Spice Girls tipped for Olympic closing ceremony

The Spice Girls are rumoured to be among a diverse wealth of acts lined up for Sunday's Olympic Games closing ceremony, entitled "A Symphony of British Music". George Michael, Muse and Ed Sheeran have broken the ring of silence surrounding the event and confirmed they are among the acts taking part in the spectacle that brings the curtain down on the London 2012 Games. Spice Girls singer Victoria Beckham last week tweeted a picture of a microphone, saying "Look what I found!". The show at the 80,000-seater Olympic Stadium features more than 4,100 performers, including 3,500 adult volunteers and 380 schoolchildren. The event will be "the best after-show party there's ever been," its artistic director Kim Gavin pledged Saturday.  The ceremony's pre-show starts at 1900 GMT, with the main ceremony at 2000 GMT, which is scheduled to last up to three hours. Gavin, who has worked extensively choreographing Take That tours, said the show would be a "mashed-up symphony" of British music. The ceremony will start with a 20-minute "day in the life of London" segment, Gavin said, a "cacophony" of music spanning the 20th century from English composer Edward Elgar to "Waterloo Sunset" by The Kinks. Their frontman Ray Davies has been tipped to perform the song in person. "It is an extraordinary show. I think it is everything we wanted," said Stephen Daldry, the ceremony's creative director and executive producer. "The brief was to celebrate the athletes, to celebrate the volunteers, to celebrate London, the country and... the rest of the world that has come together for this extraordinary Games." Daldry, a British film director and producer best known for "Billy Elliot", also praised the show's designer Es Devlin, who has previously created sets for Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Take That. The spectacle's musical director is David Arnold, who has written pieces for James Bond films. However, despite her surprise cameo appearance in the opening ceremony, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will not be attending -- and neither will her husband Prince Philip. They are at the monarch's private summer residence in Scotland. "The Queen and Prince Philip are definitely staying at Balmoral," a spokesman at Buckingham Palace told AFP.