Olympics Closing Ceremony: World Press Deem Show 'Eccentric', 'Madly Bonkers'

What do you get when you mix the Spice Girls, Fatboy Slim DJ-ing in a giant octopus and Eric Idle?

A global press reaction where the buzzword is "eccentric."

According to India Today, Sunday night's Olympics closing ceremony was "even more madly bonkers" than the Games themselves.

"The music brought out not just the breadth of British music, but also an underlying surreality, particularly with a Beatle's track 'Magical Mystery Tour' featuring dancing walruses and eggmen (from the lyrics of the song), and DJ Fatboy Slim whose appearance also heralded the arrival of the world's largest transparent plastic octopus, and whose eight limbs twitched disturbingly to the music."

Britain's closing ceremony was deemed eccentric

In Britain, an audience of more than 26 million people watched the musical celebration. The verdict from our cousins at Le Huffington Post was "inventive humour".

As for the Washington Post, it also went for the e-word, adding they had appreciated "the coupling of Olympic solemnity with English humor and a wave of euphoria in a host nation that seemed to rediscover the “great” in Great Britain."

The site Celebuzz loved it, asking readers "Did you happen to miss arguably the best British concert in years?"

The games as a whole? Well according to the Sydney Morning Herald we "didn't half do a decent job." The paper wrote: "the Games were preceded by the usual fatalistic anticipation of a cock-up. It proved groundless."

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As for the weather - "it rained, of course, but no more than usual for London, and not at all on London's parade."

Peter Wilson, the Europe correspondent of The Australian deemed that London "beat Sydney" in Monday's The Times.

"When you put it all together, the fun and the legacy, the logistics and the inspiration, the result is undeniable. It is, I'm afraid to say, bronze for Barcelona, silver for Sydney and gold for London."

China Daily, meanwhile, damned the capital with faint praise writing that Chinese Olympic Committee vice-president Wei Jizhong has "urged the public not to compare the London Olympics with the 'unparalleled' Beijing Games."

But some reserved nothing but praise for the closing ceremony. Our Canadian colleagues at The Huffington Post wrote "with a little British pomp and a lot of British pop, London brought the curtain down on a glorious Olympic Games on Sunday in a spectacular, technicolour pageant of landmarks, lightshows and lots of fun."