I just caught up with (most of) Rio’s olympic closing ceremony. To be honest, I wasn’t really taken by it, and was wondering what, if anything, I was going to write on here about it. But then came Tokyo’s segment, and I broke into a grin.

While I’m not sure what Super Mario has to do with either Tokyo or Rio – I thought the character was Italian – using him as a device to introduce the Japanese Prime Minister could only have been a nod to Happy and Glorious. Both use a fictional figure to introduce a head of state. I think the Japanese must have taken their cue from London: in both we experience the same feeling of shock at seeing an actual politician appear on stage. Yet if anything I think what the japanese did was even more bizarre than having the queen parachute out of a helicopter with James Bond. At least 007 is supposed to be ‘on her majesty’s secret service’; what connects Mario to Japan? Why use that particular mode of transport. Thus it struck me as strange, yet still rather cool. I finally have my wish for more meetings of fictional characters and real people. It also makes me wonder what they’ll do for their olympic ceremonies in 2020.