Mayor finally sets Thames alight

London's New Year's Eve fireworks display may have spluttered into a damp squib but at least the capital can look forward to an explosive kaleidoscope of colour next month at the Thames Festival.

This year's festival has been relaunched with the backing of the Greater London Authority - and from now on will be officially known as The Mayor's Thames Festival.

Currently in its fourth year, next month's extravaganza will last for three days, from Friday 14 September to the Sunday.

Changes may be afoot on the riverside, but yet again the Gallic pyrotechnician Christophe Berthonneau will be returning with his crack firework squad, Groupe F, to illuminate the London skyline.

Last year M Berthonneau produced such an eye-popping Thameside lightshow that about 60 spectators scaled barriers and climbed onto the Millennium Bridge to get a better view.

The inaugural Thames Festival in 1997 had only one, admittedly spectacular, event: 25,000 spectators watched Didier Pasquette and Jade Kindar-Martin tightrope-walk across the river on a single wire stretching from the Victoria Embankment to the Oxo Tower, passing each other in the middle.

Highlights of this month's improved and extended show will include Liquid Light, the illumination over the three nights of the LWT Tower by light artists Simon Corder and Patrick Watkinson into what they promise will be a "monumental beacon of light and images".

For the past three months over 1,200 schools and community groups have been involved in preparatory projects and art workshops for the festival.

A flickering line of over 2,000 people will promenade along Victoria Embankment, across Blackfriars Bridge and down the riverside to the National Theatre. As well as the hundreds of lanterns, the procession will boast huge illuminated sculptures, street music, stilt-walkers, singers and carnival costumes.

Saturday's Great River Race, in its 14th year but now officially linked with the festival, will see over 300 boats of every kind, whether wherries, war canoes, Cornish gigs or Chinese dragon boats, pelting down the river in the race to become the UK traditional boat champions.