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21 years ago this week, I visited the Millennium Dome with my kids – an exhibition that was supposed to be a sort of 21st Century version of the Festival of Britain, albeit with corporate sponsorship (including that famous British success story, McDonald’s). Here’s a thread.
It could be best described as Disney’s Epcot, if it had been conceived with no overriding vision or flair; an awkward midpoint twixt education, celebration, and a need to be fun. A chaotic assemblage of will-that-do?, back-of-a-fag-packet, attractions, it failed spectacularly.
The huge tent, with its scattered exhibits, gave the air of a business trade show; each individual ‘zone’ was impressive, but nothing gelled. Plus, due to the cavernous, echoey, venue, it was freezing. It would be hard to conceive of a more atmosphere-lacking environment.
The centrepiece – and the only element that I can say I actually enjoyed – was a sort of sub-Cirque du Soleil show, with music from Peter Gabriel. What it had to do with the loose, wafty, themes of the Experience is anyone’s guess, but – hey – acrobats!
I recall there being a history of Christianity, some sort of BT-sponsored area where you could play with telephones and “experience the magic of E.T.”, for some reason, and a large sculpture of a semi-naked boy, squatting to do a poo. Appropriately.
Also: a big, empty, inflatable, filled with calming lights and ambient music. Like a bouncy castle for hippies. It may actually have been calming were it not for the sub-zero January temperatures. Laying down in there is how I imagine it works at Dignitas.
One of my favourite attractions was an oversized school corridor that allowed adults to re-experience school from the perspective of a child. While children could, y’know, experience it from the perspective of… I dunno... like... a foetus?
Bafflingly, there was an exhibit of “British interior scenes”, allowing you, the British public, to re-experience what it was like to live in a British home - just like the one you had, presumably, just come from. One for the chronically homesick, perhaps.
And don't forget the Blackadder short film, presented by Sky! Because it seems we cannot have an important cultural moment in Britain, without handing at least some of it over to the millionaires Mr Bean and Richard Curtis.
One of the most eyecatching attractions, at least on the outside, was the Body Zone; a giant, stylised, replica of a human figure, which visitors could explore the innards of.
Unfortunately, to get inside the Body Zone, you had to ascend an escalator towards a giant, beating, human heart. I remember carrying my 3 year-old in my arms, as she screamed hysterically, fighting to get away as we rose inexorably towards the pulsing, quivering, thrumming, sac.
She was so scarred that, even now at 24, she claims to have nightmares about it.
However, the most vivid memory I have is of a man dressed as a firefighter, driving around the concourse in a miniature fire engine, while singing 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes'. For my older children, this bewildering addition was the highlight of the entire experience.
Well, that and going home. And that's it. That was the Millennium Experience.
