23.05: That was a truly amazing show/spectacle/event/moment. It ended, as it began, with an emotional huddle.
Thanks, as ever. for joining us for the photoblog. It’s been ace reading all of your emails. That might be it for the Viva tour, but we’ve got plenty of exciting things coming up on Coldplay.com over the coming weeks and months (one of which should be beginning any second now).
But, for now, it’s goodnight.
Anchormanx
22:46: During Lovers. Which made us a feel a bit weepy.
22:30: The Viva vid. Sit back and enjoy…
22:21: “Hello Mr. A. It would be interesting to know, even for yourself, what distances you’ve walked until now ;)” writes Stefanie. We’re gonna plump for a long, long way.
Viva video just processing…
22:16: Lost+ with Jay-Z. Just plain brilliant.
Viva crowd singing vid on its way (it’s almost like a photoblog tradition now…)
21:50: There’s definitely a feeling of post-rain euphoria out there now. If the crowd was up-for-it before, they’ve jumped right over the top of it now. Or something.
(Fireworks after In My Place)
21:39: These were during Cemeteries Of London about five minutes ago. THE RAIN HAS STOPPED! Yay.
21:25: Pics during Clocks. Big up to our camera for surviving the battering from the skies above.
21:22: Did we mention it was raining?
Despite that, when the band took to the stage, the roar from the crowd made us feel like we’d been punched in the stomach by Rocky. Genuinely never heard anything like it. There’s no way these folks are going to let a bit of water spoil the party.
21:19: Pics, from the dressing room to the stage…
21.17: Well, it’s raining VERY hard, the band are absolutely rocking Wembley to its core and the wi-fi isn’t working on the stage, so we’re back in the office. Pics coming very soon…
20:41: Right, five minutes until the band head to the stage, so we’re going to pack up the laptop and head out. We’ll be back in just over 20 minutes, with pictures of all the pre-stage action (including, of course, the huddle). Perhaps you should go and make a cup of tea.
20:33: We just bumped into the world’s greatest living rapper in the corridor. Quite literally bumped into him. He took it very well. But it seemed a bit rude to then stick a camera in his face at that point.
20:23: “Dear Mr A, Why Chris always hides in a Live blog day? – Sarah S” He’s not hiding. We just saw him and had a nice chat about the show. He’s feeling pretty nervous and excited. Sure we’ll get some more pictures of him at some point…
20:21: Just 39 minutes until show time. Feels like quite a big deal tonight – obviously everybody involved with Coldplay wants them to go out on a high. Judging by last night, we’re pretty sure they will. We’re going to try and find somewhere behind the stage where wi-fi works, so that we can keep you updated throughout – so apologies if we have a bit of a gap in photoblog service at some point between now and then!
20:09: Will, Guy and Jonny are in the very softly-lit warm-up room doing their vocal exercises, while reading. They seem relaxed and cheery, albeit with a sense of we’re-about-to-play-to-70,000-people anticipation.
Jonny, reading World Soccer magazine, thinks we should have kicked Ashley Cole’s left leg so that he can’t help Chelsea beat Tottenham tomorrow.
19:56: Earlier mystery is solved: “Sloppy Joes are mince cooked in a tomato-y sauce, then served on buns. Rather disgusting, actually.” We’d be inclined to agree with Ann S on that point.
19:50: The corridors are getting quieter. The venue is getting more and more packed. And we’re waiting for the band to start their warm-up so that we can jump in and take some snaps…
19:45: While we’re on a Jay-Z tip, here’s a picture from his set last night.
19:39: Jay-Z is on and rocking it. This is how it looks from the Royal Box…
Can’t even hear the thud of the bass from our little office, deep in the bowels of the stadium. 🙁
19:23: A nice picture of Will, in the dressing room
19:20: Just noticed that we’ve now had well over 1,000 emails from you folks today. Amazing.
19:18: We’ve been wondering ever since we got here where the England football team dressing rooms are. Luckily, we just bumped into a chap in the corridor who could tell us…
This is Ashley Cole, the Chelsea footballer who has played 74 times for England. He was sitting outside Girls Aloud’s dressing room, presumably waiting for his wife Cheryl Cole. He seemed like a very nice chap and explained to us that the England dressing room would be pretty much exactly where the Coldplay dressing room is now (although it looks a bit different with all the drapes etc).
Meanwhile, our little office actually has three showers behind it – which makes us think it might be where the referees normally get changed.
