Olympic champions Rebecca Adlington and Chris Hoy were the first passengers to emerge from the first class cabin on a British Airways jumbo jet fitted with a gold-painted nose and renamed "Pride" in honour of a team that won 47 medals, including 19 gold, the best-ever performance in an Olympics outside London by a British team.

 

Along with a posse of televison cameras and photographers, Gordon Brown was there to meet all the team and was accompanied by Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell, wearing a fetching London 2012 tee-shirt, as they entered the VIP terminal building.

 

After landing, most of Britain's gold medal winners squeezed together on the steps of the plane for a historic photograph and they were followed onto the tarmac by the silver and bronze medallists.

 

BBC1 rescheduled their programmes to show a 90-minute live programme of the team arriving home.

 

Roger Black, one of the show's guests, joked that when the team returned from Atlanta in 1996, where he finished second in the 400 metres but the squad overall won only one gold medal, there were so few medallists they "would only have needed a couple of steps to fit us all on".

 

Hoy said: "It has been an incredible reception.

 

"It is amazing, it's just fantastic.

 

"I'm going to take a couple of months off but it hasn't really sunk in yet."

 

The 32-year-old cyclist from Edinburgh said reports that he would be given the title "Sir" in the Queen's Honours List in recognition of his achievements in Beijing, where he was the first Briton for 100 years to win three Olympic gold medals in the same Games, were "crazy".

 

Hoy said: "It's such a nice thing to think that we are getting a bit of attention for minority sports,"

 

Adlington, 19, arrived back to discover that not only is the local pool in Mansfied where she learned to swim being renamed in her honour but also a local pub which will now be called the "Adlington Arms".

 

She said: “I wasn’t aware of that at all, I didn’t know about the pub.

 

“It’s only a small town and I love living there.

 

"I just feel honoured coming from there let alone having something named after me.

 

"We've just done our best to get a medal, anything else that comes our way is just a bonus."

 

Adlington and Hoy both claimed that they hoped to restart training for London 2012 after a short break.

 

Adlington said: "I'm getting back [to training] at the end of September."

 

While he gold medallists were taken to an airport hotel for a press conference covered live on four televison channels the rest of the team were put on buses to link up with their relatives and friends at a hotel in Egham where there was a champagne reception while they waited for their luggage to join them.

 

Sebastian Coe, the chairman of London 2012 who travelled back on the same flight at the team, said: "Britain have provided us with just the most extraordinary platform, one we could not possibly imagine before we came here.

 

"It's the opportunity to drive the project for us, but take nothing from any of those guys who've performed, I think, way beyond what I think any of us were expecting."

 

Ben Ainslie, the sailor who won his third consecutive Olympic gold and who the International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge claimed deserved to be bracketed alongside swimmer Michael Phelps and sprinter Usain Bolt as one of the superstarts of the Games, is another tipped to receive a knighhood in the New Year but is already setting his sights on competing at Weymouth in 2012.

 

He said: “For all of us it’s been a massive inspiration looking forward to 2012.

“Hopefully the success we’ve had can help the whole nation get behind 2012.”

 

But not all the team looked so happy as they left the plane.

 

Shanaze Reade, heavily tipped to win gold in the BMX, left the plane on crutches following her crash last Friday which cost her a medal.

 

Dave Collins, the UK Athletics performance director, also looked downcast as he came down the plane's steps knowing he was arriving back to speculation that he is about to lose his job after Britain fell short of the target set them by Government agency UK Sport.

 

In contrast, British Cycling's performance director David Brailsford looked delighted as he arrived back knowing he had been in charge of the most successful cycling team in Olympic history which won a record 14 medals, including eight gold.

 

He said: "I'm glad to be back.

 

"I want some fish and chips and a pint of Guinness now."

 

The arrival back of the team was also a high-profile opportunity for British Airways, a tier-one multi-million pound sponsor of London 2012, to gain some valubale worldwide profile.