Terence Blacker: Trolls and micro-skirts are our brand
The giant screen in the Olympic Stadium could fill up with enraged, ill-spelt 'opinions'
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Your support makes all the difference.Heaven knows, one tries to enter into the spirit of things at moments like these. The dear old Queen's anniversary. The East End Olympics. The great "Hurrah for Great Britain!" that will soon be echoing around the world. It is going to be tough, though. TV advertisements promoting the national brand have begun to appear. There are picnics, laughing, glossy people on a village green – modern, yes, but with a touch of that all-important national heritage in the background.
It is a ghastly mistake. The Britain that is being promoted by the advertising industry is a bland, middle-class Bransonised nightmare, a country where everyone has been cloned into a version of the grinning, egotistical Virgin billionaire. Foreigners expect the very opposite from the British. It is our nastiness – Ricky Gervais, Vinnie Jones, Jeremy Clarkson – that sells. We provide the grit in the global oyster. Fortunately, there is still time to refute all this in the Olympics opening ceremony.
It will open with the March of the Trolls. A heaving, scurfy mob of resentful tweeters, Facebook activists and message-board nutters will enter the stadium, each typing infuriated messages into a smart phone. The giant screen overlooking the stadium will fill up with their enraged, ill-spelt "opinions".
The Trolls will be followed by Slapperdance, a routine in which drunken girls in micro-skirts will celebrate the British weekend, tottering about on high heels, discarding their knickers, and beating each other up before falling over unconscious.
They in turn will be cleared by the Met Pets, comedy policemen in riot gear who will shout racist abuse at the international crowd while having their back pockets stuffed with money from a troupe called Fleet Street Bungers and Buggers which follows them around at all times.
With a change of pace, thousands of unsuccessful applicants for Britain's Got Talent will enter the stadium. A mighty choir will be formed to sing the country's unofficial anthem, Elton John's "Goodbye, England's Rose", hopelessly out of tune and weeping. Then, dramatically, a space will appear in the heart of the choir. Seated in a circle and shouting at one another, will be The Professional Controversialists – David Starkey, Melanie Phillips, Richard Dawkins, Julie Burchill, Rod Liddle, and Niall Ferguson. Backing vocals well up behind them. It is the Middle England Chorus, flailing the air angrily with rolled-up copies of the Daily Mail.
The Trolls, Slappers, Met Pets and talent show contestants reappear and are taking a final bow when an enormous shopping centre descends on them, filling the stadium with concrete and special offers. It will be bold, startling and the perfect way to present our great nation to the world. Let the Games commence!
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