(soft music) - Hello and welcome to Art First, the podcast dedicated to the promotion of freedom expression in the arts and art for art sake. I'm Niall Crowley and I'm your host for this Paris Olympic special. It's a panel discussion recorded live and with a small invited audience. We've got some great speakers who will introduce shortly, but first, why the Olympics? Well, as much as we love sports, we are in the business of talking about the arts. Nevertheless, the Olympics are a global event that put the arts in the spotlight, as well as the sports itself. So I'm balanced, it was too important to ignore. And as we said previously, we're keen to experiment and try different formats and explore a range of subject matter. However, when we first discussed the idea of doing this a couple of weeks before the games began, I was sincerely hoping we would have something to talk about, but why wouldn't it be? Would the Olympics come great architecture and design, grand new stadiums, impressive sporting facilities? Who can forget A-Way Way's incredible burnt nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics in 2008? Then to kick things off, the host nation draws upon its best and brightest in the arts, theater, film, costume, music, dance, choreography and more, brings together this creative talent and the public, stuffs them into their breathtaking news stadium for the greatest and most inspiring show on the planet. We, the global and national and local audience, sit back while they inspire us with the retelling of their national story, reminding us all of our common humanity and setting us up for the world's greatest sporting spectacle. Except the French didn't quite do it like that, and we've been talking, debating and arguing about it ever since. But lucky for us, the arts and even European art history have been absolutely smacking the thick of things more perhaps than we could have hoped or imagined before the Olympics began. So, what's going on? Joining us, we have a great panel who I'll introduce briefly. I've included their longer biographies and links in the accompanying notes. Please take a read. David Adam is a cultural and economic specialist whose work was at the heart of the London Olympics, organising exhibitions and cultural exchanges. He was responsible for London's official Olympic brand at the Beijing Games, he's an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California and the founder of the organisation Global Cities. Diodo Powell is an artist and art teacher whose work has been exhibited widely in London and around the country. She's a regular contributor to arts first and also organises the enormously popular gallery tour series for the Academy of Ideas, Arts and Societies Forum. Manic Gavinda is an independent arts writer, advisor, creative producer, curator and artist mentor. He's worked with many award winning artists in the field of contemporary visual arts and performance. Jane Sanderman is the chief operating officer at the Passage, a homeless charity in Westminster. She's the convener of the Academy of Ideas, Parents Forum, always an insightful commentator on a range of issues. Jane says her family are mad about the Olympics and to prove a point they're just back from Paris, having been there to watch the women's volleyball and the women's rugby sevens. Dr. Michael Owens saw Mick to his mates, who's a writer and lecturer with a career background in urban development. He co-authored Play the Game, How the Olympics Came to East London, building on his research and experiences, working for the Mayor of London at the London Development Agency. He's currently a board member at Bow Arts Trust, a much loved institution at the heart of East London. David, could you kick us off with your initial thoughts and responses to the opening ceremony in Paris in light of your experiences of working on the London Games? Maybe tell us a little bit about what you think, their challenges, they set themselves and how they would have managed them and what they achieved. I think it's really interesting to first of all, reflect on what an Olympic opening ceremony is for. What are they trying to achieve? Who are they trying to impress and who are they trying to engage? And there's a number of answers to that question, I think, but the first, and strangely, I think the first people that are often important in the minds of the organizers are the IOC, in that they want to be able to demonstrate that they have understood the full importance of the values of the international Olympic Committee and that they're going to take it very seriously and that they're going to treat the Olympic symbols with respect. And often, of course, we immediately find that people get themselves into a bit of trouble with that every now and then, as David Parris did by putting the Olympic flag the wrong way around. So it's a tricky area for people to navigate easily. But then secondly, I think they're looking to try and impress international audiences. There's a kind of global brand positioning moment for cities to explain to the world. Look here, here's who we are. Hey, you didn't understand who we are. Here's all these wonderful cultural things that we do that make us different and you should see us differently and you should see us for who we truly are. And here's the breadth and depth of what we're capable of. And there's a challenge in relation to that because I'm not sure that it's easy to succeed when you're talking to global audiences about who you think you are because it's hard enough to impress across one national culture, exactly, what it is that you stand for at a moment like that. But that brings me to the final audience that I think they're trying to talk to. And that is really a national audience. It's a moment of celebration to say, here's who we are, here's