Bristol city centre scene of Thriller flash mob

The centre of Bristol was overrun with zombies when a group of students performed a "flash mob" dance of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

A large crowd gathered around the Podium in Broadmead as about 100 people dressed in torn clothing and ghoulish make-up recreated the pop star's famous routine.

But like most flash mobs, this wasn't an impromptu outbreak of dancing, rather a carefully choreographed event that took more than a month to put together.

The flash mob was organised by Josh Forwood, a second-year media practice student at the University of the West of England.

Mr Forwood, who lives in the city centre, decided to stage the event after taking part in a flash mob in Cabot Circus in March.

The 21-year-old has previously used Facebook to attract people to take part, but decided to go about things a little differently for Saturday's event.

He said: "I contacted the Bristol University and UWE dance societies and explained what I was doing, and also got dancers from the Bristol Dance Factory involved.

"Zoe Osmond, the head of the Dance Factory, was very interested, and she put all her dance classes on to it and set up an extra session for it."

The dancers learned the moves in just four rehearsals, and those who couldn't get to the classes picked up the moves from classes uploaded to the internet. After a last-minute rehearsal at Panache nightclub on Saturday afternoon, the students brought Broadmead to a standstill for 10 minutes at 1.45pm as an audience of friends and shoppers people cheered.

Mr Forwood has other flash mobs in the pipeline, but is keeping the details under wraps.

The Thriller routine is fast becoming a favourite of "flash mobbers", and was even performed by 1,500 inmates at a prison in Singapore.

Over the last week there have been Thriller flash mobs in Vancouver, Paris, Singapore and one in Trafalgar Square on Thursday, to mark what would have been Michael Jackson's 51st birthday.