Well, that was an interesting two weeks. Many of my friends who previous claimed to despise sports were suddenly filled with enthusiasm for types of competition that even I find dull. A country that tends to be embarrassed by nationalism and success was suddenly flag waving like crazy. Against all expectations, the Opening Ceremonies had been a roaring success. All that remained was to go out with a bang.

Oh dear.

So what went wrong? I suspect two things. Firstly, stadium rock does not televise well. The sound is poor, and if you allow each act only one or two numbers then no one has much of a chance to get the crowd warmed up. The staging was great, and there were a few highlights (mainly from dead people on video, but I thought Brian May was superb, Annie Lennox’s bit looked fabulous and I loved the phoenix ballet at the end). Mostly, however, the music fell flat. And yet what were the Opening Ceremonies if not a bunch of song and dance numbers?

The other big difference between the two shows was that the Opening Ceremonies had a narrative. If one particular item didn’t work, well you were still carried along by the story. In the Closing Ceremonies, each act wasn’t just on its own, they were actively in competition because of that. That’s how our monkey brains work. If there is no story, then we’ll make one, and it will usually involve conflict of some sort.

Of course the story still has to be well told. It is easy to ruin a ceremony with a story that seems forced or unnatural. But a good story line will carry the audience through low points in a ceremony, and encourage the audience to view the event as a whole, not as a collection of individual shows.

Ah well, at least we have proved that there are things that can’t be fixed by the addition of a giant tentacled monster.