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2007 roars in with music, fireworks and a lion
By Kiran Randhawa and Valentine Low, Evening Standard 02.01.07
A giant inflatable lion at the New Year's Day parade
Fireworks light up the London Eye
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It came in with a bang, it came in with a pipe band, it even came in with a giant inflatable lion. (Although if you were just about anywhere other than London, it also came in with rather a lot of wind and rain).
This was New Year 2007, which kicked off in the capital with a fireworks spectacular that turned the heart of the city into a fantastic skyscape of colour and noise.
Gallery - the New Year's Day Parade
Gallery - the New Year's Eve fireworks
Some 35,000 turned out to watch the 10-minute pyrotechnic display heralding the start of 2007, which included fireworks off the London Eye and from barges on the Thames.
Londoners had a considerably better time of it than revellers elsewhere. Scotland's biggest Hogmanay party in Edinburgh was among the events cancelled due to high winds and lashing rain. Celebrations were also scrapped in Glasgow, Belfast, Newcastle and Liverpool.
Down in Brighton there was atrocious weather too - but not enough to stop 20,000 people piling on to Brighton beach to enjoy a party staged by DJ Fatboy Slim.
Fans and celebrities including wife Zoe Ball and her father Johnny, braved the wind and rain to dance during the two-hour set.
For Londoners, however, the big event was the New Year's Day parade, watched by more than half a million spectators. Some 10,000 performers from across the world, including marching bands, clowns, Russian dancers and cheerleaders, took part in the event, which was celebrating its 21st anniversary.
Riders on penny-farthing cycles, miniature steam engines, a Hindu Scottish pipe band and even a parade of donkeys were among the 103 acts that followed the route from Parliament Square to Piccadilly via Whitehall, and Trafalgar Square.
Temporary grandstands were erected along the 2.2-mile carnival route.
The parade was led by motorcycles from the Goldwing Owners Club of Britain, and then followed by the Fort Myers High School Marching Band, a group who had to fight a travel ban imposed by Florida education chiefs because of fears about safety in London after the 7 July bomb attacks.
The 117-strong band raised $500,000 (£260,000) to make the journey after parents voted to veto the ban.
A Caribbean school band who practised in a butcher's cold store to acclimatise also joined the carnival. The 50-strong steel band from the Cayman Islands donned winter clothes and did a two-hour rehearsal in the cold store to get used to the UK weather.
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