Rugby fever: Paris overflows with English fans as ticket prices hit £5000

Almost all of the city's 75,000 hotel rooms are taken and eager fans are now paying up to £5000 for a single ticket.

The only remaining accommodation is a campsite at the Bois de Boulogne five miles west of the city centre.

However, hundreds of ordinary Parisians are planning to throw open their spare rooms in a one-off bed and breakfast service despite their team having been vanquished by the 'Rosbifs' last weekend.

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Meanwhile in London, plans are being made for a victory parade which could see up to a million people line the streets of the West End if England win the Rugby World Cup.

Although team officials have insisted that they are not looking beyond Saturday's final in France, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Service confirmed today that "preliminary work had begun on any possible victory or homecoming parade".

In 2003, England's players paraded the Webb Ellis Cup through the streets of central London in front of just over half a million people after winning the tournament in Australia.

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However, with this year's World Cup attracting unprecedented public interest, police are braced for up to a million people this time should England defeat South Africa on Saturday.

World Cup organisers were also under increasing pressure to release the final remaining tickets for the final - which will be watched by about 16 million people on TV.

England fans were waiting to discover this afternoon whether they were among the lucky few to win one of 1,000 seats allocated to the Rugby Football Union.

Around 60,000 fans are expected to make the trip to France to cheer England on against South Africa at the Stade de France on Saturday night.

The Paris Tourism Office said it expected many supporters to beat the accommodation problem by travelling on Saturday, spending all night out, and returning home early on Sunday.

A spokesman said: "It has been extraordinarily busy and almost every hotel room is already taken."

Travel to Paris has also become a major headache. Eurostar announced that almost all the 25,000 seats on trains to the city on Friday and Saturday are sold out.

The operator put on seven extra trains to try to cope with demand, but the additional places were snapped up within 48 hours.

A spokesman advised those travelling to Paris to take a Brussels train and change at Lille for a local service into the French capital.

"We expect it to be the busiest weekend in our 13-year history," he said.

"Not only are there thousands of England fans, there will also be a large number of South Africans living in London and making the trip out, so it should be quite an atmosphere on the trains."

Flights on low-budget airlines that can usually be snapped up for less than £100 are currently going for ten times that amount.

Nearly all direct flights to Paris this weekend are sold out, with only handful of heavily inflated fares now available.

Flying on Friday, tickets are still available with Air France from London and Birmingham, costing £351 and £492 respectively.

From Manchester, a British Airways flight will cost £562.80, while from Liverpool, an easy-Jet flight will cost £405.

On Saturday, tickets are available with Flybe, leaving from Southampton and Birmingham, costing £459 and £537 respectively.

There are no return flights on Sunday with BA to London or Birmingham and budget flights back to Newcastle, Bristol and Norwich on Sunday are also sold out.

For those who are desperate to make the trip and want a cheap fare, there is always the ferry. Cross-Channel journeys by foot and car are still available.

But as one group of city bankers has showed, if all else fails fans can always charter a private jet.

Jane Thomas, 34, who works for Goldman Sachs, is splitting the £12,000 cost of chartering an eight-seater Citation XL jet with five friends.

The group, all South Africans working in the City, are also paying around £2,500 each for a ticket to the match with England.

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They have even been able to "tailor" their flight, ordering champagne, South African beer, traditional Biltong meat snacks and Springbok rugby shirts.

They will fly to Pontoise airport, just outside Paris on Friday.

Ms Thomas, of Hyde Park, said: "This is absolutely huge for our country and there was no way we could miss it.

"The main problem is finding a hotel because they all seem to be gone."

But that finding a hotel won't worry the majority of fans so much as finding a ticket now priced at up to £5,000 a head.

That was the going rate for the best seats on the internet ticket trading website Viagogo.

Eric Baker, the company's chief executive, said that prices began to soar as soon as the final whistle went after England's victory over France last Saturday. "It's the hottest ticket we have seen in years," he said.

Wiser fans were shopping on the French eBay site, where prices were considerably cheaper as local fans unloaded their tickets after seeing their side crash out.

Bidders on the Gallic version of the auction website were paying around £1,300 for top of the range seats.

The International Rugby Board warned supporters buying tickets online to be aware of forgeries.

A spokesman said: "Tickets are coded and will be checked by an electric scanner at the ground. Anyone with a false ticket will be refused entry."

One man who won't have to worry about the scramble for tickets is Gordon Brown.

Downing Street confirmed yesterday that Mr Brown, a Scot, will attend the final as a guest of the Rugby Football Union.

The Prime Minister joked at his No 10 press conference last week that once Scotland had been knocked out of the tournament, he had no trouble switching his allegiance.

He told reporters: "The one barrier to my support for England in the World Cup final has been removed by the unfortunate defeat of Scotland."