Life imitates mockumentary

The official London 2012 Olympic countdown clock is attended to by technicians hours after it was started in Trafalgar Square in London. Photo / AP

In a supremely embarrassing case of life imitating art, the official London 2012 Olympics countdown clock broke down yesterday, hours after a TV mockumentary about the build-up to the Games depicted a similar debacle.

The digital clock in Trafalgar Square was started amid a whirl of flashing lights and fireworks on Tuesday by the chairman of the Games' organising committee, Sebastian Coe, to mark 500 days until the Games begin.

The BBC was airing Twenty Twelve, a satire imagining the bureaucratic balls-ups behind closed doors at the Olympics. In the first episode, the team unveiled a giant alarm clock outside the Tate Modern, but the timepiece began its countdown on the wrong date.

Despite the more sophisticated digital design of the real clock, which was produced by Omega, it ground to a halt after less than 18 hours.

Omega engineers fixed the clock and adjusted it to compensate for the mishap.

Speaking in character as Ian Fletcher, fictional head of the Olympic Deliverance Commission in Twenty Twelve, Hugh Bonneville offered a perfect politician's response to the crisis: "It hasn't stopped. It's a powerful and at the same time playful comment on the way in which time itself seems to stand still when you're talking about something as exciting as the Olympics. So basically, it's all good."

- INDEPENDENT