* Seven youngsters light Olympic flame
* Paul McCartney plays out ceremony with "Hey Jude"
* Queen Elizabeth and 007 actor in comedy cameos
* Athletes march on, Usain Bolt struts for the cameras
* Giant bell rings out to start madcap opening ceremony
(Releads with end of ceremony)
LONDON, July 27 (Reuters) - Seven teenagers lit the Olympic
cauldron on Friday, at an opening ceremony starring the queen
and seen by millions around the world, in a touching finale to a
high-octane, musical celebration of British history and culture.
True to the London Games' motto of 'Inspire a Generation',
organisers put unknown youngsters in the global limelight rather
than established sporting greats in the closing act of a madcap
four hours of comedy, spectacle, noise and emotion.
"I declare open the Games of London celebrating the 30th
Olympiad of the modern era," said Queen Elizabeth, the
86-year-old monarch, followed by a fanfare and explosion of
fireworks.
The ceremony on a cool, cloudy but dry London night kicks
off 16 days of sporting thrills and spills up and down the
country, as more than 16,000 athletes from 204 countries vie for
the Holy Grail of sport - Olympic gold.
Celebrating her 60th year on the throne this year, the
monarch played a starring role in a ceremony which film director
Danny Boyle turned into an unabashed celebration of the host
nation stamped with an unmistakeably cinematic style.
Early on in the show, which ran well over time, Her Majesty
appeared in a short, tongue-in-cheek film also starring Daniel
Craig in his role as James Bond.
Wearing his trademark tuxedo, 007 enters Buckingham Palace
and the queen, with two corgis at her feet, turns from a writing
desk and says simply: "Good evening, Mr Bond".
The moment drew a huge cheer from the crowd, not used to
seeing Her Majesty play such an informal part in proceedings,
and coincided with a resurgence in the royal family's popularity
following the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
Doubles of Bond and the queen then parachuted from a
helicopter above the stadium, built on the Olympic Park in a
once derelict area of London's East End, before schoolchildren
sang the national anthem and the Union flag was raised.
LOST IN TRANSLATION?
The quintessentially British flavour to the ceremony,
accompanied by a stunning soundtrack of hits from Elgar to U2,
caused plenty of confusion among international journalists
struggling to describe it to readers back home.
"It couldn't get any more British if it came drenched in
tea," quipped the Hollywood Reporter movie magazine.
But others from abroad warmed to Boyle's vision.
"It really played to what Britain does best," said Sarah
Clarke, a visitor from South Africa, as she left the stadium
after the show. "It was a British ceremony but absolutely we
felt included."
The ceremony, inspired by Shakespeare's "The Tempest", began
with Britain's first Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins
ringing a giant 23-tonne Olympic bell.
Played out before world leaders, European royalty and
dignitaries including U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, the show
switched to the playful recreation of an English rural idyll
with grassy meadows, fences, a water mill and maypoles.
A cast including shepherdesses, sheep, geese, dogs and a
village cricket team filled the stage during the one-hour
prologue to the show that included a dramatic, low-level
fly-past by the jets of the Royal Air Force's Red Arrows stunt
team.
After "England's green and pleasant land" came the "dark
Satanic mills" of William Blake's famous poem.
Titled "Pandemonium", the next phase saw the grass uprooted
and fences torn down to be replaced by a blackened landscape of
looms and foundries that conjured the Industrial Revolution.
To the deafening beat of hundreds of drummers, giant
chimneys rose from the ground and began to belch smoke as a
small army of volunteers, dressed as 19th century factory
workers, forged one of the five Olympic rings.
The giant orb was raised to the sky to join the four others,
letting off a fountain of sparks and drawing gasps from many in
the audience.
All around, especially designed "pixel" light boxes
installed next to every seat accompanied each scene and created
giant images of waves, flags and words.
In the second of three "acts", Boyle paid homage to the
National Health Service, an emotive subject in Britain where
people hold the right to free health care close to their hearts.
Hundreds of dancing and roller-skating nurses and doctors
pushed beds on to the now empty stage and when the beds were
illuminated, they spelled "GOSH" for the cherished Great Ormond
Street children's hospital in London.
"The atmosphere was electric coming out into the stadium -
like we could take over the world with our beds!", said Rachel
Dobbin, a speech and language therapist from London who
performed as a nurse in the ceremony.
SPOOKY VILLAINS
Giant representations of famous villains from English
literature, including JM Barrie's Captain Hook, JK Rowling's
Voldemort and Ian Fleming's Childcatcher, rose from their beds.
They were quickly vanquished by dozens of Mary Poppins
characters descending from cables criss-crossing the stadium
roof, carrying brightly illuminated umbrellas.
Comedian Rowan Atkinson, adopting the globally recognised
character of mischievous Mr Bean, brought the house down as he
joined the London Symphony Orchestra playing a single note
throughout the score of the Olympic film "Chariots of Fire".
The final act, starring hundreds of young nightclubbing
dancers, was a breathless journey through popular British
culture over the last five decades featuring music from everyone
from the Sex Pistols to Queen and the Jam to the Who.
Sitting at a computer outside a small house on stage was Tim
Berners-Lee, the Londoner who invented the worldwide web and
enabled the explosion of social networking that is playing a
major part at the London Games.
Mid-ceremony he tweeted to his almost 83,000 followers "This
is for everyone" which also projected across the spectators.
Next came the parade of athletes, with the Greek team
keeping up Olympic tradition and leading out thousands of
competitors dressed in colourful national costumes.
They marched around the stadium in double-quick time, urged
on by the up-tempo beats of the Bee Gees band and others. The
world's fastest man Usain Bolt strode confidently with the
Jamaican flag while playing up to cameras and cheering fans.
Libya and Egypt represented a new chapter in their histories
after the tumultuous events of the Arab Spring while the first
ever female Olympic athletes from Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar
made appearances.
Britain, dressed in white and gold and hoping to repeat its
medals success of Beijing in 2008, entered last to thunderous
roars and the thumping strains of David Bowie's lyrics "We Can
Be Heroes" as ticker tape floated down from the roof.
Boxing's most famous fighter Muhammad Ali briefly appeared
to hold the Olympic flag, looking frail, wearing dark glasses
and leaning on his wife.
The Olympic torch, ending an 8,000-mile odyssey across the
country, was driven in a speedboat up the River Thames by former
England soccer captain David Beckham and handed to Britain's
most successful Olympian Steve Redgrave.
He then passed it on to seven youngsters - Callum Airlie,
Jordan Duckitt, Desiree Henry, Katie Kirk, Cameron MacRitchie,
Aidan Reynolds and Adelle Tracey - who performed a lap of honour
before approaching the centre of the stage.
Surrounded by thousands of athletes, they lit some of the
200-plus copper petals which rose on stalks to form a single
burning "flower".
Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney rounded off a night when music
played non-stop, and at concerts across the capital, with a
nostalgic sing-along of his old band's hit "Hey Jude".
(Additional reporting by Kate Holton, Will James, editing by
Peter Millership and Tony Jimenez)