London 2012 Olympics: Danny Boyle’s Shakespeare theme for £81m opening ceremony
- Hollywood director Danny Boyle chooses Shakespeare theme for £81m opening spectacular
- 27-ton bell inspired by Shakespeare will form the centrepiece of £27m opening ceremony
- Hundreds of NHS nurses and schoolchildren will be involved in event
- 20,000 performers will take part in Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies
By Emily Andrews
Last updated at 1:43 AM on 28th January 2012
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will feature a performance by hundreds of nurses, it was revealed yesterday.
Artistic director Danny Boyle – the Oscar-winning director behind Slumdog Millionaire – said he wanted to celebrate everything that was ‘unique and special’ to the British Isles…including the National Health Service.
Europe’s biggest bell will be specially made to ring in the start of London 2012.
Our turn next: Mark Foster of the Great Britain Olympic men’s swim team carries his country’s flag to lead out the delegation during the Opening Ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics
The 27-ton bell will be a feat of engineering and twice the weight of Big Ben.
Mr Boyle said the ceremony will be called ‘Isles of Wonders’ after a speech in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest.
More than anything, he said, he wanted it to be a ‘people’s Games’ and to try to capture the very particular, and sometimes peculiar, British sense of humour.
A sense of humour that has, at times, been tested by the spiralling budget for the Olympic ceremonies – last month it doubled to £81million.
At the vast rehearsal studios in East London Mr Boyle gave a small glimpse of what 80,000 spectators and millions of TV viewers can expect on July 27.
The biggest ringing bell in Europe has been commissioned and will hang at one end of the stadium.
It will ‘ring in’ the start of the Games and will be inscribed with Caliban’s line from The Tempest ‘Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises’.
Shakespeare, NHS and schoolchildren will be at the centre of the Olympic Opening Ceremony display, Danny Boyle, pictured, revealed today
The half-man, half-monster Caliban is devoted to the island on which he lives – and Mr Boyle hopes to mirror that pride and patriotism in the ceremony.
Indeed he seemed to be rather keen on monsters – he said that last year’s production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre had allowed him to practise lots of ideas.
So perhaps we’ll see lots of prosthetics, green paint and pantomime costumes alongside runners from Kenya and gymnasts from Russia.
Another theme will be the cleansing and recovery of poisoned land – after the Olympic park site was cleaned of all its industrial pollutants.
Greatest show on earth: The spectacular Opening Ceremony in Beijing in the Bird’s Nest Stadium four years ago
One certainty is that there’ll be lots of flying – and flowers. A flying system that can lift 25 tons, the equivalent of five elephants, has been installed in the main stadium to enable some impressive aerial acrobatics.
‘EMPLOYERS UNPREPARED FOR GAMES ABSENCES’
Most employers have not drawn up plans for dealing with an expected surge in staff absence during the Olympics, months before the Games start, according to a report today.
A survey of 1,000 office workers by recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clark showed that two-thirds were employed in companies yet to draft a plan.
Among those who have agreed procedures in place, some said annual leave will be given on a first-come, first-served basis, while a small percentage have told staff they will not be allowed to take a break while the Games are held.
Employers in London are among those most likely not to have told their staff about holiday plans when the sporting event is held in the capital.
Nicola Linkleter, managing director at Badenoch & Clark, said: ‘Given the immense interest the London Olympic Games will create among workers, this is poor planning that could lead to employee discontent, confusion or threadbare cover.’
And Sebastian Coe, chairman of London 2012, dropped another hint by saying whenever he popped down to see rehearsals he kept tripping over buckets of flowers.
So it will be noisy, acrobatic, colourful and floral. What else?
Well, the only other confirmed part was that nurses will have a starring role in one ‘sequence’ as the NHS is one of the things that is ‘unique about us…along with our sense of humour’.
Featuring with them will be some 900 children from the six Olympic host boroughs who have been auditioning in recent weeks.
No details of performers were revealed – but again a hint that ‘everyone’ wants to take part. But we can expect the spectacular. And the unexpected.
