Seven Years Of Preparation Culminates With Olympic Opening Ceremony

Seven years of preparation culminates in just a few hours time with the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

A global TV audience of around a billion people are expected to watch the three-hour Olympic opening ceremony spectacle in the Olympic Stadium.

Danny Boyle, the artistic director of the £27m opening ceremony, dedicated it to the 15,000 volunteers taking part.

"This is a live performance and it's the actors, and in our case they're volunteers, who have to get up there and do it."

Europe's largest bell will ring inside the Olympic stadium at 21:00 BST at the start of the extravaganza, said to be a quirky take on British life.

Some 15,000 square metres of staging and 12,956 props will be used, and the event will boast a million-watt PA system using more than 500 speakers.

The day of celebration began at 08:12 with a mass bell ringing. Big Ben rang for three minutes for the first time since King George VI's funeral.

In other news Lord's cricket ground has turned away spectators trying to get in to watch archery amid confusion over ticketing.

The London 2012 website advertised the event's preliminary rounds as "unticketed", which some members of the public interpreted as open to the public.

But Olympic organiser Locog said it had not advertised or sold tickets for the ranking event and had always made it clear preliminary rounds were not open to spectators.

South Korea later claimed the first two world records of London 2012 in the men's team and individual archery.

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "It's a great opportunity to show the world the best of Britain, a country that's got an incredibly rich past but also a very exciting future.

"Someone asked me yesterday what face of Britain do we want to put forward - is it Blur or the Beefeaters? - and frankly it's both."

Coverage of the opening ceremony starts on BBC One at 19:00 BST and Radio Five Live from 18:00 BST. UK users can also watch it via the BBC News website.

(H/GK)