The Olympic Side of London
Description of Scene: Text: Time code
Act 1 Scene 1:
Opening Sequence
Credits:
narrated by: Iain Sinclair
producer: Abi Weaver
director: Daniele Rugo
cinematography: Nicolas Sburlati
sound: Dawid Waselewski.
View of London from the River Thames –
St. Pauls’s Cathedral – Bridges
HMS Belfast (War Boat)
00:00:44 - NARRATOR
July 6th 2005 London wins the bid for the
2012 Olympic Games. From the start the
Olympic project will be about regeneration.
The culturally unifying message of the
games promises to reconstruct a deprived
part of the capital Stratford in East London.
00:01:16 - NARRATOR
The sight is a vast tract of ex-heavy
industrial land falling between Stratford and
Hackney wick.
00:01:28 - NARRATOR
For the first time this area always far off the
official map attracts global attention. What
is this place? Who are its people?
Act 1 Scene 2:
Olympic Logo to darkness
00:02:28 – Title:
The Olympic Side of London
Act 2 Scene 1:
East London sequence introduction
00:02:42 – Narrator
East London is as slippery to define as
anything. At the beginning of the 20th
Century it was considered almost a foreign
country. Marginal, cheap, undesirable, a
place for political exiles, free thinkers,
refuges. So many contradictions, disguises,
deceptions, multiple identities. Full of true
Londoners, second generation immigrants,
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The Olympic Side of London
professional strangers, working men.
Act 3 Scene 1:
Black and White footage
00:03:19,18 – Sub-title:
East London – 1940
03:49,07 Character 1: Iain Sinclair appears
00:03:51 – Sub-title:
Iain Sinclair
award winning writer
Black and White footage
00:03:40 - Character 1: Iain Sinclair
We came to Hackney, which was then an
unknown landscape to me. I had never
lived here before, I had come here once...
...for the reason of chasing down a movie
when I was in film school in Brixton. I came
up to Hackney by bus to the Rio in Dalston
to chase out 'The Criminal' by Joseph Losey
which was prophetic in some senses. And in
1969 moved into a small mid-Victorian
terraced property just off Albion Square,
which was then a landscape that looked as
if it was unchanged since the Second War. It
was a post-Blitz landscape. There were
prefabricated houses...
This house had a crack in it from the war
time bombing. And when I started to dig up
the front garden I was pulling out a wheel
barrow of shrapnel.
00:04:32 - Character 1: Iain Sinclair
So that was the landscape of the mind and
the landscape of East London was black
and white it was monochrome. And I look at
8mm footage I shot at that time and you
cannot believe this is the sort of tail end of
the swinging sixties and the psychedelic
era. Apart from the short skirts of the girls
who were walking under the railway bridge.
It is that landscape of Hue and Cry and the
British movies that were shot just after the
war- you know exploiting the sort of ruined
landscape.
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The Olympic Side of London
Black and White footage
00:04:59,18 - Character 1: Iain Sinclair
So this is moment of zero degrees of
architecture Nothing is happening, its static
- its dead.
00:05:12 - Character 1: Iain Sinclair
And if you wanted to go into the landscape
you could only reference it through lost
films. Haggerston Park where there had
been gas works, major gas works - was
exploited by Carol Reed to shoot 'Odd Man
Out' and James Mason is running across a
snowy field there and pretending that its
Belfast. And further down in Bethnal Green
and in Brick Lane Carol Reed was also
shooting a fable by Wolf Mankowitz in which
a unicorn appears to these street traders.
And further down still in Beckton – later -
Stanley Kubrick re-stages the Vietnam war.
So the whole cycle comes full cycle. The
gas works destroyed by bombing in the
second world war become the sight of the
Vietnam war. And that was the memory of
my first era of exploring this East London
landscape.
Act 4 Scene 1:
In the kitchen of a café – machinery –
pastry making
00:06:52 – Sub-title:
Joe Cooke
pie 'n' mash maestro
00:06:48,12 - Character 2: Joe Cooke
Our family business started off in 1862.
About a half a mile from where we're sitting
in Scalter Street – just off of Brick Lane. Inbetween
Brick Lane and Bethnal Green
Road. My great grandfather Robert Cooke
– started off a shop there and he was the
very first man to put a meat pie mash,
potato and parsley sauce on a plate. And
that was it – that was the beginning in 1862.
