Welcome to the BA London Eye everyone. This is capsule 3 and I'm your pilot, guide & I like to think friend for the next half hour, Captain Neil.

If you have any questions about anything you can see or would like me to point out something you would like to see, any questions about the wheel, trivia, sports, fashion tips, anything please don't hesitate to ask, otherwise enjoy the flight.

If you look to my right, you'll see a large grey dome on the skyline, that's St Pauls Cathedral, just over 300 years old, built by a chap called Christopher Wren, St Pauls is the second largest self supporting dome in the world, and it's very nice.
Over the river you'll see a big Golden Eagle on a plinth, that's the RAF war memorial and the building behind it is the ministry of defence, now they have actually covered all of their windowss with net curtains as they thought spies (such as yourselves) would come up on the eye and try and look in.
The building to the right of St Pauls is called Whitehall Court, it was originally built to be the London residence for the Tsars of Russia, I don't know if you remember them, they were a very popular heavy metal band in the late 70's.
If you look at the tall pointy roof just to the right of centre of that building, you should be able to see the shape of a man standing on the rooftops, it's not Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins dancing across the rooftops of London, but it is in fact Nelson on the top of his column in Trafalgur Square.
Between the MOD and Whitehall court you'll see another statue on a column, that's a chap called the Grand Old Duke of York. I did some research for this job and discovered he was in the army, commanded about 10,000 men, he marched them up to the top of a hill, then he marched them down again.

Just behind the MOD you can see a large wooded area, that is St James Park, and at the far end of the park in the gap in the trees is Buckingham Palace.
Now the Palace and the Royals are the reason that they had to make all the glass in the capsule bulletproof. They thought the Royal family would dis-like the eye as it ruins the view, and they have been proved right as the Queen Mum often sits on the balcony of the palace and takes pot shots at us (not hit us yet though).
Looking to the north there are 2 bridges you can see on the river, the first one is the Hungerford Bridge built by Brunel, it was originally a suspension bridge, but was modified to carry trains and the chains that originally supported it were taken to Bristol and used on the Clifton suspension bridge. The second bridge is Waterloo, I know nothing about that one.
Mid way between the bridges is a building with a very large white clock face, that is Shellmex house and it has the biggest clock in London, 1 inch bigger than Big Ben.
To its right you can see the Savoy Hotel. Very posh, afternoon tea, which is a cup of tea, a slice of cake and a scone costs 17 quid, just ask for the Savoy value meal deal.
Directly above the Savoy on the horizon is Ally Pally.

Don't worry about that very loud clanking noise, capsule 3 always does that. At least your not the poor sods in 29.

Welcome to the top of the Eye, we are now 450ft above the city.
T here are only 3 buildings higher than this. In reverse order (like top of the pops), in at 3 we have the BT tower, at 2 we have tower 42 - formally known as the Nat West building. And the tallest building in London is Canada tower in Canary Wharf, over 800ft, making it nearly twice as high as the eye.
Now I must tell you that we do allow smoking at the top of the eye, but anyone whiching to light up must step outside.

Looking down the river to the south we have three bridges, Westminster, Lambeth and Vauxhall, to the left of the Vauxhall bridge, you can see the new MI6 building as featured in the last Bond film and where James Bond really works. We sometimes see him coming out for his lunch, on a jetski, he pops down to Benjy's on the Strand and gets a ham bagguette.

Looking East just to the right of Canary wharf you should now be able to make out a very large white shape on the horizon, that's the millenium dome.
The best time to look at the dome is about 9am on a Tuesday morning, as it is surrounded by MP's throwing money at it.
To the left of the dome are three towers in a row and between the two towers on the right, you now get the best view of Tower Bridge.

Looking out of the other end of the capsule there is a street opposite that runs away from the river between the buildings, if you follow it further up you can make out the gates of Downing St. Now the gates are commonly known as the Thatcher Gates as they were erected in the late eighties to help protect the IRA from Mrs T.
To the left of Downing St, you can make out Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster, and just behind it a very large white church, Westminster Abbey. It was completed in 1065 and that is where they crown the Kings and Queens of England, and usually bury them too (although not usually on the same day).
Next door to the Abbey is a smaller church, St Magarets, not as old as Westminster, but well worth a visit. It is actually the final resting place of St Walter Raleigh, he's buried under the altar, although his head is in the churchyard - which I think shows you just how tall he was.

If you look over the houses of Parliament, you can see three big ugly blocks, they stick out like a sore thumb and completely ruin the view, that's the old Dept of the Environment.

And last but not least the south bank. Just past Westminster bridge you can see a very large white building with St Thomas' Hospital written on it, that's St Thomas' hospital, one of the oldest in the world and it was where Florence Nightingale had her nursing school.
Then here right next to the Eye is County Hall, one of the largest bulding in the City it has 11 miles of corridors, when they abolished the GLC the majority of the building was converted to a hotel called the Marriot, but the basement houses the London Aquarium. And the best time to visit it is midnight, just look in the Thames in front of the Aquarium and you see the most amazing sight, they actually take all the fish out for half an hours swimming exercise every night.

We'll be landing in a couple of minutes, so let me just tell you a couple of things about the eye, the entire weight is supported through the spindle at the centre, which is the size of a church spire, and had to be turned on a lathe to get it perfectly round, the only factory in Europe that could do it was a very famous Czech car company called Skoda.
And this thing we are passing now with all the black cables hanging from it is the emergency brake, if the main brake fails, the engineers assure me that it would stop the wheel turning in just a matter of hours.

I'm bring her in to land now, so I hope you enjoyed it and thanks for choosing to fly with British Airways