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Stephen Hawking, Britain’s greatest living scientist, was present at the Paralympic ceremony in person, aboard his space age chair. Booming out of the Olympic Stadium loudspeakers came the oddly ethereal, American-accented tones of the 70-year-old theoretical physicist. “Ever since the dawn of civilisation, people have craved an understanding of the underlying order of the world,” the Telegraph quoted him as saying. “Why it is as it is and why it exists at all,” he said. Thus, with a choreographed Big Bang almost loud enough to disturb the peace on the surface of the Moon, kicked off the brightest and busiest lecture he can ever have conducted. On Tuesday night, at the Olympic Stadium, 62,000 paying customers were treated to three hours of noisy, colourful, bolshie brouhaha and umbrellas - umbrellas used as boats, umbrellas as flying machines, an umbrella forming the central stage. As the sky cleared after a drizzly afternoon, the sight of dancers floating beneath giant brollies, cavorting to the opening number raised a hearty grin. The number was, naturally enough, Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’. At times chaotic, a little jumbled in its rush to communicate its ideas, maybe and occasionally resembling a giant prog rock gig, the London Paralympic Opening Ceremony could not be accused of being po-faced. Joe Townsend, a former Royal Marine Commando who lost both his legs in action in Afghanistan, brought the Paralympic torch into the stadium down a zip wire that stretched from the top of the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower. For Bradley Hemmings and Jenny Sealey, the artistic directors of this performance, things were far less specific in their location as compared to Danny boyle’s London 2012 opening ceremony. This did not have the same aim of telling us about the country that was to host the event. Their reach was wider, the aim to triumph in the human spirit, celebrate the possibilities that lie within us all. This is what the ceremony was trying to do - point out that the limits of endeavour are merely territory as yet unexplored. To do so we were presented with a deluge of music, dance and words. The show began with Hawking and next on came the central character of the show - Nicola Miles-Wadden arrived in her wheelchair atop a giant apple to play Miranda, the heroine of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’. For the third time in this series of grand ceremonials this summer, Shakespeare’s final play was to be central. Indeed, after Caliban’s speech about an isle full of glorious noise had featured in the Olympic opening and closing extravaganzas, there was something beautifully apt about Miranda’s words in this context. Immediately after the Queen had been serenaded into her position by a stirring rendition of Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the national anthem, the competitors began to parade into the stadium, far earlier in the proceedings than their Olympian counterparts. Athletes from 164 countries filed in to a score by three bouncy, dancey London DJs and accompanied by standard bearers carrying country names on — naturally enough — umbrellas. With big gaps between the delegations, it took a while, the long parade — a long, long while. Fifty minutes longer than scheduled it lasted, before the ParalympicGB team arrived at the rear to a huge ovation, marching to David Bowie’s Heroes, some sporting Union wheel covers on their chairs.

Stephen Hawking opens Paralympics 2012 with a `Big Bang`