Thinking big breathes life into the O2 Arena

David Campbell is talking about the O2 Arena when he calls it “The Dome”. He moves to correct himself, but hesitates. “Actually,” he says, “after all this time I think we can go back and talk about The Dome now. There was a silly period when no one would talk about it at all. Then there was a period when it was only ‘The O2’, we couldn’t say ‘The Dome’. Now it’s called the tent.”

It has been called a white elephant, too, and an £800 million flop, but the Government’s once-maligned Millennium Dome has, finally, after years of growing pains, come of age.

The O2 Arena is one of Britain’s best-known venues and arguably the world’s most popular, having sold almost four times the