Wednesday, 9th July 08

As official police attendance figures are released for the event, Pride London’s own numbers turn-out to have been rather cautious!

The Metropolitan Police have released the official attendance figures for Pride London 08 and it is believed that 825,000 people attended the event. The police numbers, which have traditionally are very cautious, have been calculated by specialist analysis of CCTV and aerial photography.

The amazing number of people who enjoyed Saturday’s event means that Pride London 08 is the biggest pride event ever to have taken place in the UK and puts it in the top 5 attended prides in the world.

Colm Howard-Lloyd, a Director of Pride London, commented:

“We released our initial estimates for those attending earlier in the week. We are always quite cautious about these figures; my mother taught me you shouldn’t boast. I fell off my chair a number of times when we were told that nearly twice as many people attended the event than in 2007.”

He added:

“I hope this sends a strong message of togetherness not just to LGBT people in the UK but also to those in countries such as the Czech Republic and Bulgaria who have struggled to be allowed to celebrate pride recently.”

PS Pride London’s campaign to support Health Initiatives is still running. Health Initiatives is the only HIV peer based Support/Educational and Clinic PALS project in the UK. For more information visit http://www.healthinitiatives.org. Donations can still be made by sending an SMS message (costing £1.50) with “HI CLINIC” to 84424. At least £1 goes to the campaign.