At last. . .something compelling about Britain's infamous Millennium Dome! This week's (failed) diamond robbery with its associations to scenes in a recent James Bond film finally gave the public some excitement about the Dome.
Cynics might say Tuesday's events were all a publicity stunt to boost the miserable attendance figures in the last two months of the Dome's short and unhappy life. It might be a landmark structure, an engineering marvel. Viewed from the much more impressive London Eye ferris wheel it is an intriguing additon to the east London skyline. But to paraphrase Dr Johnson: the Millennium Dome at Greenwich is worth going to see, but not worth seeing.
The Dome has had few Irish visitors, despite the last-minute dash by engaging chief executive, Pierre-Yves Gerbeau, to persuade, nay, beg, people here to make the trip across the water to, er, marvel at it. Arrow Tours of Drogheda reports a low to medium level of interest in the year of the Dome. "It wouldn't be tens and it wouldn't be thousands," says Brian Greene of Arrow Tours, a little coyly. He points out that the strength of sterling has been fatal to the attraction of anything in London for the Irish over the past year. (Arrow has a bargain weekend on offer until the end of December if you do want to go and see the wretched thing.) Of course now that the Money Zone, home of the De Beers diamond display targeted by the thieves, has such notoriety it might draw those influenced by headlines such as the Sun's rationale for the rather elderly coterie of suspects: "We're Only Here for De Beer".
There is however a possibility that the famous semi-oval shape will be part Irishowned for the rest of its life. Treasury Holdings, the dynamic entity of Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett, is reported to be a key player in a proposal to take it over with the intention of transforming it into a business park after the withdrawal of the Japanese conglomerate Nomura.
As the Great Greenwich Mistake enters the twilight of its short and controversial life, the question looms: what will fill the void of revulsion and controversy that has kept the media and politicians going for the past five years? And why wasn't it a shining success, like the Eye, opposite the Houses of Parliament?
The Dome's fascination lies not in its contents but in the saga of political ambition, official ineptitude and mediocrity of such staggering quality that it became oxymoronic for extreme mediocrity. It could be a metaphor for the emptiness many fear lies at the core of contemporary life.
It would be facile to bemoan the fate of all those millions of pounds which could have been Doing Good. But, if not housing the homeless and feeding the hungry, the billion or so pounds could have been doing something to uplift people's souls and bring beauty and enjoyment to the world. Instead it was devoted to a tawdry, commercial, second-rate thing.
On the punters' level, the real problem with the Dome has been that it is not very good. Simple as that. Why hasn't it been a success? Why were visitor levels about one quarter of those optimistically anticipated? Because it is second-class, at best. And these days second-class just won't do.
The journey to the Dome through a London pulsating with ideas and creativity is enjoyable (provided the transport is not too crowded). The new Underground station at Greenwich, and those on the Jubilee Line which go to it, are clean, slick and spacious.
The first dawning sense that all might not be as good as the Tube station comes with the long wait in the queues to enter the Dome precincts.
These individually are not very long, but there are nearly 20 of them, and on our visit they moved at the speed of porridge flowing uphill. When our family commented on this, the couple in front joked that it was because people had to raise mortgages when they got to the front and heard the entry price. We all laughed at that, but the smiles froze when we arrived at the perspex ticket box and its occupant asked for £56.50 sterling (over IR£60) for two adults and two children. And this was apparently after a price cut, as Guardian columnist Matthew Engel reported in July that his family ticket had cost £74. Maybe that was the secret behind the De Beers would-be robbers - they needed the cash to pay in.
The expensive exchanges at the ticket box took far too long as the salesperson went through a detailed list of explanations and qualifications about what we could and couldn't do inside. This is the Millennium Dome, this is supposed to be about advances in technology: couldn't they put all this boring information up on a screen?
Mildly disconcerted, we entered the precinct. You don't enter the Dome directly. Carousels and old-fashioned fairground stalls are the first "attractions" to greet the visitor. There is a "plummet ride", in which strapped-in victims sink rapidly to ground level, for £2. There are stalls at which you throw balls to win bears, and that sort of thing. Tawdry, and difficult for families with young kids to avoid successfully.
Next, there is a building housing various exhibitors, such as the Sky satellite television network. The Sky room was neither very inspired nor inspiring, with a few lame "interactive" screens. But this, alas, set the tone for the contents of the main event space.
The Dome itself is big. That is true. There is a gigantic centre area for performances. A "Millennium Show" featuring acrobats on wires, stilts and so on, plays several times a day. This is impressive, if just for the height at which they cavort. Apart from that, everything else is distinctly underwhelming.
Take the much-vaunted "Body Zone", famous for the length of its queue. This is the giant human form with interiors devoted to physical explanations. Alas, it was all very dated and lacking in zap. The queue was long, but did move quickly - and seemed quicker because some rather accomplished jugglers, unicyclists and comedians wove in and out of it.
Once inside, there are a number of chambers, but it seemed more like a time machine than a Body Zone, taking one back to similar displays in the 1960s. The "heart room" for example, shows a big pulsating heart (of synthetic materials, naturally). And that's about it. The reproduction room contained little else but a screen with a film of sperm wriggling around. Took me back to fifth-form biology classes, it did (a little later than the 1960s, but not terribly). The brain room was slightly better, with a couple of jiggling brains wearing Tommy Cooper fezstyle hats and a soundtrack playing music hall jokes (hard enough for us to understand; I don't know how the Japanese tourists managed).
As for the rest of the exhibits, they were at this level or marginally better/worse. Tepid appreciation was the most they could elicit. And yet - why? During the same trip to London, I took my children to the Science Museum in Kensington, where we attended a lecture on recognition of human faces and voices which was totally fascinating and engaging, although using simple props. We went on the big wheel, the London Eye, awesome in both conception and execution. The Museum of the Moving Image was closed for renovation, but we have had great fun there on previous visits. The point is that the ability to produce first-class material, entertaining and informative, exists in Britain. The great pity of the Dome is that this was never used. At the end of 1999, Tony Blair described the Dome as "a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, excellence over mediocrity". He had the key words right - cynicism, blandness, mediocrity.
Perhaps he and his party have been so defensive about the doom Dome because it is contemporaneous with their government and its many parallel shortcomings reflect what people feel about "New Labour": flashy, talked-up, but nothing real, new or satisfying in it.
The Dome, as is often overlooked, is actually the child of the Tories. The plan was introduced by Michael Heseltine during the Major government. No doubt he is delighted that he couldn't be blamed. For one intriguing period, the Dome was the responsibility of Peter Mandelson. Conspiracy theorists could well have seen this as a poisoned chalice, but Mandelson managed to say positive things about the emerging beastie before acceding to the Northern Ireland portfolio. Come to think of it, quite good training.
When it closes on December 31st, the Dome will be lucky to have had five million paying visitors. Its target was 12 million. People didn't stay away in droves simply because of the bad press. Much of that press was about political infighting and financial problems which many people would not have taken in to their considerations of whether or not to see the attraction. Was it Mae West who said "I don't care what they're saying about me as long as they're saying something"?
Very little of the reported comment was about the contents of the Dome, and their rather poor quality: like a trade show in the 1970s. Quality counts now. This is the Internet generation. Watching the film Ghostbusters again recently, I was struck by how dated the effects looked. We've all become very sophisticated and choosy, and the clever people who have mastered new technologies have made us so. The problem with the Dome is that no apparent effort was ever made to utilise this talent.
These operators offer bargain packages for the Dome: Arrow Tours, 0419831177; Stena, 01-2047733; Irish Ferries, 01-6383333