what we stand for, here's what we're interested in and here's a kind of collective attention moment around which we can all gather and say what we've achieved. And if we think back, I know most of the people in the cold era from London, if we think back to that London 2012 moment and the opening ceremony there, there were many elements of that that many people wanted to celebrate the history of the place and to feel confident about themselves and to say, hey, we've invented some stuff and we've participated in world culture and the stuff that we're capable of. And I think if you spoke to most people at the time, the London 2012 Olympics for ceremony felt, oh, at the moment, oh my God, we've got it over the line, we can do it and here's a load of wonderful things that we're good at. So it's a kind of getting across the finishing line and feeling celebratory about it. And for that reason though, often when you're talking to a national audience, it's not, it's not often the message that you're trying to get across to them is not often as well understood for international audiences. And just to give a quick context in the context of London, I think we wanted to show that we were full of humour, we were quirky, we thought differently, we'd take James Bond, we'll throw the Queen out of the plane, ha, ha, ha, look at us, there are more kind of traditional or a more hierarchical culture where respect is important, it's been noted that the Chinese looked on at that and so forth. Oh, look, those people don't take themselves very seriously if they threw their monarch out of a plane. You know, it doesn't matter what the message is that you're trying to convey in some way, it will reinforce what we understand. What were the French, what were the Parisians trying to say in doing what they did? I think they were trying to show that they could innovate, they were trying to do it outside of a stadium, they were trying to bring something new to it and they were trying to celebrate all the values that they think French culture currently stands for, which of course creates myriad controversy. That's really interesting. I think you've kind of touched on so many of the most important points and the points that certainly came up when I've been talking to people. The other thing that came up though is, I think in relation to where the opening ceremony was set and how in a stadium it's obviously for a local and national audience and it seems perhaps that the setting of the opening in a city, he was very much for a television audience. Do you think the opening ceremony succeeded on an artistic and a technical level? Well, I think what you described there is that they wanted to put the city on show and I don't know quite what was that, masked horseman running across the city and showing up the iconic buildings and so on and celebrating the same itself as a river. But London did a similar thing really. It had moments inside the stadium, but it had these videos and films that showed helicopters taking sweeps across the whole of the city and people waving from various buildings as the helicopter went by and it tried to push to show and look, we're no moving east. So it's not uncommon to do that. But a question whether or not even in doing that, the Olympic opening ceremonies, anything other than a teller visual event, it's an event that's designed to catch the eyes of the world and that phrase, the eyes of the world's a very interesting phrase. It's often how the marketers talk when they're trying to attract brands to associate themselves with the Olympics and say the eyes of the world will be on the city at this moment and it comes out of that long tradition, well, long tradition really I think since about 1967 World Expo where that first global teller visual event takes place where the eyes of the world are watching as this kind of, it becomes technically possible to do that. So I think they did it, you know, capable of showing the city was on display, it got rainy, it felt a bit messy, I'm not sure television audiences would have stuck with it all the way, but that in general is because I'm not sure television audiences will stick with anything that long all the way anymore and in truth what's more likely to happen in a more fragmented, splintered media age will pick up the bits from it through the decentralized media, will pick up the short sharp sound bites from Twitter, from Facebook or whatever, but that's how we will imbibe the media today and in a way we'll get a kind of filtered quick summary of what, what were the best bits, we won't have to put up with what the creative producers thinks to totality. - Dido, can you give us your thoughts, what were your highs and lows of the opening ceremony and? - I agree that the television bit made me think of what happened in London and I just now watched, just watched the whole thing through and actually I think it did quite a lot of things it, it works for all the dipping in and dipping out and people said it looked fractured, but those bits, those little vignettes, each one, I thought there were many that really were very exciting, but then there was a logic through the whole thing because so we're going through the themes, liberty, equality, fraternity, women, sport. And so actually I felt that it really had a nice flowing, flowing feeling through it, those particular things and in some of them I found some bits very, very original. I mean, I liked the mixture of their traditions and then the modern, most people have just spoken about the sort of, well, the feast of the gods and the gaudiness and the kitcheness, but when they did the museum thing, I thought it was a way they focused on paintings in the Louvre, the paintings were empty, famous paintings, the figures weren't there, they were looking out of a window, they were watching