Leicester City party: 240,000 join epic title celebration

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It wasn't just Jamie Vardy who was partying when Leicester City celebrated its greatest title triumph in Premier League history yesterday. While the world watched and dozens of camera crews lined the streets, thousands of people turned out for the team's victory parade and carnival at Victoria Park.

Blessed with fine weather, the open-top bus carrying Claudio Ranieri "and his team of misfits, journeymen and cast-offs" snaked its way through a "cacophonous sea of blue and white", reports The Guardian. "It was the moment, surely, when those last few holdouts who had refused to see it as anything other than dream finally allowed themselves to believe."

Almost a quarter of a million people, two thirds of the population, lined the city's streets according to the Leicester Mercury and gave the team a "rapturous reception", which continued into the night at Victoria Park, where the rock band Kasabian staged a surprise performance for a crowd of over 100,000.

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"While a visiting Queen and a rediscovered king had drawn crowds to Leicester city centre in recent years, spectators said yesterday's celebration was unlike anything before."

Victoria Park was more like Glastonbury, says the Daily Mail and several of the Leicester squad appeared close to tears as they lapped up the adulation. The party was broadcast live on the BBC, and there were TV crews from around the world.

"It is some story the dozens of cameras had to transmit," says Jim White of the Daily Telegraph. "Not a tale of ordinary success, the celebratory normality of Manchester or London. Rather, this is Hollywood in the East Midlands.

"The sense of pride generated by the exploits of the dozen young men on the top of the bus was tangible. This was a moment of civic togetherness that nothing else – not politics, not the arts, not even the reburial of royalty – could deliver. This was the moment Leicester celebrated its new status as the champion city."