00:07:25 - Character 2: Joe Cooke
I was born and brought up in a market. Only
a half a mile from here - Broadway Market.
Which would have been a competitor with
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The Olympic Side of London
Lady selling bags
Packing away of the market
Act 4 Scene 2:
High rise block of flats
this market, Hoxton, and the other markets
around - Ridley Road, Well Street these are
all local Hackney markets. And they would
have all been exactly, exactly the same
formula. A mass of stalls and fruit and veg
and every conceivable thing for mums to
buy for the mother of the house to buy.
Plus all of the streets would have had their
individual shops and every market would
have had their own... character. And in
those days, not necessarily going back a
hundred years but certainly before
supermarkets came in - people would have
shopped in their own market - their local
market. They would have had no reason to
travel. It would take them over an hour to
walk from one end of the market to the other
because of all the different people they saw
and met and spoke to and chatted tofriends.
So that was how it was... The
markets were the hub of each community.
00:08:56 - Character 2: Joe Cooke
Its totally different today, people go
shopping they get in the car they go to
which ever is their favourite supermarket
and they can do absolutely everything there.
00:09:35 - Character 2: Joe Cooke
When the high rise flats came- obviously I
would have been a kid - they altered the
community - a vast amount. Obviously
these high rise blocks replaced streets.
Where you would have an area, a great big
area of streets - that would be taken away
and just replaced by one single block.
00:09:59 - Character 2: Joe Cooke
You don't have to be brain of Britain to work
out that all these people would have all
been on the same level would have lived on
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The Olympic Side of London
the same street would have all gone past
one another doors and would all known one
another - every single person would have
known. As soon as you build what is
effectively a street in the sky - that goes.
That goes instantly. I don't think there's any
doubt that it robs the community of all
contact and being sociable just generally
being sociable to one another. It just
finishes - it just finishes. Its a
shame...obviously the idea of them as a
space saving exercise is fantastic that's
obvious but as soon as people being
friendly to one another and just being
sociable to one another - passing the time of
day to one another is completely gone.
Act 5 Scene 1:
Old lady walking over bridge and feeding
the birds in the park
00:11:55 Character 3: Denis Weaver
appears driving his car whilst speaking
00:11:56 Sub-title:
Denis Weaver
the man who left
00:11:47 - Character 3: Denis Weaver
I left East London to get a better way of life.
Not just for me - my wife and three children.
I was a gas fitter in them days and
managed to save just enough money to
move away from the poverty of the East
End. And we decided to move into North
London, which was a better area where we
went to. There were better schools for the
children - there were no gangs hanging
around - there was no gangs on street
corners. Only when you move away then
come back years later do you realise how
poor an area East London was.
00:12:22,22 - Character 3: Denis Weaver
My dad was a market porter down the
Borough Market and my mum actually
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The Olympic Side of London
00:13:20 Musical Interlude
Act 5: Scene 2
Entering into a Council Estate (social
housing) Continue Music fade out
worked in the Co-op.
00:12:31 - Character 3: Denis Weaver
An East Londoner in my days in the 50's
and 60's was a Cockney and that was really
a working class person born east of the City
of London. There was a great community
spirit among all the Cockneys. If you were
short of food they would help you out and
give you food, sugar, bread, milk. If you
were short of a few bob (trans 'bob' =
money), they would actually help you out as
well and not worry so much about when
they got paid back. Also I remember
because they worked hard and the jobs
didn't pay that much – when it come to the
weekends they made the most of their
weekends – so Saturday nights and Sunday
afternoons were spent going to the local pub
with family, friends and neighbours and
having a good sing-song (trans 'sing-song' =
sing) a good drink up and a good knees up.
(trans 'knees up' = drink lots of alcohol)
And all of a sudden Monday morning come
again and they were back to the dismal time
of working for not much of a great wage.
00:14:32 Character 3: Denis Weaver
But this hasn't changed. I started coming
here about 1961 and this hasn't changed at
all in 50's years. You could close your eyes
and open again and think you were actually
still here in 1961.