what's going on and then the dancing, some people were very rude about the Marlion dance, Maca Mona and even that connected to the Academy of Letters because she's supposed to, her language is all twisting words and making things up and then the Academy of Letters just by their setting the rules. So I really liked the intersection of these quite gutsy dynamic dances set against the rule-finding Academy. So in a way, I think they were taking, taking from the English as self-deprecatory thing that, yes, on the one hand, you have this very academic training but on the other hand, you had all these free bits and they're dancing, I thought was amazingly athletic and it echoed that when they had all the dancers going along the same by the gold bit, they all echoed the movement of water, boxing, swimming, they echoed some of the sports. I thought that was all done very cleverly and was nice and punchy and full of colour, full of life and the sort of undercurrent of pleasure of all sorts. - Jane. - I think what David said was very interesting in the tension about what it is for and that idea of international stage and then a national stage. So there does seem to be a difficulty between an understanding of the seriousness, perhaps of it and the play form of it and I think perhaps it's a tension that can't be reconciled or, so you can see that with Beijing, they really were serious, it was a spectacle, it was an announcement that China was going to come onto the world stage as a really serious player, you know, if you like, believing in universal values in a strange way but it's saying, this is really serious, it's not a joke, we want to really show ourselves to the world and every single part of that opening ceremony is going to be perfect in a big spectacular way and will charge around the world and it did exactly that. And then you can see with London, and I really agree again with David Francis' reference to London, that wasn't the same, it did seem to be much more, you know, a developed country in which what conversation you're starting to have is this slightly playful if you like, but slightly also ironic and slightly also talking to yourself. So, you know, you do think what did people make, are people bouncing on national house service beds in London and Germany. So, very important to Britain and the real, you know, the last thing Britain has is a unifying idea, but I think anyone else is probably thinking, why is a house service? And what is it, you know, what the hell is this got to do with anything? I think interestingly as well, you just think those beds, surrounding those beds with J.K. Rowling and images to Harry Potter, that's very different to what happened in 2020 for Paris Olympic. So, it also does go to show different cultural norms, I guess, being shown out with which happened in Paris. So, I think they were some of those, you know, they were some of the themes. I think, for me, artistically, could you always want to go to an artistic event or see an artistic event and you have your mind open? Don't you want to enjoy it and you want it to become something that makes you better in watching it, you know, makes you understand the world more? And I think it was patchy in that. So, I think there was sort of good parts. I mean, I really liked, as you say, that dream is at the beginning when the man or the woman, I think maybe the park or person, where the boats are taking the children down the river and you think, well, this is going to be a mystical and magical opening ceremony. You know, I was thinking, I like La Mill. You know, that sort of surreal French thing. And I think some things that were executed really badly, the minute you saw the Lady Gaga who's being around, you understood what they were trying to do. Just the execution, I think, was poor in places and that's probably just the challenging of staging something down a river. And when you're slightly out of control of the circumstance of that staging during periods through the ceremony. Yeah, so I think, and died of interest in when you saw it. I mean, I really did like that Louvre a bit when they go in the Louvre and the paintings, all the people have come out of the painting and they're staring through the window, aren't they? And then there's that dreamy idea. But then to me, they really ruined it by having that minion episode. We think, A, what are the minions got to do with France? And that was really crass when then there was this sort of horrible picture of the Mona Lisa on the sense. So I think they got to dream like big things. And then the next bit, they did something that was really terrible and really oafish. And I think they probably will go on to the whole drag trans runway. But one of the things I just thought, yeah, people clomping down it. The clothes were very ugly. And you think, well, France is known for its sort of beauty and its style. So, you know, even without the sort of meta narrative around that, like, you know, yeah, it was good in parts. - Okay, brilliant, that was a really useful contribution. Manic, do you want to give us your thoughts? Your highs and your lows? - Hey, well, I actually thought it was wonderfully audacious. It was a spectacle. And I think it was, the staging was really quite unique in that they used the best of the city and with the same, you know, Paris kind of, we all have an image of what Paris is and how it's built into the architecture of it and the kind of censoring of Paris. It all works, I think, architecture in spatially, really, in my opinion, because, you know, just having the same as the kind of the artery of the whole city and using the athletes and the sports people. In this boat, that's kind of journeying through the city. I thought it was wonderful. I'm rather than just having a traditional, you know, let's have the athletes waving