Day 518 - 24th August 2008

The Olympics have left Beijing today and the metaphorical 'baton' has been passed over to London in preparation for the next four years.

There was a little show on Britain's behalf at the closing ceremony, Boris Johnson was there, but he wasn't one of the dancers. There was a big red bus and some dancers with umbrellas all around it, the bus drove in and stopped. They actually put a real bus stop in the stadium, and there were people waiting for it to arrive! It wasn't that real though, only one bus came after the wait.

Anyway, the bus roof opened up revealing a skyline of London, and some more dancers, then Leona Lewis, X Factor winner turned international superstar, rose out of the bus on a plinth and started singing, well, at this point she wasn't really doing much. Then, Jimmy Page rises up along side her playing the intro to 'Whole Lotta Love', and they carry on the song with her doing it.

Leona Lewis singing Led Zeppelin admittedly felt rather odd, and any other time it would have been simply ridiculous, but on that night in Beijing, it was pretty cool. In fact, we managed to out-cool the Chinese three-hour effort with that simple one-song gig. Good job; it shows you don't have to spend a whole economy to get results.