill and tourism. If they handed out the Euros everybody would get 60 cents.
Mr Bean is a ‘love him or hate him’ individual whose greatest value is that his humour requires no language and he is well-known worldwide.
Well done London, my arse! How come this Sunday afternoon they broadcast the Ladies Beach Volleyball on BBC1 at the same time as the Hungarian Grand Prix on BBC2?. Barstewards! You owe me batteries for the remote control as I’m not giving money to Mr Murdoch for Sky+
OZ