18:59: As the band are up to their own things at the moment, we thought we’d treat you to a little video of yesterday’s soundcheck to tide you over…
18:57: Brenda has asked for a picture of Jay-Z. Sadly, despite our AAA pass, this is the nearest we’ve come so far…
18:53 Quite a few of you have emailed anchorman@coldplay.com to ask us what the band are doing now. William is chatting with friends and family, as is Chris, while Jonny is sitting in the dressing room and Guy is chilling out in the warm-up room.
18:47: A few of you have asked if there are lots of family members about today. Yes, indeed – being a hometown show and the big tour finale, there are plenty of proud parents, wives, friends etc. In fact, we just saw Chris’s dad. “Pretty spectacular place, isn’t it?” he said. And he’s not wrong.
18:44: “Will you please tell us if you are going to get the band to give us a shoutout or not so we can stop eating our souls away in hope? :D” Emily S
Souls being eaten, F5 buttons dying? Crikey. You go away to have dinner and all hell breaks loose. (We’ll do our best Emily.)
18:42: “Dear Anchorman, Every time you ignore a request, an F5 button dies. Think about that,” writes Emily S, ominously.
18:37: We’re back in the royal office. This is all that the Queen left behind…
18:31: Hello again. Apologies for the gap in photoblog service – there was a meeting in the management office, which meant we couldn’t come in for a whle. So we went for dinner in catering with Jonny, Jonny’s uncle, Jonny’s cousin and Jonny’s cousin’s girlfriend. Lovely folks the Bucklands. Dinner was a) ribs and b) very tasty indeed. Right, the Queen has now left the building, so we’re going to reclaim our office.
17:51: We just went on a little adventure to see the marvellous White Lies.
(Our excitement at walking down the Players’ Tunnel just about outweighed our disappointment over the lack of apostrophe on the sign)
17:32: Who’s for a little video of the balloons bouncing about during Yellow last night?
17:17: “Can we have a group picture?” asks Milica K
“Can we have a pic of Chris?” asks Emily P
“Surely Brooke couldn’t have accepted that medal,” points out Kaitie A. Ah yes, good point. Oops.
17.08: Here’s the medal which each of the crew were presented with by the Queen
17:01: “Will the Queen join the band on stage?” asks Imke to anchorman@coldplay.com. No, don’t think so.
16:59: A couple more pictures from the crew awards ceremony…
16:51: So, here’s Her Majesty presenting Brooke, the man responsible for the butterflies, with the I Never Want To See Another Butterfly award, flanked by a dashing courtier or two…
It was a really lovely little ceremony – with lots of silly awards, lots of laughter and a real feeling of end-of-term warmth from a bunch of people who’ve spent a long time in very close confines and come out smiling.
16:43: Sorry, we got caught up at the (amazing!) crew awards ceremony. Pics to follow. But, for now, we’ll reveal that the reason we had to leave our office earlier was that a Queen Elizabeth II lookalike needed to use it to get changed….!
16:06: How it’s looking in the band’s warm-up room…
16:03: “How is your day going so far?” asks the impressively-named mishelle vanessa velasquez gutierrez. Very well, thanks. And, fingers crossed, it should only get better from here…
15:59: At the end of every tour, Coldplay always have an awards ceremony for the crew – presenting awards for their efforts. As this is the tour finale, the awards ceremony is taking place today. In fact, it’s in about 15 minutes. We’ll go along and try to take some pictures. (Then, afterwards, we’ll tell you why we had to leave our office.)15:53: Thanks for your guesses of why we had to leave the office. Not even close. To be honest, you could guess solidly for about 10 years and you probably still wouldn’t guess.
15:43: Guy’s here! This is an action shot of him doing some album cover autographing…
He really enjoyed last night’s show. “It was great, wasn’t it?” he says. Yes indeed.
15:32: We’ve just had to leave our little office and move to the management offices – not sure you’d believe us if we told you the reason (hopefully we can tell you later).
Anyway, here’s a little film showing Wembley Way yesterday. This leads from Wembley Park tube station right up to the stadium, and it’s one of the most enjoyable, evocative aspects of any visit here. The film ends with a shot of a London bus, as all good films should.
15:23: Here’s Jonny!
And here’s legendary band assistant Vicki Taylor, cutting ginger…
15:15: “ARE THE BOYS THERE YET?” asks Alina. No, not yet. We probably wouldn’t be posting pictures of the Jules Rimet trophy if they were…
15:12: One of the main reasons we English folks love Wembley Stadium is that it’s where we won the football World Cup in 1966. This stadium is actually a totally new one, opened in 2007, but it’s on the same site and there are a few reminders of it dotted around the stadium – like this one…
Of course, strictly speaking, it should be a St George’s flag rather than a Union Jack, but who are we to quibble…
15:07: “What is Roadie #42 up to?” asks Daniel P to anchorman@coldplay.com. Well, he wasn’t at his bunker…
But we may have found a clue in one of the restaurants near the posh seats…
15:04: We just caught the very end of Girls Aloud’s soundcheck.
