Much excitement at Francis Towers this morning when the Olympic flame came past on the fabulous royal barge Gloriana. Gloriana was suitably decked out with ‘moment to shine’ flags that will have been printed, well, somewhere hopefully in the UK. When the torch relay came down the local high street earlier this week, the accompanying entourage of promotional vehicles were all top-notch examples of creative vehicle wrapping, too. Some pics can be found here. Then there’s the ‘limited edition’ Coca-Cola bottles being handed out in an aluminium bottle with some sort of printed wrap, along with Samsung flags and other branded goodies bearing the “produced by Icon Live” imprint. Do hope they were sourced in the UK - questions about this to Icon owner Chime Communications have so far remained unanswered. As this week’s special feature articles about London 2012 show, it’s difficult to pin down the boost to UK Print plc, not least due to all the strictures attached to Olympic contracts. But it’s good to know that some companies have gained through the games, something that’s apparent from today’s news story about Halstan and Pindar Creative. And seeing the clips of the Olympic Park it’s clear there is print aplenty all over the place. Am really hoping there’s some sort of print element in tonight’s opening ceremony, too – I saw an artists impression type of pic a while back that seemed to hint that a big map of London might be involved at some point – let’s hope so! Meanwhile, to put this all into perspective there was a clip on BBC News this morning featuring a woman who was an expert on the so-called  London ‘austerity games’ of 1948. She showed a ticket and a programme – which even back then was produced daily and printed overnight for the following day’s competition. Rather a more onerous task considering the technology of the day. She revealed a fantastic fascinating print stat: the programme printer was Alastair McCorquodale, of the eponymous McCorquodale printing business, and he also took part in the 100 metres final! London 2012 will have to go some way to top that for a print story, but here’s hoping there’s more good news than bad for those in our industry.