Is it just me, or do most events go on a bit too long? Or, as in the case of the Olympics closing ceremony, a lot too long. The Olympics themselves were simply wonderful and far too short. The last football World Cup saw 64 matches played over nearly a month. At the Olympics countless contests are played out in barely two weeks. I’ve never understood what the hurry is all about. Perhaps this is the point: it’s about leaving us wanting more. Unlike its opening and closing ceremonies about which the opposite plainly applied.
I don’t think I’ve ever come out of a church service, a theatre, or a concert venue, and said to whomever I was with: “You know what, I’d like that to have gone on a bit longer.” Indeed, rare is the event that I didn’t think could have benefited from being shorter. I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way. I’m just honest enough to admit it, and unbothered about being thought a philistine. I’d like to conduct lie detector tests on punters filing out of the Royal Opera House. Were you in any sense thankful when the curtain came down? Did you want more? If you answer no and yes then your pants are on fire.
I used to be a liar, too. After I saw Meat Loaf at the National Exhibition Centre one Saturday night in the early 80s I told everyone I knew that it had been ace, the greatest night of my life. But the truth was that by the time the big man’s rendition of Bat Out of Hell in the encore had raced past the 15-minute mark, I was getting desperate. Eventually, he ground to a halt and the stage cleared. But then, to my dismay, he came back and did another number, which also went on for ever.
Naturally, there have to be exceptions to prove the less-is-always-more rule. Taylor Swift might be one. Her show is nearly four hours long, and nobody seems to think that is too much. What interests me is how long she would have to play until some members of her congregation, albeit reluctantly, started sloping off to the exits? Five hours? Six? Past dawn?
I’d been through an Olympics ceremony before Sunday’s director’s cut in Paris. That was back in 2008, on a long – very long – sticky evening in Beijing. It was my honour to be sitting next to Sir Matthew Pinsent who, like me, was wearing shorts. Sometime during the third hour of the show I realised that our legs had stuck together, bonded by sweat. Two had become one. While it was undoubtedly an honour to be adhered to one of our greatest Olympians, the unpeeling was a bit awks. In Paris I took no chances. It was long trousers for me.
The pity of it was that each element of the whole thing was great, but each felt less great the longer they continued. That gold-person-thing dancing around, for example. OK, not my cup of tea, but obviously nicely done. Equally obviously, half as much gold-person business would have been about right. And there were the ring things that looked like garden hose reels, which ended up levitating. Nice. Dashed clever. But 10 minutes all up for that section would have been plenty. And the poor, poor athletes. When they first started marching in, it was great. Half-an-hour later, with no sign of the tails of the processions, everyone was wilting, not least the athletes themselves. At first they were a seething mass of selfies, hopping around with joy. Gradually, their interest waned.
Those of us in the stadium could see many of them slowly lose the will to live. OK, there were a few who ended up storming the stage, possibly in the hope of getting arrested and taken away. But the majority milled around, idly chatting, doing the odd stretch. As time slowed to a crawl, hundreds of them sat or lay on the floor, perhaps dozing. At one point, as the hose-reel business rolled listlessly on, a delighted cheer went up at our end of the stadium. An impromptu breakdancing contest had broken out between a couple of competitors. A circle of cheering athletes gathered around them. Eventually a huge guy in a tracksuit shooed the breakers away in order, it turned out, to drop down and demonstrate his prowess at press-ups. Everyone laughed. This was entertainment.
Meanwhile, the show droned on. The women’s marathon medal ceremony was special, but by then we were too anxious to enjoy it because we knew that the worst was yet to come: we still hadn’t heard from The Suits. And, as we all know, no Suit will ever use 10 words when a thousand will do. Tony Estanguet, the president of Paris 2024, made some great points, if in triplicate, to warm us up for the oration of the Suit-in-Chief, president of the IOC, Thomas Bach. Every time Mr Bach was introduced, mention was made of his 1976 gold medal in fencing. If only he was as quick with his speeches as he was with his foil. His sermon was like that of a not-very-inspiring vicar who has lost his place and read the same thing out twice. When he devastated us all with his Seine-sational pun, I wanted him stripped of his fencing medal as punishment.
Never have I been as pleased to see anyone as I was when the lights picked out Tom Cruise on the roof. First, because this surely heralded the end – or at least the beginning of the end – of the show. Second, because he was obviously going to jump and gravity, if nothing else, would ensure that this stunt, at least, couldn’t be dragged out for ever.
Within perhaps half an hour, it was finally over, although by then thousands of us were well on our way into the night reflecting that everything, including this column, goes on for far too long.
• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
• An evening with Adrian Chiles
Join Adrian on 10 October, 7.30pm-8.30pm, where he will discuss with fellow columnist Zoe Williams his brilliantly bemused tour of British life as captured in his new collection of Guardian columns. Book tickets at theguardian.live.com
