Alexander Chancellor

Long life | 11 August 2012

The difference between the mood before the Olympic Games and the one after their first week was enormous. The earlier mood was one of gloom and foreboding; the subsequent one of festive exuberance and goodwill. During my visits to London from Northamptonshire during the weeks before the Queen’s encounter with James Bond I found nothing but anxiety and resentment. Taxi drivers in particular were surly and despondent; one told me he had yet to meet a fellow driver that was anything other than furious and resentful about the prospective traffic disruption and the loss of business about to be caused by the provision of private limousines to thousands of corrupt foreign bureaucrats.

Nearly everyone else seemed to think that the whole thing would be some sort of giant fiasco that would deal a further blow to Britain’s prestige. Our own self-esteem had fallen so low that David Cameron kept having to tell us that Britain would surprise the world by managing to ‘deliver’ the Games — an odd assurance to give when no other country has ever failed to ‘deliver’ them and when Britain, with its long experience of arranging coronations and royal weddings, is particularly good at that kind of thing.

Relief came first with Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, which wasn’t in my view quite as wonderful as most commentators thought — too unstructured and trying to pack in more than it should — but nevertheless an impressive, sometimes touching achievement and flawless in its execution. Then, after an agonising wait, came a flood of British-earned medals that showed us to be a remarkably sporting nation. Who would have thought it? We were supposed to be obese, drunk and generally inferior to practically every other nation in our athletic abilities.

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