Impressed

At nine o'clock last night I sat down to watch the Olympic Games launch. At 1.30 I fell into bed.

Do you know, it's a long time since I felt this good about being British. I loved the inventiveness, the excitement, the beauty, the energy, the quirkiness, and the fact that most of the people taking part were volunteers who had thrown themselves into the rehearsals, worked their socks off, and performed brilliantly.

We had big engineering and small children. Shakespeare, J M Barrie, and Harry Potter. Cricket, maypoles, and farm horses, through suffragettes, wars, and the Industrial Revolution. Enormous blue butterflies who were really cyclists. The lighting of the cauldron was breathtaking and moving, and if you haven't seen the Queen's role, find an i-player or something and take a look. Respect, Ma'am.

We could have done with less rap music, and I didn't see the point of including the Arctic Monkeys (that's a band, by the way) and Sir Paul Mac singing Hey Jude, badly. We don't have to wheel him out on every big occasion. But the scene with dancing nurses and children bouncing on the beds, which was a tribute to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and the National Health Service, was just wonderful.

I would have liked a bit more reference to the coast and the small islands of Britain. But that's me being picky.

Whoever designed those costumes should get a medal. To say nothing of whoever designed the cauldron with the two hundred flowers. Danny Boyle, the film director who masterminded the whole thing is being hailed as a hero and will no doubt be awarded some sort of an honour. Now, I'll let you in on a bit of inside information.

Everything about what would happen in the Olympic Launch was kept top secret, but one member of the team let out a teeny insight into the workings. Danny Boyle insisted that the rooms where they worked had a reading space. Yes, just that, a place with books and comfortable seats, so anyone working on the project could go and sit down with a book if they wanted to. Wonder why?

Because he knew it was important, I suppose.