00:14:52 Character 3: Denis Weaver
Kingsmead Estate (funnily enough) was
built in 1939 and was opened by the King
and Queen of England. They were given
the choice of actually staying at Buckingham
Palace or moving to this Kingsmead Estate
and they had a long time to think about it –
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The Olympic Side of London
then decided reluctantly to live in
Buckingham Palace. But that estate was
called a village estate, in them days. And it
might have been nice when it was built in
1939 but it still became very run down.
There was large families with quite a few
children. Husbands didn't go to work – they
were drunks. Some husbands run away
with other women and left their wife and
children to fend for themselves. They
couldn't have enough money to feed
themselves. And what happened in the end
was the kids turned to crime.
0:15:40,08 - 2 people walking on the
street carrying a television
'Ten pound yours! Ten pound yours!'
00:15:45 Character 3: Denis Weaver
They would do the worse thing possible and
break into other neighbours flats. Rob
(trans 'rob' = steal) the gas meter of money.
In them days you used to have gas meters
where you used to have sixty or seventy
pounds in, which was a lot of money. Nick
(trans 'rob' = steal) jewellery from the flats,
TV sets and radios just to feed themselves.
But what happened in the end was some
kids got into drugs. There were kids on
Chinese heroine, kids on acid, kids of
amphetamines, blues, uppers and downers.
00:16:19,20 Character 3: Denis Weaver
Being in the East End the job opportunities
were poor. You would either work in a
factory, work for the council, work for the
dust work (trans 'dust' = dustman) , in a
brewery, work for the post-office. It was
very hard to get a job like that and move
away from the area. But I struck lucky.
There is lots of parts of East London where
you could go back in time and still think it
was 1950 and 1960, that hasn't changed.
But what has changed with East London is
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The Olympic Side of London
where you had the Cockneys, most of them
moved out the Cockney spirit- that
community spirit has gone now. Most of
them moved out – there was hardly any
housing. It was either moving to a tower
block or go to a new town. And a lot of them
were talked into going to the new towns like
Basildon and Harlow with a promise of a
house with a garden and a better way of life.
A lot of people jumped to it instead of going
to tower blocks or not having any
accommodation whatsoever then the ones
they were living in. When they moved out of
there some regretted it, but they couldn't
afford to come back again. And what you'll
find nowadays is that there are more people
that speak Cockney in the new towns and in
Essex then you would in the East End. And
where you had the Cockneys, Jewish and
the black community now you've got a mix
of everything – it is very multi-culture.
Which is a good thing – you've got artists,
writers – its ever evolving the East End –
But it will never change visually. There is no
government in the world even in the next 50
or 60 years that could actually afford to
knock some of these council blocks down
and re-build them. So in that way it hasn't
changed whatsoever.
Act 6: Close up tower block 00:18: 22 - Narrator
To understand where you are you rely upon
the imagination of the city. There is an
interaction at all times. Between the two
sides – the physical and the metaphorical.
Boundaries and strategic – they expand and
contract in accordance with the political
whims of the moment.
00:18:44 - Narrator
Hackney at certain epochs has given itself
certain airs and graces before being
slapped down and consigned once more to
the dump bin of aborted ambition.
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The Olympic Side of London
00:18:58 - Narrator
Whitechapel and Brick Lane have been
Huguenot and then Jewish and then
Bangladeshi, there are four or five layers of
immigration. But there is something that is
specific, a trace, a word, a broken sentence,
an unnoticed detail.
Act 7: View of Central London
00:19;51 Sub-title:
Phillip Blond
'Big Society' politician
View of Whitehall with British flag
00:19:42 Character 4: Phillip Blond
I like mixed communities I like living in areas
that have different people from different
relationships I also love the history, its one
of the oldest areas in London and you feel
Dickens, its near a Hawksmoor Church. You
know you feel the presence of all the
literature I grew up with. And what’s
interesting are the moral conundrums that
Dickens writes about are moral conundrums
we have sort of a type of endemic mass
poverty that’s not really been dealt with - we
have people abandoned and we have
people doing very well - it feels like living
very much in the real world and at the front
line of that world - and I like to learn from
the world
00:20:29,10 Character 4: Phillip Blond
I think the inspiration for big society comes
essentially from the feeling that something is
deeply wrong in Britain. That our economy
has become dysfunctional and serves the
few instead of the many. And there's a
sense that we've lost the middle of our
society - our city and our social life. And
really I think that helped inform the broken
Britain thesis which nobodies claiming
Britain’s Somalia but in terms of the
developed world it seems that we weren’t
developing the way sort of countries like us
were developing. Indeed in the UN survey
Britain came bottom for children, for
relationships for well-being and we came
bottom in terms of how our youth operate.
