No need to be Dome alone at New Year: join the Dorchester circus

London’s swanky Dorchester Hotel has been hit by a particularly bad bout of millennium fever.

In a bid to out-do goings-on at the Millennium Dome, the normally dapper Dorchester is swapping its armchairs and grand pianos for an altogether more, er, space-age experience.

On New Year’s Eve this year, the Dorchester’s “Global circus” will take guests through a time tunnel accompanied by “other-worldly creatures” to a future where “sound and light move endlessly back and forth and circus performers in outlandish costumes appear through the haze and smoke to mingle or stand rigid and immobile as frozen pieces for whom time has no meaning”.

It sounds just like the Dome’s event but with Beluga caviar, sautéed escalope of goose liver and Bollinger Grande Année 1990 thrown in for good measure.

The Dorchester promises enough dry ice and lasers to put the Dome to shame.

However, anyone thinking it’s time to buy a ticket should note: packages cost £2,000 to £5,000, which even makes the Dome look like good value.

Now that really is a circus trick.