Cheers to New Year... US girls fly in for parade

Cheerleaders, Morris dancers, beauty queens and vintage cars and took to the streets as 500,000 Londoners watched the New Year's Day Parade.

Stars of the show on the route from Parliament Square to Piccadilly were more than 1,200 cheerleaders from high schools across America, who had all raised their own expenses to travel to the capital.

Pom pom and circumstance: some of the 1,200 American high school cheerleaders who flew over to London for the New Year's Day parade

Travelling the furthest to be at the parade was a marching band from Roosevelt High School in Honolulu, Hawaii. The parade was started off by Northwest Missouri State University's Bearcat Marching band.

Floats representing London boroughs competed for £18,000 of prizes at the 22nd annual parade.

On parade: the event, which featured marching bands and floats, attracted 500,000 spectators

Hounslow's float featured famous people associated with the borough, including Henry VIII and Freddie Mercury. Southwark was setting out to break a world record by ringing bells more than 1,200 times.

Students from the Sylvia Young theatre school in Marylebone dressed up as characters from West End shows, including Spamalot's King Arthur, the Phantom of the Opera and Wicked's Witch of the West, marking 100 years of West End theatre.

Ending the parade of 8,500 performers was a single Routemaster bus.