London Mardi Gras 2001

It's the biggest event on the British gay calendar. The day starts of at 12 noon with a parade and march through the city centre, starting off at Hyde Park Corner and finishing just down from the Houses of Parliament, passing through Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square along the way. Tens of thousands of happy people take part to march, along with some colourful floats and other organisations that put on different performances.

Personally I think it should be encouraged to be more of a Mardi Gras parade like that of Manchester and Birmingham , and less of the traditional pride march. Its more fun, more entertaining and would appeal more to the people who watch.

Finsbury Park , where the festival was held opened at 1pm. There were several large dance tents provided by clubs such as Trade and Heaven, a funfair, market area, radio one dance arena, and the usual main stage entertaining us with many top name acts. The weather stayed beautiful throughout the day, adding to everyone's chilled happy attitude and the vibrant atmosphere. This year the capacity of the park was increased to hold 85,000 people, which meant even more sexy boys to admire whist you wondered around. Here are three galleries of them...

For the parade I was asked to organise something to represent the internet company Gaydar. Gaydar has only been around for about a year, but already grown into probably the world's largest gay contacts site. After all who hasn't got a gaydar profile these days!

There were 6 of us, we all dressed up, or down should I say, into just a pair of white speedos that had Gaydar printed across the back. It went down really well, with countless amount of photos taken. What is it with straight Chinese girls and there cameras? Have they never seen a boy in speedos before? Anyway we had a great time, roll on next year...

Thanks to everyone who helped make the day what it was including the organisers and volunteers, well done, it was a great day out.