around in a stadium or something. And yes, you know, doing it that way, I mean, you don't have complete control. I think compared to the Beijing Olympics, there was complete control on this, the level of authoritarian control, I would say. Some people say that the best spectacles are created by a fascistic authoritarian government. And I think China did succeed in that way because it was, these were just like bodies as machines, whereas I think there's a lot more humanness in the Paris opening ceremony. I think what I took with it was just a kind of, I can not graphic clash that was going on. It was such a saturation of iconographies. And I like that kind of stuff. It's maybe a bit postmodern in that sense, you know, we'll get on to the controversial thing about the tableau of Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the last supper. Was it the last supper that was being depicted or not? But there was what was going on throughout the whole of the artistic direction. Was this clash of cultures, clash of values? And I think that's what the French like. They like to kind of play with this idea of tradition and rejecting tradition and then seeing what comes out there. So for me, it felt very surreal, these incredible poetic moments. So, you know, it did felt like Daide said, this sort of Pablo of almost like a collection of poetry that connects together. And it wasn't trying to kind of say, and this is what it is. I think it was trying to just leave it to the audience to be perhaps puzzled, perhaps been used, perhaps wowed at times. You know, the Eiffel Tower kind of a robotic laser experience is complete sci-fi in many ways, as well as the masked figure, the silver figure going on the horse through the same. And then with Darren's porch and leading the athletes, that was straight out of Assassin's Creed, which is a French invention. And yes, it's one of the biggest, you know, kind of global games in the world, you know? So I think what Thomas Jolly was doing as the artistic director was really appealing to a whole range of generations, appealing to the whole range of generations. And he did that with I think a lot of philosophy, given a lot of clues, maybe some of us got it, some of us didn't. I thought it was all dacious and it's fun. - Great, that's really helpful, thank you very much. Mick, what were your thoughts, any reflections on your experiences from London and all the work you did there and how you found it? - Well, I suppose the comparison that struck me between London and Paris or two points really, they've been made already, but the, first of all, the idea of using city as stage, you know, which London did actually in the way they've talked about, you know, London did it by video, but now, you know, the ceremony was out in the city. And I thought they did that really well. I thought they have a lot of fun with it. And then the other thing is the, you know, and again, this is in the spirit of not competing with the Beijing and not, you know, not kind of directing everything from the top and making everything kind of really pristine, you know, in the way that, like, if you look at the, you know, if you look at the, you know, the, kind of the swimming performance, you know, that one where they all kind of create an architecture while they're swimming, the Chinese did in that, you know, at a micro level exactly what they did for the opening ceremony in Beijing. But what Paris did was, you know, in the spirit of London, it was a bit quirky, you know, it was a bit bonkers. And, you know, it's looking at it, you know, not from a perspective of city branding, but more looking at it as a kind of goggle box moment, you know, did it work or not? You know, in a way, the weirdness of it, the wackiness, you kind of half the time, you're thinking, I don't even understand that, you know, and I quite liked it at that level. So I liked, you know, I liked the sort of rather schtick, or the kitch, the kitch maybe, of being taken on the tour around Paris and being shown all of these iconic venues and knowing that all of those really important cultural references would be made. And, you know, and the idea that you might even know some of them, you know, like kind of 20 questions at moment. So I thought that all worked really well. So the, if you like the metaphor that I think kind of summed up the feel of it. So Le Mans said it was like a traveling theatre troupe, you know, so I thought that idea of looking at it as a bit like a circus, you know, and just marveling. So look at all of those beautiful dancers and, you know, look at the lovely singers kind of thing. And I think at that level it worked really well. Of course, you know, I don't think anyone watched it all the way through. I mean, you'd have to be tough to watch it all the way through, you know, stop the boats, wasn't it? There was that kind of joke flying around, stop the boats, please, you know, 'cause we're bored, stupid and they're all getting really wet. But I think that, you know, actually the before, you know, the audience is a social media audience. And we did exactly that. We did afterwards. We found out exactly what the moments were and we went and watched our own thing. And I think, you know, part of that, part of the way that the audience relates to this, you know, is about picking those things that you're really interested in. So, you know, for me, things that stood out, some of the musical moments I thought were really wonderful. I mean, I really liked the Nakamura, you know, with the, you know, with the marching band, with the Republican guard. And it reminded me of Beyonce, you know, in the, you know, so when Beyonce does her kind of American music and she draws on the cultural references of marching bands and then crosses over, you know, with her contemporary music, I thought that that