9
The Olympic Side of London
Derelict building
They drink more, they have sex earlier, they
are far more heavily into drugs than any
other of the OECD countries. What most
worried me was how we treat the bottom
half. It's clear that cast is becoming truer of
our society than class.
00:21:45,18 Character 4: Phillip Blond
The problems that we’re facing is a whole
group of people who can’t integrate, aren’t
skilled and who are becoming sort of part of
the permanent underclass. And who don’t
seem to be able to access pathways to
improve their lives. And in many ways they
are being pushed further and further out so
they are becoming more and more
fragmented so we’re creating a city where
it's increasingly impossible to be poor and
we are also not creating the conditions
whereby people can improve their lot. The
pathways through education are blocked,
the pathways to assets are blocked.
Nobodies creating the conditions for people
to associate - to skill up to create new
possibilities for themselves.
00:22:44,16 Character 4: Phillip Blond
The obvious thing to say about the changes
in the East End are that its mass influx of
migrants from different communities - the
break up of the established white working
class families and the creation of lots of
heterogeneous groups that though they
were co-present didn’t necessarily engage.
And what I think is the worse thing that's
happened (I am not opposed to migration, I
think that the country needs it - I think it
needs to be not at the enormous level that
its been at to allow integration to take
place.) But what we’ve actually seen is
massive influx that people haven’t been able
to cope with and then we’ve seen the rise of
the ideology of multi-culturalism that
essentially gives public money and support
10
The Olympic Side of London
and conceptual license to further
fragmentation between communities - it
allows separate development. And actually
that creation of separate development is
what licenses modern racism. And I think
you can see by the contemporary rise of the
BNP as emerging from a multi-cultural
settlement that has clearly failed.
Act 9: Brick Lane Scene
00:23:48,07- Musical Interlude
Act 10: Saree Shop 'Doli'
Character 5: Asif Karim appears
00:25;31 Sub-title:
Asif Karim
entrepreneur
View of Saree's
00:25:18 Character 5: Asif Karim
My dad moved over to England, because at
that time it was the best thing to do. It was
a trend that everyone from Asia wanted to
come over to England. And he just wanted
a better standard of living. And he started
working in a chocolate factory. He had zero
money with him – zero. He had nothing not
a penny. He started working in a chocolate
factory but he knew the rags (trans 'rags' =
fabric) trade before he came to London –
so he knew a bit about the clothes trade.
So whilst working on – whilst working in a
factory he used to carry a rucksack and go
door to door and started selling saree's and
fabrics to customers – people that he used
to know. And slowly slowly things started
building up things started getting better.
There was a niche in the market in London
at that time. That people wanted these
clothes because people were coming to
London from Pakistan, India all the Asian
countries but there weren't many shops
around to supply the fashion that they
needed.
00:26:28 Character 5: Asif Karim
For people to accept change its not easy
people don't accept change that easily.
When there's a community living in an area
and you have different types of community
coming in left right and centre (trans 'left
11
The Olympic Side of London
Red post-office van
right and centre' = coming from everywhere)
its not easy to accept that sort of change.
Now you have over a hundred different
people – a hundred different languages
spoken in East London. So the
communities work together – work with each
other. Before (I’m talking about 30, 40 years
ago) when the influx of communities were
coming in from Asia, I’m talking about India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh – there were a lot of
problems. In East London, you do not find
this Islamiphobic stereotype because its not
only Muslims that live here – you've got
different types of communities that live here
– you've got the Hindu you've got the Sikh,
you've got the Chinese, the Polish – you've
got different, oh, I forgot the English people
(laugh). You've got these different facsist
groups like the English Defence League
who want to do a march in East London to
try and disturb this community cohesion.
But I think we're strong enough to not to
listen to them – because they're just a
bunch of thugs that are trying to shout and
scream.
00:27:51 Character 5: Asif Karim
I kicked up such a fuss because I didn't
want to come to East London. I thought no
– because I heard so much bad things –
things I used to hear about East London.
