It might be alright

The headline grabbers in the team to deliver London's Olympic ceremonies are clearly Danny Boyle and Stephen Daldry.

But there's a serious amount of experience there to support them. No pictures, yesterday, of Mark Fisher, 63-year-old stage and production designer, but everyone will have seen some of his work. He trained as an architect, and then taught, before moving into rock concerts with his structures and inflatables for Pink Floyd's American Animals tour in 1977. Then, the list from his various studios is full of A-class invention. The Wall and Division Bell for Pink Floyd, Steel Wheels, Bridges to Babylon, Voodoo Lounge and A Bigger Bang for the Rolling Stones, Zoo TV and Popmart for U2, Tina Turner’s Private Dancer tour, George Michael’s Faith tour, Jean Michel Jarre’s concerts in China, Houston and London's Docklands, KA for Cirque de Soleil. Take a look at his company website, Stufish, for even more that you'll remember. And he was part of the team for the Beijing Olympics opening.

Hamish Hamilton, 43, is a top-notch live tv director. Brought up in Blackpool, he studied accountancy at Stirling, but became more interested in student radio, and through that joined the BBC as a trainee producer in Scotland and Northern Ireland, eventually ending up in Manchester on "yoof" shows. MTV poached him, and he's gone on to do most of their big live awards shows; he's done concert dvds for Britney Spears, U2, Madonna and Robbie Williams - and then he got this year's Oscars ceremony, and the half-time Who gig at the Superbowl. He's also directed a number of the annual Victoria's Secret lingerie extravaganzas.


Catherine Ugwu got into "live arts" production working at the ICA in the nineties, and has been involved in performance arts ever since. The Millennium Dome opening was probably her first solo work - which brought her into contact with Mark Fisher. She went on to produce the opening and closing ceremonies for the Commonwealth Games in Manchester in 2002, the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, and was part of the team that produced the opening and closing of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Catherine and Mark are currently working with the Glasgow 2014 team to produce the Commonwealth Games flag handover, to be staged in Delhi in October 2010



Other "winners" yesterday were the consortium Flow Productions, made up with seconded staff from event PR firm Unspun (also working on the England 2018 World Cup bid), California-based event producers Five Currents, and infrastructure and procurement consultants Arcadis. They'll now form a standalone company called London 2012 Ceremonies Ltd.