Asked if the fear of technology going wrong had ensured they play safe, executive producer Stephen Daldry implied they would be pushing boundaries. He said: ‘The idea of jeopardy is one of the great fantastic tensions of the evening.’
Mr Boyle said only about a third of the budget would be spent on the opening ceremony, which was much less than the £65million the Chinese spent at Beijing 2008.
He said: ‘You are standing on the shoulders of giants when you do this kind of job. You cannot but live in the shadow of your predecessors.
Countdown: Sebastian Coe, Boris Johnson and David Cameron discuss the six-month countdown to the Olympic games in Davos yesterday
‘The spectacle of Beijing was just breathtaking. The sheer beauty of Athens is very inspiring but I have to say that Sydney has inspired us. It got the feel of a people’s Games right.
‘It is inevitable that people will compare us – and that is fine.
‘I think there is a sea change and we are lucky enough to be setting it. It will be spectacular but the reduction in scale is inevitable.’
London 2012 said it will release more details of the opening in the run-up to the Games to give people a flavour of what to expect.
Mr Boyle said he would have preferred to keep everything a ‘surprise’ but that was impossible when everyone ‘films everything on their mobiles’.
Estimates suggest the advertising spend during the ceremony, which will last three hours, could be worth £2billion globally.
‘LIKE 165 WEST END SHOWS AT THE SAME TIME’: FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR OLYMPIC OPENING AND CLOSING CEREMONIES
Staging the four showpiece opening and closing ceremonies for the London 2012 Games is ‘challenging, daunting but also incredibly exciting’, executive producer Stephen Daldry said today.
He described it as like putting on 165 West End shows at the same time.
Nurses, the biggest ringing bell in Europe inscribed with lines from Shakespeare, and children will be key features of the opening ceremony.
Here are some of the facts, figures and details behind the ceremonies.
For the Opening Ceremony there is:
- 15,000 square metres of staging – equivalent to 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
- A flying system that can lift 25 tonnes – that is the same as five elephants.
- There will be 12,956 props, which is more than 100 times more than used in a West End musical.
- A million-watt PA system using more than 500 speakers and 50 tonnes of associated sound gear – which is double the amount of speakers than on the main stage at Glastonbury.
- The design team have made enough scale model pieces to cover a 100m running track. Every performer has been represented by a plastic figurine.
- So far, 64 different supplier companies have been contracted to provide services and products.
- For all four opening and closing ceremonies there will be 25 containers full of scenery and props and 75 containers of costumes full of 23,000 costumes. Some cast members will wear more than one costume each.
- 15,000 volunteer cast across all four ceremonies. The people who have auditioned have been aged from 18 to 90 years old. They have come from across the UK and include people who watched the 1948 Games live, according to London 2012.
- A total of 12 hours of music working with an internationally renowned orchestra of around 60 musicians is part of the programme. Organisers will spend three months of recording time in the studio and spend 36 hours in dedicated drum tuition.
- The combined TV audiences for the four ceremonies is predicted to be more than four billion people. Sir Martin Sorrell has predicted that the equivalent airtime value of the four ceremonies will be worth between approximately £2bn and £5bn.
Categories: News Tags: £81m, 2012, Boyle's, ceremony, Danny, London, Olympics, Opening, Shakespeare, Theme
Lottery winners Dave and Angela Dawes opt for simple Gretna Green wedding ceremony
By Andrew Levy
Last updated at 7:55 AM on 5th December 2011
They had 101 million reasons to have a lavish wedding attended by a vast number of guests.
But when EuroMillions winners Dave and Angela Dawes tied the knot, they opted for a simple service at Gretna Green attended by just five family members.
But there was one key member of Mrs Dawes’s family missing on her happy day – her son Steven, 17, from a previous marriage.
Tied the knot: Dave and Angela Dawes, pictured at the time of their lottery win in October, have married in Gretna Green
The teenager has claimed he was abandoned by his mother as a child when she left to live with her lover – now her husband.
