The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Saturday
‘It was one of the biggest experiences of our lives’
SIMON TOFT AT THE DOME ON MILLENNIUM EVE
On New Year’s Eve, 1999, millions of people around the world celebrated the dawn of a new millennium. The UK had gone above and beyond in its celebration, and a new Millennium Dome, costing £789 million, had been erected to mark the occasion, along with a Millennium Wheel (now known as the London Eye). On the eve of the Dome’s opening, 10,000 VIPs were invited to celebrate this once-in-alifetime event, with a concert in the presence of prime minister Tony Blair and the Queen.
“It had been billed as the hottest ticket of the century – as ‘one amazing night’,” says Simon Toft, then 35, who was a reporter at The News in Portsmouth at the time and had received a VIP invite.
Unfortunately, the evening didn’t get off to the best start. Toft and his partner (now his wife) arrived at about 7pm but had to queue with thousands of others at Stratford station for security checks and to pick up their tickets. They finally got into the Dome at about 9pm.
“It was quite impressive to see it for the first time,” Toft says. He was in awe of the Dome’s enormousness; it was the size of 13 football pitches and taller than the Statue of Liberty.
“When we arrived we were given a quarter bottle of champagne and a sort of meal on a tray, which was supposed to last us for the evening,” he says, clearly unimpressed. “I honestly don’t remember what the food was, but I guess it would have been a meal like you get on an aeroplane with cellophane over it.” There were vendors available for guests to buy more food and drink as the evening went on.
The couple looked around the zones in the Dome, which had been created to tell the story of Life. People queued up for the interactive elements, like hitech funfair rides. “It was fairly entertaining, but wasn’t that exciting, to be honest,” Toft says, summing up the general consensus when the Dome opened to the public in 2000.
At 10pm, Toft and the other guests took their seats, which were arranged in a big circle around the central performance area. Stephen Fry introduced the concert, and then the performances began.
Mick Hucknall, the lead singer of Simply Red, was the main act. The Corrs, Heather Small, Ruby Turner and Jools Holland also performed and got the audience tapping their feet. “A lot of people got out of their seats and were clapping and singing along,” Toft recalls. “Any frustrations of earlier on in the evening had been forgotten by then. It felt exciting to be there.”
The Queen arrived at about 10pm by boat. There was a 21-gun salute from the naval ship HMS Westminster, which alerted the guests inside the Dome to the fact Her Majesty had arrived. It was an exciting moment. “Whenever you see the Queen at an event, you know it’s quite special,” Toft says. “The fact that you were there sharing the experience with the Queen felt really significant.”
Toft was also aware he was one of a select few to get an invite to the event, along with newspaper editors and the chief executives of sponsoring corporations. “I was aware I’d only been invited because of my job – nobody else I knew got an invitation – so it was quite a privilege,” he says. “There was quite a bit of envy among some friends that we had managed to get tickets to the Millennium Dome. I felt part of what was a big event in the life of the country.”
He is reluctant to say whether it lived up to being the “party of the century”. “I’ve definitely been to better concerts,” he says, “but I’m glad we went. My wife and I look back on it now and think that was one of the biggest experiences in our lives. Just to have been there was memorable.”
At midnight, everybody linked arms with the person next to them and sang Auld Lang Syne to herald in the
year 2000. “Because we were in this massive arena and everyone was doing it, it was quite an impressive sight,” Toft recalls.
“The bit that sticks in my memory, and a lot of media reports afterwards picked up on this, is the Queen had to hold hands with Tony Blair and sing Auld Lang Syne,” he says. “She was definitely not amused, because normally you’re not allowed to touch the Queen’s hand. It’s completely forbidden.”
The Prime Minister reached out to link arms with the Queen for the song. “She didn’t know what to do so she had to grab his hand. And it was so awkward – we could see across the arena that she really did not want to be doing it!”
Toft and his girlfriend left the Dome at about 2am and took the Underground back to London Victoria station. People on the Tube were tired and happy. “There was just a nice feeling of camaraderie, I suppose, because you’d all shared in this big event together and now you knew the new millennium had started and life was going to go on. You found yourself sitting there wondering what life would be like in the future.”
But when they got to the station, the couple realised the next train to Portsmouth wasn’t until 6.30am – so they had to sit and wait for three hours. “As we sat there, I remember thinking, ‘We’ve just been with the Queen and the prime minister at this incredibly exclusive party, and now we’re sitting on the floor at Victoria station. What a comedown!’ Whenever my wife and I talk about it now, that’s one of the things that sticks in our minds the most.”
Toft expects to party now that freedoms are being restored, but he doesn’t expect a night to match New Year’s Eve 1999: “The end of a millennium only comes once every 1,000 years.”