was in evidence in the Nakamura performance. So I sort of loved it at that level. - Should we move on to some of the controversies? I was reading a piece just after the day after it came out by Gareth Roberts in the spectator. He was talking about the drag stuff and one kind of saying, well, seen it all before 20 years ago at the Vauxhall Tavern. It's a bit cynical, but I kind of thought that myself a little bit. He and others sort of suggested there's a bit of a sneering going on at mainstream, mainstream fans and mainstream society. So there was that element. And there was also the very obvious one about the, the Last Supper was what people being gaslighted when they were told that, no, no, you're wrong. It's not the Last Supper. And does it matter, really? David, do you want to come back in? - In terms of other Olympic games, if we think about Tokyo, you know, the controversy, we went quite as deep into cultural war issues then as we are now. So it wouldn't matter what happened. There was going to be something that's going to get picked out and framed culturally aesthetically. I thought it was absurd. There is a determined attempt to try and invert traditional symbols, but to do it in a kind of mixed up and not particularly French way, it was gaudy and gosh. And it didn't feel aesthetically interesting. It doesn't seem to me to drag something that's on the periphery of our culture. What was once considered to be something that is peripheral and that was about inversion is no center stage. It seems inevitable to me that it would be there. And it seems inevitable to me that they would want to play with symbols that they think would upset people and so on. - Brilliant, thank you, Dada. I was really amazed that so much publicity was on that bit because it seemed to come and go in a flash that the Dionysen feast that was then, they said, was the Last Supper, then the Guardian said, no, no, it's by Jan Van Bigglert, Feast of Gods. And there are many, but the whole point is the Last Supper has been used endlessly by different artists, Andy Warhol's used it. Lots of people used it. But I just thought that he had all pale blue and blobby and a bit oily and the flowers were a bit hideous. The only bit I liked about it was him popping out from under a pot, a serving dish. But if it's also, if somebody was wanting to overanalyze it, then the notion that paganism wouldn't match the Christian. I mean, pagan and Christian were the two things that were put together in the Renaissance, but the bad taste colors and everything, even that fits plenty of French traditions in the art. You know, Rococo down to Renoir, but it didn't have much power. I didn't find it offensive, but I didn't really think it added to anything. So it interfered with lots of the other bits that were, I thought, really powerful, like the horse, which I thought was completely magnificent. - I think Dionysus was eaten by the Titans, wasn't he? Which is probably why it was in a boiling pot. Okay, thank you very much for that. Manit, what did you make of it? What did you make of the idea that maybe the controversy was about people feeling gaslighted by it? - Yeah, I mean, like I said, to Saudi Iran, this kind of a flash of iconography that was going on there. Also, there was a bit of, you know, you idiots, it's not about, you know, it doesn't depict Christ and the Last Supper, it's a back in alien feast. So yes, there's a bit of sneer and a snarkiness going from those kinds of people, so I agree on that. But also I think, you know, the people that were offended by it, I mean, come on, good life. It's not flash and bloods Jesus Christ in his apostles. Mary Magdalene, you know, it's a wreath on the 15th century. Fesco, a neural, you know, by Leonardo da Vinci of his interpretation of Christ in the Last Supper. So, you know, I think we always have to remember that art is artifice, it's not real, it's not flash and bloods. But in this case, it was a performance art spectacle in terms of what Thomas Johnny kind of created as a taboo legal. And I thought it was a bit disingenuous that they were saying it's not about the Last Supper 'cause it certainly is, it's referenced. And as Gaido said, you know, it's also referenced in the back in alien painting by Jan Ashinz, and Deljut at the top of Deljut's name, Bill Jutz, at least of the gods. And, you know, perhaps that painting was inspired by da Vinci's Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the Last Supper. So we kind of just seen layers and layers of stuff going on, different kind of clashes of medical, spiritual, quasi-spiritual. So it's just cheeky, it's like Charlie Hebdo without the extreme vulgarity. So they were able to get away with it, each another of the protests. - Okay, that's a really good point. Jane, what did you make of it? Did you see elements of the culture war in there? Were there, was it the elites nearing the masses or was it nothing at all? - I think it obviously is an element of the culture war. I pretty sure what David said at the moment we're in such a pea-brile environment that we like to match to anything, but that is where we are, are we? And unfortunately, Manic, I think the difficulty in someone going, why are Christians offended by people taking the Mickey out of their religious iconography? We all know, and it's interesting that you are talking about Laisite, which is a very important French value, and talking about Charlie Hebdo. We all know that what religion or what iconography was not taking the Mickey out of you. That could have been really edgy, couldn't it? They could have celebrated that love of freedom of speech in French society, so much that people died, literally died for that freedom of speech, but that was not celebrated. And we know that everyone would take offense on that religious iconography, if it was