00:34 The athletes are coming into the stadium through the crowd.
They enter together rather than country by country - to signify world unity. This is a tradition started at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne after a suggestiong by a Chinese apprentice carpenter living in Australia called John Ian Wing.
00:27 KEY MOMENT- Flags enter the stadium
The parade of the athletes will be preceded by the entrance of the National Olympic Committee flags.
There is one flagbearer for each of the 204 countries, who took part in the Olympics - with sailor Ben Ainslie given the honour for Team GB. They will enter in single file and will then be followed by many of the Games' competitors.
00:26 A black cab pulls up and who gets out but Kinks frontman Ray Davies to perform his acclaimed song. Waterloo Sunset tells the tale of a pair of lovers Terry and Julie who meet at Waterloo station every Friday night and "are in paradise" gazing at the sunset while the busy city and the "dirty old river" rush by.
00:21 The day draws to a close - in a segment named after The Kinks' song Waterloo Sunset. But it starts with alarm clocks and The Beatles: A Day in the Life - all together now: "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..." Bounding on to the scene are 30 gymnasts from the acrobatic troupe Spellbound who rose to fame in 2010 through the Britain's Got Talent TV show.
00:19 Stomp are back ending this Street Party segment of the ceremony in fine percussive style before we move on to Waterloo Sunset, the part which represents the end of the day.
00:16 And from those veterans of the music scene to one of the newest acts - here's fresh-faced pop sensation One Direction with What Makes You Beautiful.
00:14 Now it's another evocative song about London: the Pet Shop Boys performing their 1984 track West End Girls. It was written in response to TS Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land, literary fact fans.
The 130m wide union jack artwork on the floor is by Damien Hirst and has an almost as long name: "Beautiful Union Jack Celebratory Patriotic Olympic Explosion in an Electric Storm Painting".
It's one of his spin paintings and is the largest reproduction of a Hirst work ever produced.
00:12 And in the 1982 video for Our House, Madness's saxophonist Lee Thompson flies into the air as he performs his solo: and he does again tonight.
00:10 The whole stadium are singing God Save The Queen!
00:09 As silence descends a fanfare from the Household Division Ceremonial State Band announces the arrival of Prince Harry and the President of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge.
Prince Harry is representing the Queen tonight. He's praised the athletes who competed, saying: "They have shown us that there are few boundaries to human endeavour." He also paid tribute to the thousands of people who prepared the teams for competition and those who brought the London Games to fruition. The efforts of the volunteers - Games Makers - had been "supreme".
This is Rogge's last closing ceremony as IOC president as the former Olympic sailor is stepping down after 11 years at the helm.
00:07 It's got very, very noisy here with a cacophony of horns, drilling and shouts. We need an authoritative figure to shut everyone up - ah Churchill, he'll do!
00:03 This first section is called Rush Hour and it has a newsprint theme to it - with everything wrapped in the morning's papers. Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé is unwrapped on a newspaper rubbish truck to sing Read All About it which was a number one hit last year for Professor Green, with Emeli as a featured artist.
As you may recall, Emeli performed at the opening ceremony, with a spine-tingling rendition of Abide With Me, in tribute to the victims of the terror attacks in London on 7 July 2005. Her single Heaven was also used during one of the dance segments.
00:01 It's showtime! A cheer goes up as the bongs of Big Ben ring out, counted in unison by the crowd of 80,000 here in the stadium.
The Closing Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games will provide an opportunity for the world to view the artistic expression of Artistic Director Kim Gavin, his team and the culture of the Host City and the UK. It will be titled "A Symphony of British Music," to celebrate the fact that music has been one of Britain’s strongest cultural exports over the last 50 years. The worldwide broadcast of the Ceremony will feature more than 4,100 performers, including 3,500 adult volunteers and 380 schoolchildren from the six east London Host Boroughs.
- 2012 Olympics closing ceremony: ‘A symphony of British music'
Many of the ceremony’s details are being withheld from the general public much like Danny Boyle’s awe-inspiring Opening Ceremony. Yet, some of those “globally successful musicians” have already been confirmed, including British rockers Muse, who will be performing their Olympic-inspired song “Survival.” Also confirmed to pay tribute to British music over the past 50 years are the Spice Girls, Adele, the Who, and members of Pink Floyd.
Unlike the Opening Ceremony in which athletes march according to their nationality, the Closing Ceremony’s March of the Athletes has all the competitors march together in a single file line as a sign of solidarity between the countries.
Anastasia Davydova, the only five-times Olympic champion in the history of synchronous swimming, will carry the Russian flag at the closing ceremony, the Russian Olympic Committee’s press-service reports.
- Davydova to carry Russian flag at Olympic closing ceremony
After the March of the Athletes three flags will be raised while the corresponding national anthem is played. First, the Greek flag to honor the birthplace of the Games, then the flag of the host nation, and finally the flag of the next host nation, Brazil in 2016, is raised.
After the raising of the flags, London Mayor Boris Johnson will symbolically return the Olympic flag to IOC President Jacques Rogge who, in turn, will hand the flag over to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro Eduardo Paes. Rogge then declares the Games officially over and the flame which has burned in the cauldron since the Opening Ceremony will be put out.
Official London 2012 website, Yahoo! Sports, BBC Sport, RIA
"I'd love to open a tennis school for children in my hometown of Sochi." said Sharapova Maria.