East London's a dump – East London's this
– I didn't want to move to East London. But
now, I wouldn't move for the world from East
London – it's the best thing that's ever
happened to me East London.
00:28:11,08 Character 5: Asif Karim
If you look at what they're doing to the
Olympic site. That was a place where I
would never go – it was a dump site. And
they have completely regenerated it – I was
just shocked to see it, I mean they have
completely regenerated it. I mean that has
12
The Olympic Side of London
a knock on effect on everything and
everyone. Because that will create local
jobs – and you might turn around and say
that the jobs will only be servicing jobs but
a job is a job. To get a job nowadays – it's
not easy. And for the people that are
unemployed and haven’t been working for a
long time – those sort of jobs will be a good
opportunity because East London has
always been – I’m not going to say low on
confidence but this is a boosting point – a
moral point – a boosting point for the local
people, for them to get themselves a decent
job. And this is a starting point - from there
they can build their confidence and move on
– who knows?
00:29:07,16 Character 5: Asif Karim
You've got Stratford International that has
been built that will make Stratford City one
of the main hubs in the UK. You'll have a
direct tunnel from here to France. Back on
the map Stratford is! Which is a very good
thing not just on the map of the UK but on
the map of the whole of Europe as well. It
will be a talking point for the future
generations. We can say that we have had
the Olympics on our back door. And the
future generations will be inspired by this.
Act 11: Children playground
00:29;24 Sub-title:
Good Times
World in the East End
Character 6; Christine Ali appears
00:30:36 Sub-title:
Christine Ali
community worker
00:30:26 Character 6: Christine Ali
I've lived in Cable Street for 44 years. My
mum was Welsh, she came from Wales and
my dad was Asian. But I’ve been brought up
in the East End of London as an East Ender.
Just sort of thrown into it. Brought up with
lots of different kind of people. As a child, I
played on this playground. I grew up here.
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The Olympic Side of London
Views of playground
Children playing with cards – shot topbottom
00:32:52 Camera moves up a high rise
And this has been for the children since the
early sixties. It used to be a children
hospital years and years ago and when that
was demolished basically the land was
given to the children of East London. So
what happened was – a group of parents
got together, they came in and le their
children play. Basically, in the 80's it was
run by the council. The council were
abolished which was the GLC and the
amount of people that rallied together to
keep the place going. Yet again it was still
the local community – parents that rallied
round and opened the gates and kept it
going.
00:31:50 Character 6: Christine Ali
A lot of parents in Tower Hamlets don’t work,
so they are living on a very low budget. And
they’re having to manage to survive on that
so its basic stuff that they’re having really
and like I said, the children that use this
playground- most of them come from a
deprived family. They are put out for the
day to get on with it and learn to fend for
themselves.
00:32:24 Character 6: Christine Ali
With the Olympics – they're meant to
benefit people in Tower Hamlets. But most
of the people in Tower Hamlets they are
being asked to move out, because they
can't afford to pay the rent. So they're not
really benefiting the local people. Eventually,
well I believe, most of the people in Tower
Hamlets, that are on the poverty line - are
going to be moved out further. They are
going out to Dagenham and them places
where it's a lot cheaper then Tower Hamlets
because Tower Hamlets is – to rent a
property is just unbelievable – the prices!
14
The Olympic Side of London
building block of flats
On the river – images of expensive flats
00:32:54 Character 6: Christine Ali
I think when they started going up was the
late 80s. They started building these new
penthouses and all the new properties.
Across the road you have people that live in
half a million pound houses and across the
other side there are people living on this on
the bread line (trans. 'bread line' = poverty
line) – on nothing really.
00:33:15,20 Character 6: Christine Ali
When I was a child Wapping and the
Docks , Shadwell basin everything was
totally different to the what it is today. There
was a lot of stuff that you could just go and
pick up from old debris sites. They used to
have big warehouses and stuff like that and
it was exciting for us, because we used to
go over there - climb over the wall, and
there would be all we soldiers’ outfits and
we would get our old army There was a
rubber factory – we would go and get big
lumps of rubber and I used to go there
swimming. That was our local out door
swimming - it was full of old cars and
tractors, it was absolutely rotten and filthy,
dirty - but it was like a day out for us. You
could go down to the river, there was a
beach down there – it was a muddy
beach…but that was our little bit of freedom.
