It began with one Beckham, and it will end with another. The Olympics, which opened with a cheery David Beckham scudding down the Thames in a motorboat, is expected to finish on Sunday at 9pm with his wife, Victoria, driving into the Olympic Stadium astride a black cab, in a closing ceremony that celebrates some of Britain's favourite musicians from the past half-century.
The well-wrought bombast of Danny Boyle's opener prompted a sharp intake of breath and, in some quarters of the press, hyperventilation – but the organisers of the closing ceremony hope their work will spark the opposite: a collective exhalation, a national letting-off of steam and above all, a good old bump and grind.
"If the opening ceremony was the wedding," David Arnold, the ceremony's musical director, told the Daily Telegraph earlier this week, "then we're the wedding reception. We're the one where everyone gets out of their cars at the village hall, [and] goes: 'Wasn't that lovely, everyone looked great, let's put on Blame It On the Boogie and have a laugh.'"
Victoria Beckham will be reunited with her fellow Spice Girls, and the quintet will all enter the melee atop personalised London taxis. Melanie Brown – aka Scary Spice – has one embellished with leopard print. The band will be aided by a set of sparkling silver microphones, one of which was snapped and tweeted by Beckham last week.
The theme of the shindig is A Symphony of British Music, and is said to feature a sweeping medley of 30 of the country's favourite hits, ranging from Elgar to Adele. Arnold has corralled the 30 tracks into one long flowing mashup, sections of which will be performed by 20 contemporary household names. The composer of five James Bond scores, he selected the poppier tracks by going through each of the Top 20 singles since 1956, creating a shortlist of 500 and narrowing it down from there. It's a process that he thinks will leave some people disgruntled, since the selection has necessarily left out many favourites. He also warns that there may be crossovers with the opening ceremony. During the planning period, his team was based next door to Boyle's, and both groups found their work overlapped.
Locog have not confirmed any artists, but but Muse are likely to perform their Games-themed track, Survival, that focuses on the "darker side" of the Olympics. George Michael has also tweeted about his involvement – his first live appearance since his life-threatening illness last year.
The artists will be assisted by 4,100 performers, of whom 3,500 are volunteers. Their performances will be punctuated by the medal ceremony for the men's marathon, speeches by the likes of the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, and video highlights from the Games themselves. Following the last athletics events on Saturday night, Arnold and his team have just 16 hours to fill the stadium with replicas of London landmarks, including Tower Bridge.