Sounded good. Hardcore GA fans should notice Sarah walking off towards stage right…
14:38: Apparently they’re “doing some tests and will be a few minutes”. Sounds like a good time to nip out and take some pictures…
14:36: The lights have gone out. It’s pitch dark apart from our computer screen. RESPONSE TEAM, WHERE ARE YOU?!
14:31: “Are sloppy joes mince burgers? Am I close? Even just a little?” asks Rosalie from Australia. To be honest, we’re not exactly sure what they are – but there was something which looked like chili con carne – so we’d guess it’s probably that.
Kaitie must know, because she’s emailed to say “I’m not a fan of sloppy joes.”
Oh, by the way, please try to get your question or comment into the subject of your email – we’re getting loads and it’s slowing us down!
14.24: Renate would like to know what the weather is like in London today. Well, happily. it’s looking good. Yesterday was all about sun and blue skies, and today is shaping up to be pleasingly similar. These pics should give you an idea of how lovely it was yesterday…
Mind you, it got quite chilly towards the end of the show, later on.
14:19: Right, so here’s the lowdown on lunch – which we ate far too quickly. Here is the menu…
We plumped for fish and chips, with mushy peas. For those of you unaware of this classic British delicacy, mushy peas look exactly like they sound, but taste rather nicer.
You’ll note some tartare sauce on there too. Twas all very nice. Here’s an action shot of someone else ordering their lunch…
And here’s a picture of the delicious “millionaire’s shortbread” which we took away with us for pudding.
Don’t ever say we don’t give you the big backstage exclusives.
13:55: Katie emailed anchorman@coldplay.com asking to see a picture of our office (or “blog nerve centre” as Katie calls it). It looks a little something like this…
Glam, isn’t it?
Right, we’re off to grab a spot of lunch…
13:48: The puppets made it along then…
13:42: Just popped into the dressing room. As predicted, the band are not here yet. So we took some pics of the empty room…
13:37: Shout out to all the Muslims around the world celebrating Eidul Fitr today and tomorrow (including Farizah M, who just emailed us).
13:34: “Who are the Response Team exactly?” asks Brooke W. We’re not really sure. But it’s good to know they’re there, ready to respond…
13.29: Some slightly odd “unofficial” T-shirts displayed in a very odd sort of way, near the venue yesterday:
13:23: “How many are the expected audience?” asks Hanna H. Tonight, like last night, is a 70,000 sell out. Working on an average height of about 1.7 metres, that means if you laid all 140,000 down in a line, they’d stretch for 238 kilometres / 148 miles. Try to drop this fact into conversation wherever in the world you are today.
13.18: The “Response Team”, ready for action, yesterday…
They’re actually looking out at Wembley Arena, where Coldplay did their friends and family warm-up show on June 13th 2008. They have, quite literally, come such a long way since then.
13.13: “What are the boys doing now?” asks Christina F. Tis a good question. We’re not exactly sure. The backstage area here at Wembley Stadium is absolutely *enormous* and we’re in a little office on our own – sort of between the band’s dressing room and the management office. We’ve not actually seen anyone yet. But it seems likely that the band are enjoying a bit of time at home with their families before heading back here.
13.07: A couple of nice pictures from yesterday’s soundcheck. It was good to see the boys so relaxed ahead of such a big gig (a big gig which turned out to be absolutely blooming marvellous, by the way).
13.04: Looks like you’ve got our undivided attention afterall…
🙁
12.52: So, we were here yesterday and we took a walk to the very back of the stadium. That must’ve taken about 45 minutes. But it’s a lovely view…
We decided to take the signs pointing to “Exit” to get back down. After at least 20 flights of stairs, we got to the bottom, and found the doors locked. The walk back up has left us with extremely aching legs today.
12:47: We should point out that we’ve been asked to play football with the band at 2.15pm. Playing football at Wembley Stadium is not the sort of offer you turn down, so we will be popping off to do that – but we’ll try not to be away too long.
12:45: Hello! We’ve just arrived. We’ve set up our little desk and we’re ready to start blogging. As in Dusseldorf, we’re happy to take your picture requests or questions – just drop us an email at anchorman@coldplay.com and we’ll see what we can do.