Act 12: Canary Wharf 00:34:17,16 Narrator
The Thames is the life blood of London.
The city grows up because of the river
otherwise there would be no city. It was big
enough to allow you to trade first with
Europe and then with the world. It was a
busy working river. It didn't die out until the
1960's when the Docks were closing off
because they were being replace by
containers. At that point everything went
stagnant. Nothing changed until the 1980's
15
The Olympic Side of London
and the Thatcherite era when they
developed the Docklands. Instead of their
being docks it turned into a financial centre
that could have been anywhere.
Act 13: Plane flying into land – View of
London from the East
Character 7: Mark Hunter appears
00:35:45 Sub-titles:
Mark Hunter
Olympic champion
Image of rowers next to City Airport
00:35:36 Character 7: Mark Hunter
I grew up in East Ham. And I started rowing
when I was about 14 and at this point we
had moved further out from East Ham to
Romford. I used to commute into Island
Gardens. I used to get on the bus from
school to the station at Romford and get the
train from Romford to Stratford and get on
the Docklands Light Railway from Stratford
to Island Gardens. It was a sport that I fell
in love with and I've carried it on from there
and got the heights of competing at the
Olympics.
When I was a youngster and use to train on
the River Thames. In the winter doing our
long endurance training - in the summer we
used to go to the Royal Docks and we used
to do all our speed work on, well it was
meant to be flat water but it was quite rough
and windy because it was an open stretch -
right next to London City Airport...
Obviously you’ve got all of the aviation fuel
fumes coming across - so it's not the most
pleasant area. But back when I started
there was no buildings around - it was
derelict - it was all the old warehouses of
the docks had been torn down. So you’d
have massive concrete chunks everywhere
and steal girders that had been ripped up.
Wading in the mud with trees and Asda is a
big shopping centre over there so there
were Asda trolleys in the river and
occasionally dead bodies floating past. But
that's what I grew up with so it was nothing
strange to me being in that environment.
You used to store your boat on these kind
of areas and tie it down as well as you could
with bits of rope down different parts of
16
The Olympic Side of London
Act 13: Scene 2: quaint river boat on the
river
00:37;23 Subtitle:
Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
Rowing on the river
wood to hold it down and it was just open.
You used to get changed out in the open - it
was nothing glamorous - their was no
where to have a shower afterwards - you
just kind of put your stuff on and make your
way home.
00:37:30 Character 7: Mark Hunter
I progressed as a youngster to about 18 or
19 at Poplar. But you kind of reach as high
as you possibly can in a certain
environment, and I needed to progress from
there and I was lucky enough to have
competed at two junior world championships
and won at Henley. Back in that era you
had to be invited to Leander and I got my
kind of pink letter to come and train at
Leander and see how you get on. When I
was a junior it was very noticeable because
you had your public school boys from Eaton
and Radley and Harrow and those sort of
schools and obviously I was the Cockney -
East End boy - kind of a wide boy wearing a
gold chain - so you know I sort of really set
myself up wearing a gold chain back then
but, it was something that you did and
everybody did so that was quite fun.
00:38:28 Character 7: Mark Hunter
When I started as a kid as a rower it
coincided with the 1992 Barcelona
Olympics being on television and watching
the Searle brothers – Gary Herbert and the
Cox pair race to the line snatch victory from
the Italians and their emotion and
excitement on the medal podium - watching
that flag being raised and hearing that
17
The Olympic Side of London
Rower on a dock with oars in hand
Shows the Olympic gold medal
Act 13: Scene 3, water to night view of
Canary Wharf
national anthem just blew me away and
captured me like nothing else. And all I ever
dream of was about having that opportunity
and that chance. So you know I set about
this journey this unique journey to want to
be an Olympian and a gold medallist. When
I had the opportunity and I went to Beijing
we were favourites there was a lot of
pressure and expectation. Just crossing
that line it was the first time that I had ever
felt a sense of being complete a sense of
calm. And everything seemed to happen in
slow motion. And then the realization that
all of those years of heart ache and
devastation of not winning medals to win the
biggest thing that an athlete could ever
dream about winning you know I done that.
