Huw’s the killjoy as Glasgow throws a ceilidh for the Commonwealth

Friendly, fun, a wee bit daft and very moving. Welcome to Glasgow 2014!

Anna Meares has achieved a lot in her cycling career but at the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony she managed something no one in Scotland ever thought they would live to see.

Never before has anyone walked into Celtic Park waving a Union Jack and been cheered to the rafters by the capacity crowd.

Australia were the first of the many Commonwealth nations to enter the stadium with a Union Jack in the canton (that’s the posh name for the upper left corner, apparently), and the joyful reaction to its bearer was one of many moments during the lively ceremony to give locals a knowing smile.

That wasn’t the only look on my face during the two and a half hour jamboree, of course. There was dismay (John Barrowman’s opening number that looked straight out of my sixth form revue in 1991), suspended disbelief (the dancing teacakes), pride (Oor Wullie), quizzical (Nicole Scherzinger anyone?), endearment (the Scottie dogs) and a tinge of disappointment (they didn’t blow up the flats).

These were five more emotions than Huw Edwards showed during the BBC’s broadcast, a man whose demeanour reminded me of Droopy the dog until coming alive when the Welsh team walked in.

“Don’t expect anything on the scale of London 2012,” he said in his opening, pouring cold water on our expectations before calling the admittedly clich packed opening segment “a jumble of Scottish emblems and symbols, some of them energetic, some of them a little more mundane.” He then welcomed Malaysia into the arena by listing the air disasters to have stricken the country in recent times.

Hazel Irvine is always a breath of fresh air but alongside Huw she was a veritable tornado, full of fascinating facts about each competing nation, “The majority of the Maldives is only the height of a high hurdle above sea level,” humour ““Anguilla is the French word for eel, as in `my hovercraft is full of eels,’” and the all-important local knowledge. “These people are not actors,” she warned us as two police officers and a refuse collector murdered Rhythm of My Heart before Rod Stewart took the microphone from them and did exactly the same. That man is going to need a lot of lozenges before the closing ceremony.

Once Rod had croaked his way through his greatest hits (perhaps Amy Macdonald’s bold choice of black leather trousers on Scotland’s hottest day of the year threw him off tune), the ceremony settled down to be something we should sing the praises of.

The Unicef appeal and the inclusion of a tribute to Nelson Mandela were particularly nice touches, as was the impeccably observed minute’s silence for the innocent lives lost aboard flight MH17.

There was the odd misstep, Glasgow City Council leader Gordon Matheson appeared to have been told he was addressing the Nuremberg rally, Rod came back for an encore and the Queen’s message in the dastardly tricky to open baton didn’t turn out to be her order for extra milk and eggs which I was dearly hoping it would be.

But on a night when we were repeatedly told Glasgow was welcoming the world, it announced warmly and with open arms “Come on in”.

“People were right to say you can’t expect the ceremony of London 2012,” droned Huw in summary. Shut yer geggy, man.