2012 Handover Party – spectacular isn’t the word

I’d be the first to admit that I am terribly cynical about the Olympics in general, and in particular about London 2012. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but admiration for the athletes’ achievements, but for me they are totally overshadowed by the corruption, the tacky commercialisation, the political opportunism and the outrageous amounts of money spent on winning and staging the games nowadays.

However, when James was kind enough to offer me a ticket to the Visa London 2012 Party on the Mall to celebrate the handover last Sunday, I decided to cast my cynicism aside for a day and go along. After all, I reasoned, the UK has some of the most talented artists working in film, dance, theatre, music and performance art, so with the money being lavished on 2012, it should be quite a good show. Oh, how wrong I was….

The four us met up at midday and made our way to the Mall, along with thousands of other people (quite a broad cross-section of people – thankfully Union wig-wearing morons were relatively thin on the ground).

It was at this point that my cynicism began to return; 40,000 people were expected, but there were only two entrances, and everyone entering was having their bags searched (can’t have people bringing in their own drinks) and tickets checked twice. As a result there was a massive queue stretching back down the Mall, and we were forced to listen to the party getting underway without us, courtesy of the PA system.

Admittedly ‘the party getting underway’ did seem to consist of some third-rate compare who’d probably be considered too cheesy to get a job DJing on a provincial commercial radio station. “Make some noise” he implored, and hundreds of people in the queue did, responding with a chorus of boos and general muttering about the piss-poor organisation.

Anyway, after queueing for over an hour we were in, and we trotted up to the fountains opposite Buckingham Palace where the stage was, to the strains of Eye of the Tiger. My first thought was that there were more people behind us in the queue than inside. My second thought was “Is this it?”. The event had the air of a poorly attended Radio 1 Roadshow circa 1986. Still, it’s lovely to see little kids waving flags emblazoned with a credit card logo – catch ‘em young, eh? Shame by the time 2012 comes along they’ll be too up to their eyeballs in debt to afford tickets.

The TV people needed to pre-record some shots of an enthusiastic audience to insert into the live broadcast later on, so the compère whipped the crowd (seemingly consisting of old grannies and 10 year old girls) up into a frenzy by giving out some London 2012 badges. It frightens me that some of the people in attendance are actually allowed to vote; most of them seemed to be fuelled by jingoism or Prozac. We breathed a sigh of relief when the compère finally shut up, but he was replaced by McFly performing an Abba cover.

We had already begun backing away from the stage, but at this point our pace quickened. But where to go? Apart from the stage and a couple of big screens, there was nothing but half a dozen fish’n'chip and burger vans, and numerous little kiosks selling overpriced 2012 tat (£6.50 for a ‘limited edition’ London 2012 badge – sure to be featured on Antiques Roadshow in ten years time).

Our group, by now just laughing incredulously, did pause to watch the handover in Beijing on the screens. Which didn’t really help, what with Boris’s bumbling antics and funny ping pong speech, and the bizarre double decker bus theatrics. After a spot of expensive take away food, the four of us began to wonder if we’d rather be in a pub than staying to endure Heather Small, Katherine Jenkins, The Feeling and Il Divo performing sporting/winning-related tunes (the organisers missed atrick by not getting Shed Seven to reunite to perform Going For Gold).

The final straw came when we had to endure the cast of the Queen musical performing We Are the Champions and We Will Rock You, not once but twice (again for the benefit of making it look good on TV). We couldn’t take any more, and escaped the hideousness of the Visa London 2012 Party on the Mall and retired to De Hems for some much needed, non-British alcohol.

It had been entertaining for all the wrong reasons; the tackiness and “couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery” approach was bad enough, but what really got me was the complete and utter lack of imagination displayed by the organisers. We’ll never match the Chinese budget, so why not try something totally different (my vote would be to get Continental Drifts/the Mutoid Waste Company!). If that’s really the best London 2012 can come up with to celebrate the handover, it really doesn’t bode well for the games themselves. Cynicism restored.

Leave a Reply