Huw Edwards warned us to expect “a pretty special eight minutes”, and he wasn't wrong. London's portion of yesterday's closing ceremony spun the head. Where else would you see a bus turn into a hedge and then sprout Leona Lewis, except in some unusually feverish and possibly cheese-driven dream?

And we haven't even mentioned that Jimmy Page was there with David Beckham. Sue Barker had wryly noted that it must have been a while since Becks went anywhere by bus. Then again, this wasn't your typical number 39. It had a lift in it, for one thing. And it turned into a hedge - a pretty crowded one, when you factored in Lewis, Page, a cellist, various dancers with brollies and a Blue Peter competition winner. Move right down inside the hedge, please.

It didn't make the scene any less disorienting when the hedge started playing Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love. “I want to give you every inch of my love,” as a priapic and panting Robert Plant sings on the original. And as Lewis didn't sing yesterday.

But “cripes” and “yaroo” and, indeed, “Where's that postal order, Bunter?” For there was Boris Johnson - or, as the French announcer introduced him, “Boreese Yonsong” - striding on stage to collect and, furthermore, wave the Olympic flag on London's behalf. Reflecting the gravity of the occasion, the Mayor of London's tie was properly done up, his hair was almost in place and he didn't have the first clue what to do with his hands, which were continually flirting with the inside of his jacket pockets but then thinking better of it.

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Yet the flag was accepted and waved without diplomatic incident, and into the keeping of London passed the Games of the 30th Olympiad, or, as we may come to think of them, the first Borisiad, assuming he is still around in four years' time. On The Mall, choreographed crowds cheered and shook flags on cue. (You don't have to go to Beijing to see a public gathering manipulated for television.) Now, technically this marked “the official handover”, but such was Beijing's expensive flawlessness that some preferred to think of it as what rugby people call “a hospital pass”. Yet, early on yesterday, it looked encouragingly as though Beijing had finally run out of creative steam. How else to explain the fact that behind Barker on the floor of the Bird's Nest stadium was a military marching band and something that looked like a giant edam?

What a lift for the London organisers. Follow that? Easy. We'll see your edam and raise you a cheddar. Alas, this was merely the pre-ceremony entertainment and within minutes we were cowering again under a blizzard of heavy artillery-style fireworks and drummers drilled to within an inch of their lives.

It was time to be positive. Eddie Butler, the BBC's voice of archery, in a moving recap of these Games, raised the possibility that London might profit from being “maybe just a touch less ordered” than Beijing. And Sir Steve Redgrave thought the fastidious but possibly sterilising attention to detail seen at the 2008 Games might be “a chink in the armour that London can exploit”. (We almost got through 17 days in China without anyone using that metaphor, but I guess it was too much to hope for.) “London will be more fun, more human,” Edwards said. “That's one area where we have an asymmetric advantage,” Carrie Gracie agreed, praising London for its “spontaneity, its sense of carnival, rolling out on to the streets”. Which was possibly a slightly fancy way to talk about people standing around in the fountains in Trafalgar Square.

The problem with these arguments is that they sound like excuses made early. “London 2012 might be a mess - but it'll be a heartfelt mess.” But that's defeatism, isn't it? Where is the pride that history tells us a host Olympic city needs above all?

Back in Beijing, the scenes around the specially erected Memory Tower (30 tonnes of steel, a year in the preparation) had given way to some Chinese rock music. Outdo that? No problem. We've got Jimmy. And Leona. In a hedge. Bring it on.