another religion. And so I think it just did this hard thing about saying something as, if you like a series of the Olympic Games, and a series is something that is thrown internationally, and you might say the opening ceremony actually is a sideshow to the series of the Olympic Games, but it is enmeshed with the Olympic Games. And so I do feel it was another element when people saying, well, Christianity can be mocked. And actually, as we're saying, Paris, you know, the heart of, if you like, coming from a Judeo-Christian tradition, you look at all those things that were going down the river, looking at and praising or being ironic about, I guess, where, you know, Notre Dame comes from the civilisation of the Christian tradition, you know, all of those wonderful buildings down that sand comes from that, you know, the Baroque, the amazement of the Baroque, and when the Catholic Church fed people's, you know, dreams and ambitions, I mean, you know, ultimately is good laisite and inequality, paternity. But it's an important cultural and civilised part. And it just feels yet another time that is being mocked, you know, it's always being mocked. It's never being praised. It's never being delighted. And it didn't become part of the Paris story, which just seems amazing when that is how Paris got made. So, you know, it's difficult because it's only in the end an opening ceremony with a few people dancing around on a bone or a few men in beards in tutus walking down a stage. I do understand that. But you can understand why also people do feel perhaps that much should be a bit more serious, but it should fight with civilizational values, as well as just being mocking and playful. That there's a lot more at stake now than almost there ever has been. And if art doesn't come into the fight, potentially it's going to be the enemy rather than the friend of civilisation. So, yes, is that too high-blown? I don't know. That's really useful. Thank you. Mick. Jane's points really got there that, you know, if you think about some of the Republicanism of France and they progress over the old forms, there's a lot to celebrate there. But I think that the story that's being told here in a way, they also want to draw on an older sort of aristocratic story, kind of classical story of what France is. And then also, and I think this is a kind of big elements of the story that's being told. And it kind of, I think, picks up on what Manic was talking about earlier on. But the French culture as post-60As. And so, the idea of being able to make fun of yourself, the idea of using irony. And I think that was kind of a part of what was going on as well. That was a part of what they were saying about, you know, what it is to be French and what French culture is. And in that regard, I got the feeling that they believed that, you know, that the drag, for example, was risky. And I think what that misses is the way in which that kind of ironic, self-depreciating way of presenting yourself is a conservative form today. You know, that it's the way in which the establishment deals with the fact that nobody really believes much about them. And, you know, nobody's really bossing. And so, what you do, you know, you kind of present that in a very knowing way. So, I think that was kind of part of what was going on. But I suppose, again, coming back to the, you know, the kind of goggle box approach in relation to all of this, like, you know, you can feel everyone sitting on the sofa going, yeah, you know, yeah, that drag, who cares, you know? And anyway, we've done it much better. You know, Lily Savage was better than anything that you can do. And, you know, and as you say, we've sort of seen all that, all that we've been watching drag for years and years and years. And it's not challenging, you know, but I wonder whether there's something about the position of drag in relation to French society and, you know, some of the currents, you know, maybe the transform East, maybe manic knows about that. You know, they're kind of older forms of performance in which people become a whole other personalities on the stage, you know, and maybe there are cultural references or maybe there's a kind of more internal discussion that we didn't get. But mostly, I just thought the drag was, I say, really. OK, that's brilliant. David. Just a very quickly on that, and maybe to tie it back to the distinction between what the cultural values were versus what the Olympic values are as a kind of wave summarizing in some parts, I think both Jane and Michael said that, and I don't want to give the director or lead too much credit as it caused the controversy. They went and had a press conference, listened to the press conference, listened to what he himself turned and said. He said, we were doing it because of this, this chimes with Olympic and French values of diversity, openness and inclusion. He didn't say the Olympic values, which are faster, swifter, higher, excellent. So it's kind of coming back to Michael's point about it. It would be a little bit more challenging to have said. We did it because we were celebrating excellence, just as they built Notre Dame to celebrate the best of what was achievable. I do think there is a problem, perhaps, in that some of the original Olympic values that the Cubartan tried to revive and so on, they seemed very odd to us now. And I think Michael's point there is quite important about how it would be very difficult to go out and say, well, we're celebrating excellence because we think that achievement is a great thing. That would be across the pages of the news a lot more. Chocora, Paris, tries to celebrate how bloody brilliant its culture is. I think we'd be hearing about that for some time. Okay, that's brilliant. What a really excellent discussion. Thank you very much, all of you. [Music]