He and his father also say they were left in £20,000 of debt and fruitlessly chased her through the Child Support Agency for financial help.
Steven declined to talk about his mother’s marriage today but his father, John Leeman, confirmed he had not been invited.
Excluded: Ms Dawes’s son Stephen was not invited to the low-key wedding
‘It’s the first I’ve heard about it,’ said Mr Leeman, 44, a lorry driver from Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.
‘We’ve had no contact at all. That’s all I can say at the moment.
‘He has every right to be in contact with his mother. They know where we are so they can get in contact if they want.’
Asked if his son – who said his mother issued him with a false address and phone number when she left so that he was unable to speak to her – would wish her well, he replied: ‘No comment.’
At the time of her lottery win, she issued a statement saying that she loved her son and was hoping to rebuild their relationship.
Ms Dawes, 43, who had previously changed her surname by deed poll to that of her lover, wore a cream dress as she arrived in a horse-drawn carriage for the candlelit ceremony at Anvil Hall in Gretna Green on Friday.
Mr Dawes, 47, a shift supervisor, wore a traditional morning suit.
They were accompanied by the groom’s two grown-up sons from a previous marriage, his father and both of the bride’s parents.
The couple – who couldn’t afford to marry before their massive lottery win in October – then took the carriage to the Gretna Chase Hotel.
Splashing out: The Dawes have taken advantage of their newfound wealth by going on shopping trips in London
They toasted their wedding by splashing out on a £250 bottle of Louis Roederer Champage from the hotel bar and having a steak dinner.
They and their guests are then understood to have spent the night at the hotel, where the most expensive bridal suite – which has a four-poster bed – is £230 per night.
Gary Leonard, 39, from Doncaster, South Yorkshire, who married his wife Clare on the same day and stayed in the same hotel as the Dawes, said: ‘You’d never have known they had all that money.
‘They weren’t flashing their money or showing off.’
Celebration: The couple won the £101million EuroMillions jackpot and promised to make their friends millionaires too
Mr and Mrs Dawes were living in a one-bedroom housing association flat when they scooped the jackpot.
Talking about their extraordinary win in a press conference, they promised to make 20 friends millionaires.
But Steven, who is studying woodwork, previously told the Mail he would be suspicious if his mother offered him any of her fortune.
‘It would depend on why she was giving me money. If it was so that she looked good then no, I don’t want it,’ he said.
‘She could give me every penny of that £101million and it wouldn’t make up for what she has done. She will never be my mother again. That’s something money can’t buy.’
A member of staff at the Gretna Chase Hotel said yesterday: ‘Mr and Mrs Dawes had a private dinner with their family members and everyone stayed here overnight.
‘It was all organised through a wedding planner company.’
Categories: News Tags: Angela, ceremony, Dave., Dawes, Green, Gretna, lottery, Simple, Wedding, Winners
Fury over Jonathan Ross’s £25k deal to host BBC Four World Cinema Awards ceremony
Last updated at 11:20 PM on 15th October 2011
The BBC has been criticised for paying Jonathan Ross to host a TV awards ceremony, despite having several of its own presenters who could do the job.
The Corporation, which announced 2,000 job losses last week in a cost-saving move, is paying up to £25,000 to hire the ITV chat show host to add some ‘star quality’ to the BBC Four World Cinema Awards next month.
Uproar: The BBC has been criticised for inviting former employee Jonathan Ross (left) to host an awards ceremony after he left following his misbehaviour on live radio with Russell Brand (right)
The former BBC presenter, who has hosted the ceremony since 2004, was suspended for three months in 2008 following the ‘Sachsgate’ scandal, when he and comedian Russell Brand left obscene messages on the answerphone of actor Andrew Sachs.
He left the BBC in 2010.
BBC staff have expressed anger at the decision to bring him back.
One employee, who asked not to be named, said: ‘What is particularly galling is that the BBC has plenty of people on its payroll who know a lot about cinema and would cost nothing or very little in comparison.’
Don Foster, culture spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, called the deal ‘inappropriate’.
Ross’s agent did not return calls.
