London Games open with fun-filled show

The London Olympics burst into life on Friday with a humour-filled opening ceremony watched by 80,000 spectators and more than one billion TV viewers.

Queen Elizabeth II and James Bond, alias actor Daniel Craig, were shown in a spoof film parachuting from a helicopter into the Olympic Stadium in east London before the real monarch took her seat to loud applause.

After seven years of planning, the Games officially began in the gleaming new stadium in a once rundown area of the British capital with a colourful show devised by "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle.

The ceremony kept Boyle's promise to showcase British history with a dash of...

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