I think I deserve an Olympic medal. I certainly thought that at 12.40am this morning after I had sat through every moment of the opening ceremony of London 2012. But then I guess nearly 27 million others would get the same medal of endurance, and it wouldn't be quite so exclusive.
In a scenario that I'm sure was rife across the country, I got together with friends, wine and snacks galore to watch the marathon show. I can't deny that scepticism was rife at first; with hindsight I think we all thought the event could never match the hype or expectation that surrounded the three hour £27 million extravaganza.
But by the end of the opening show, about an hour in, we were all feeling smugly proud to be British. Yes there were some interesting time leaps in the history of our nation, the lengthy industrial revolution suddenly giving way to the Suffragettes and World War One, but the inclusion of a cricket match at the beginning of the ceremony, appeased me greatly. The growing towers of the revolution, the illuminated hospital beds, and the winged cyclists that culminated in an E.T. style ride into the sky were all visual highlights of the show.
The attempt at light hearted royal humour with the video of Daniel Craig as Bond on a mission to deliver the Queen to the stadium was slightly let down by the jump from daylight to night, and then back to daylight, and the unenthusiastic face of our Queen for the rest of the ceremony.
My favourite moment of the opening hour came with the reveal of Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who invented the World Wide Web. Hello rest of the world, look at how clever we are! We created the Internet! It made up for the bizarre text message/dance sequence evidently aimed at 'the youf of today' that preceded his appearance.
There followed a painfully dull two hours as every team in the Games paraded into the stadium. Necessary yes, entertaining, no. But it was definitely worth the wait to see the stunning cauldron and flame that ended the night's proceedings. It was just too obvious that Sir Steve Redgrave would light the flame, and a nice touch that he passed it on to seven young athletes to do the job. As the arms of our cauldron travelled upwards to make one giant torch the effect was breath taking, and the spectacular fireworks that raced around the roof of the stadium were truly a sight to behold.
I don't have much experience of Olympic opening ceremonies, but I think Great Britain lived up to its name last night.