Like half the UK population, and probably one in seven of all of the people on this planet, we settled down approaching nine pm Greenwich Time to watch the only Opening Ceremony broadcast from these islands that the majority of us will witness during our lifetimes. Three and a half hours later, as the last athletes were being herded away from the lit cauldron, we drifted off to bed feeling the same warm glow from that eternal flame, after what turned-out to be an absolute triumph for its creator.
Is this what Jimi Hendrix meant by Purple Haze?
Our personal evening was made all the more enjoyable by a very thoughtful option provided on the red button – the ability to watch the coverage sans-commentary. This had been sought, and found, within nano-seconds of discovering that the BBC’s commentator was Huw Edwards, a news presenter who winds me up simply by sitting in a studio looking into a camera. He doesn’t even have to open his mouth to have me reaching for the remote, so the prospect of several hours of his particular brand of snide commentary, delivered in pseudo-dulcet welsh tones, did not appeal. As it turned-out, experiencing the ceremony in the same way as those lucky 80,000 actually in the stadium was by far the better option.