Best speech of the Olympics -
Boris Johnson: “Ladies and Gentlemen - Ping Pong is coming home!“.
Click here for the full length speech video on the BBC website
Transcript of part of Boris’ speech:
I mourn the passing of some of these sports - for example, the pancrateon, whose chief exponent was Milo of Croton, whose signature performance involved carrying an ox the length of the stadium, killing it with his bare hands and then eating it on the same day - I’m trying to persuade them to bring that one back”.
“And I say this most respectfully to our Chinese hosts who have excelled so magnificintly … at ping pong. Ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in 19th Century. It was, and it was called “Whiff Whaff”. And there you have one of the essential differences between us and the rest of the world. Other nations - the French - looked at a dining table and saw and opportunity to have dinner. We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play Wiff Waff.
And that is why London is the sporting capital of the world - and I say to the Chinese, and I say to the world, Ping pong is coming home, athletics is coming home, sport is coming home.”
Why do I have this sneaky feeling that some pillock, somewhere, will manage to take offence at something Boris said? There’s always one.
The closing ceremony, like the opening, was without doubt the greatest show on earth.
But seriously though, as soon as that horrible “Lisa sucking off Homer” waste of £400,000 of Olympic Logo came on in the stadium, I was so ashamed. That logo kind of sums up what Britain has become in 8 years of Labour: embarrassing, wasteful, no sense of identity pride or Britishness, unclear and just really, really lame.
Update: some reaction to the speech:
http://www.2oceansvibe.com/2008/08/25/ping-pong-is-coming-home/
While he is often lauded as a “bumbling buffoon” and erratic at best, I think we should agree that he is taking a very Churchillesque tone in everything he does. Winston Churchill is famed for his quotes to do with women and drink. He was OFTEN completely pissed whilst simultaneously leading the British army as one of history’s most famous and accomplished leaders. Look, I’m pretty pleased Boris Johnson isn’t heading up a war machine, but you you got to enjoy his approach. Conservatives and posh snobbery (with humourous undertones playing an essential part) is becoming cool again, and he is at the forefront.
http://www.uncorrelated.com/2008/08/ping_pong_is_coming_home.html
Most of the show around the London Olympics makes me cringe, especially the pc propaganda for ‘diversity’, cripples as athletes, ant-like communitarianism, wrinkly heavy metal, effeminate male performers, visual cliche’s of London buses and bobbies and so on. So the Mayor of London to the rescue in Beijing last night, effortlessly upstaging the PM, David Beckham and Seb Coe:
http://michellestyles.blogspot.com/2008/08/ping-pong-is-coming-home.html
Boris Johnson’s remarks about the Olympics made me laugh. It is easy to forget exactly how intelligent and what a polymath the current mayor of London is. I rather suspect that he did not have to do any research to come up with the remark.
http://machogrande.livejournal.com/324484.html
Forget Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream”, yesterday Boris Johnson made quite possibly the greatest speech in history. Forward to 2:20 for the best bits.
Back on the ceremony…Just think how many people were involved in those opening and closing ceremonies - not just getting all the people to move at the right time, but hundreds of wires, cables, motors, computers, hydraulics - every single thing worked. I am already cringing at what I’m guessing Britain’s opening ceremony is going to be like: “Celebrating multicultural diversity through the spirit of ethnic dance”.
That said, our little 8 minute spot wasn’t quite as bad as I expected, but it did leave me wondering WTF was going on at points. Token wheelchair dude too - nice patronising touch there!
There was something wrong with the bus, though: no groups of chavs robbing people, no graffiti on it, it didn’t break down, and no ticket inspectors fining a single, tearful white woman while letting 3 massive chavs off without a fine.
But Beijing has the money for this too - £20 BILLION altogether, and the ceremonies cost £4,000 per SECOND apparently.
Here’s an interesting insight into the effort behind the ceremonies (from Press Association)
BEIJING (AP) — Martial arts student Cheng Jianghua only saw the army barracks he stayed in and the stadium where he performed at the spectacular Olympics opening ceremony. But his sacrifices were minor — other performers were injured, fainted from heatstroke or forced to wear adult diapers so the show could go on.
Filmmaker Zhang Yimou, the ceremony’s director, insisted in an interview with local media that suffering and sacrifice were required to pull off the Aug. 8 opening, which involved wrangling nearly 15,000 cast and crew. Only North Korea could have done it better, he said.
Cheng and 2,200 other carefully chosen pugilist prodigies spent an average of 16 hours a day, every day, rehearsing a synchronized tai-chi routine involving high kicks, sweeping lunges and swift punches. They lived for three months in trying conditions at a restricted army camp on the outskirts of Beijing.
“We never went out during the time we were training,” Cheng, 20, told the AP in a phone interview. “Our school is quite strict. When we stay in school we can’t go out on our own, let alone when we’re at a military camp.”
[Zhang Yimou said] “North Korea is No. 1 in the world when it comes to uniformity. They are uniform beyond belief! These kind of traditional synchronized movements result in a sense of beauty. We Chinese are able to achieve this as well. Through hard training and strict discipline,” he said. Pyongyang’s annual mass games feature 100,000 people moving in lockstep.
Performers in the West by contrast need frequent breaks and cannot withstand criticism, Zhang said.
“In one week, we could only work four and a half days, we had to have coffee breaks twice a day, couldn’t go into overtime and just a little discomfort was not allowed because of human rights,” he said of the unidentified opera production.
“You could not criticize them either. They all belong to some organizations … they have all kind of institutions, unions. We do not have that. We can work very hard, can withstand lots of bitterness. We can achieve in one week what they can achieve in two months.”
I think there are two extremes here, but he’s really right about what we’ve become in the west.
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