00:39:33 Character 7: Mark Hunter
It took a lot of hard work and dedication,
perseverance and pretty much name every
attribute it goes into winning one of these…I
just remember the impact it had on me
when I first saw one when I was a kid. So, I
enjoy going to schools and clubs and
colleges and sharing my experience of how
I got to get my own. Hopefully trying to
inspire someone. Not to just want to
participate in rowing – in any sport - if
they’re good at it you know live the dream
pretty much and give it a go.
00:40:12 Character 7: Mark Hunter
East London is different now to when I was
a kid. It’s a bit more run down - there
probably wasn’t as many opportunities to
what there is now. Obviously back in the
day when I was a kid - Canary Wharf that
was just taking shape and the first building
was going up and everybody said that that
was going to be a white elephant. And now
look at it its one of the financial places in
London. Now it’s a very luscious area…but
back then it was really grottyprobably a bit
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The Olympic Side of London
run down and you kind of had to look after
all your stuff. It was seen as the outside
place of London. Where now I would say
it's becoming more part of London.
00:40:52,22 Character 7: Mark Hunter
I think having the Olympics come to East
London has really opened up every bodies
eye to what an amazing area it is and what
it has to offer. And the opportunities that are
there now you - know with this show piece
of the world coming to East East -
everybody millions and millions of people
will be watching. I think it’s a real good
opportunity to show what the area has to
offer and put it on the map. People laugh
and joke about EastEnders but this is their
home Olympics so for them to be part of it
and enjoy as much of it as they can. I think
this is a massive opportunity. And I think
they talk about legacy - my legacy is about
peoples memories and images that they’re
gonna carrying with them for the rest of their
lives. People that they’re going to see
competing in front of them - seeing Usein
Bolts, Michael Felts - those amazing
athletes that people are dying to see and to
be close to. To have them in their own town
competing, I think is a very special
opportunity.
Act 14: Scene 1, the market, a young girl
looks at fabric.
00:42:46 Character 8: Peyvand Sadeghian
appears
00:42:46 Sub-Title:
Peyvand Sadeghian
00:42:15 Character 8: Peyvand
Sadeghian
I grew up in Canning Town. I am half
Persian half Chinese so its part of that weird
London mix I suppose. My mum and dad
both came to study...they both went to the
University of East London and that's how
they met.
00:42:43 Character 8: Peyvand
Sadeghian
I think with all the Olympics at the moment...
...there's a lot built up around it in terms of
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The Olympic Side of London
young artist
A poster of the Westfield centre
View of the Olympic site still being built
hope and getting hopes up and there's all
this pushing for young people getting
involved. And I think that's good but only if
its a genuine thing that’s going to happen
and I am slightly sceptical as to how much
hope there's been put on this and how much
it will really give for young people in the East
End. I know that they're saying that they're
employing local people and actually that's
not entirely true. A lot of the people they've
employed that do live in the East End have
moved specifically to the East End to work
for the Olympics. So I am not really sure
what that's achieved - because there is still
massive unemployment. There's the
Westfield that's being built which again will
provide lots of jobs but only certain kind of
jobs...not everyone is made to work in retail
and services.
00:43:47 Character 8: Peyvand
Sadeghian
I think the legacy of the Olympics is going to
leave East London with a massive shopping
centre, which I don't know...'Wow! Yippee'
(sarcastically) I'm not too enthusiastic about
that. And I think the flats and stuff that they
say they're going to leave for local people...I
am slightly concerned that that will turn into
a massive ghetto, actually. So, I am
massively sceptical about what the
Olympics will leave. Especially when you
look at the track record of other countries as
well. I hope I’m proved wrong.
00:44:30 Character 8: Peyvand
Sadeghian
I imagine the East End in the future to be
quite the same in some ways I think it will
always be transient with different groups of
people coming in and out. Total mishmash
of all different things. Kind of always on the
verge of collapse, but holding itself together
somehow – I don't know how. I can't ever
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The Olympic Side of London
imagine it being a clean and polished place.
I think it will always be rough around the
edges, which I like.
