Eccentrically lavish opening ceremony kicks of UK Olympics

The United Kingdom's entire history and culture, from the industrial revolution to modern everyday life, and from Shakespeare to The Beatles, James Bond and Mr Bean, was showcased in a lavish opening ceremony frequently punctuated by British eccentricity and humour.

The 'Isles of Wonder', as it was called, was surely the magnum opus of Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire.

In sharp contrast to Beijing's tightly choreographed opening ceremony four years ago, it often appeared chaotic and often made little sense to non-British observers; but there was a method in the madness.
 
The New York Times declared it a "dizzying" production that was "weirdly British''. It described the opening ceremony as ''hilariously quirkish … a wild jumble of the celebratory and the fanciful; the conventional and the eccentric; and the frankly off-the-wall''.
 
Among other things were smokestacks rising from formerly green fields, signifying the migration from the countryside to fast-industrialising towns; women suffragettes on the march; and children bouncing on National Health Service beds while the nurses danced; with 'Mary Poppins' finally appearing to put them to sleep.
 
Then there was Daniel Craig, the latest 'James Bond', getting an audience with the Queen, and both of them (or rather their doubles) parachuting out of a helicopter into the stadium.
 
There were musical cameos from Mike Oldfield to The Who and Eric Clapton; then the London Symphony Orchestra played Chariots of Fire as Mr Bean-actor Rowan Atkinson played the keyboards in an eccentric and comical manner, striking one key repeatedly as he pulled out his cellphone and pretended to talk into it. A Paul McCartney concert ended the show.
 
Football star David Beckham, who helped to convince the International Olympic Committee to grant London the games, sped down the Thames in a speedboat bearing the Olympic flame on the penultimate leg of a torch relay.
 
Finally the Queen herself arrived, escorted by the Duke of Windsor, to formally declare the games open. She took her seat among hundreds of VIPs, including US First Lady Michelle Obama and as many as 80 heads of state. The total audience numbered around 80,000.
 
Finally the parade of participating nations began, led by Greece, where the Olympics originated over 1,000 years ago; and followed by athletes of 204 countries in alphabetical order.
 
More than 10,000 athletes from 204 countries will compete in 26 sports over 17 days of competition in the only city to have staged the modern Games three times.
 
Most of them were there for the traditional alphabetical parade of the national teams, not least the athletes from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen competing in their first Olympics since their peoples overthrew autocrats in the Arab Spring revolutions.
 
Brunei and Qatar were led in by their countries' first ever female Olympians and so, along with Saudi Arabia, ended their status as the only countries to exclude women from their teams.