Both the town's football and rugby sides were involved in significant action on Saturday, but the rival attractions in Callendar Park attracted the biggest crowd, with long queues for many events and significant traffic management headaches.

Let's face it, you can see matches with round and oval balls any week of the year, while pan-European marching bands, naked Japanese dancers and choral country and western collectives are a rarer treat.

There's a danger that the ever-expanding Big in Falkirk audience is even getting a touch blase about the whole business. The presence of Yukiko Nakamura draped against a tree as she reprised her Volte Face show of the Merchant City Festival failed to distract one bunch of youngsters from their game of hide and seek, and the various ensembles from across the continent displaying their skills as elements of La Banda Europa became simply the soundtrack to a large lady shaking her booty and a couple of stage-school teenagers demonstrating their perfect polka.

Fewer shared the particular joy of witnessing the toddler whose word-perfect rendition of Ring of Fire in unison with The Parsonage clearly astonished her mother, and suggested the little one was finding the Whalley Range All Stars' Compost Mentis less than riveting. Bless contemporary clown Fraser Hooper for exacting a just revenge on these precocious nippers by employing them as furniture in his act.

With two ponies leading the procession, the musicians assembled for Before The Wolf made an impressive sight. The production values that have been brought to La Banda Europa in costuming and wigs (half Liaisons Dangereuses, half Leningrad Cowboys, movie fans) match the musicianship. If Jim Sutherland's band can make it Big in Falkirk, they'll make it anywhere.