Act 15 train passes - a newspaper in the
water
00:45:06,21 Sub-title (Newspaper in the
water)
'lessons from the future'
Character 1, Iain Sinclair walking
00:45:24 – Character 1: Iain Sinclair
On Wick Lane in the Victorian period there
was a pub called the White Lion that staged
everything that's now coming to the
Olympics just as a single event – put up by
an impresario who decided to put a gravel
track at the back of his public house where
ironically is now pretty much the Olympic
site. And he created a grand stand out of
the new railway embankments that have just
appeared and it was so successful that
10,000 people turned up from all over the
country to witness races between Dear
Foot, a native American who had been
brought over to take on our local
champions. Some of the races were run
later in Victoria Park. So in a sense the
whole flim flam (trans 'flim flam' = hysteria)
of the Olympic Games which has been
presented to us with an enormous budget
and enormous publicity was inacted in the
Victorian period without any fuss at all. By a
totally private initiative.
00:46:47 – Character 1: Iain Sinclair
The kind of landscape of the park exists on
the notion. There's a selling point at the
beginning of it was that after the games
were over the Athletes Villages – the tower
blocks that have been created could then be
sold off expensively for Private Housing
combined with a certain amount of social
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The Olympic Side of London
Dog sleeping
Character 1: Iain Sinclair walking past the
Olympic site next to the canal
housing. But this is in fact going to be
extremely difficult to finis because it's been
discovered that the old industrial lands are
very heavily polluted. There's a level of
radio activity from two land fill sites that
were there from a luminous watch tower
factory that was burying drums of thorium
and above everything else, a small nuclear
reactor.
00:47:37 – Character 1: Iain Sinclair
In all of the dirty and dangerous industries of
London were on this land. Because it was
nomans land – and now having churned up
the landscape so much even though the soil
has been remediated and there is a little
plastic coating on it – you cannot use these
blocks for public housing because nobody is
going to want to take that chance. So the
financial underpinning of the whole thing is a
nonsense, it doesn't exist and it's not going
to work.
00:48:19 – Character 1: Iain Sinclair
The closer you get – you move in to the
main stadium, which is now going to be rebranded
as the Westfield stadium. You will
see the detritus of war. Concrete machine
gun nest and a series of huge bunkers and
obstacles that were put down defend again
war time invaded up the river lee – are now
referenced as part of the general art works
around the Olympic site. You see a
scattering of blocks that look as if it has
come from the moment where the Berlin
wall was broken down and detritus scattered
about. And we're into that post war – pre
war – eternal war time invasion landscape
now. We're surrounded by nothing but
endless fences. So it's a landscape of
suspended permissions and it's a pretty
bizarre experience to walk through it.
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The Olympic Side of London
Walking closer to the Olympic stadium
Close up of Sinclair – camera unsteady
Musical Interlude
00:49:28 – Character 1: Iain Sinclair
Looking at the these stadia emerging I’m
very much reminded of a trip I made to
Athens, while I was researching my book
Ghost Milk. And in Athens we can shoot
into the future and see how they very
quickly became abandoned. There was no
way that the Greek economy could sustain
these incredible stadiums that had been
built for this one event. And they were full of
grass – the trees that had been planted
were dead. The Athletes Village that was
going to be made over into housing was not.
All the windows smashed covered with
graffiti. Immigrants were camping out
amongst the ruins it was a landscape of
ruins and the day that I was actually about
to leave Athens people were taking to the
street and rioting because of the whole
house of cards financially was collapsing.
And the pipe dream that this thing had
mortgaged them to was shown to be an
extreme folly. And I think that's the most
dramatic demonstration of what sits in front
of us here if we are not very careful.
00:50:35 – Character 1: Iain Sinclair
And the only real legacy is a huge Westfield.
Australian shopping mall through which you
gain access to the stadium as you come out
of Stratford. So in a sense the stadium is a
minor excrescence on the edge of Westfield,
rather than the other way around.
Act 16: Ruins being demolished 00:51:44 – Narrator
The Olympic development is accidental
archaeology. A séance with ruins. The
latest cancellations bring up the scattered
history of East London. What has
disappeared comes back to haunt us. The
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The Olympic Side of London
00:52:16 Sub-title
Welcome to the next generation
memory mud of centuries is unintentionally
dug up. Re-imagined by visionary
developers and now invested by the grand
project – The greatest show in the world.
Build a stadium and the world will come...
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