HEADLESS men, blood-sucking leeches, Indian sand painting and non-stop music - all will fill the streets of Bury town centre on Bank Holiday Monday.

Everyone is invited to enjoy a day of free entertainment at this year's Streets Ahead festival.

The whole thing starts at 1.30pm with the Bury Spectacle. A massive pair of eyes will make their way from Bury Metrolink to The Rock, surrounded by dancers and artists and Bury's own samba band Zambura.

A host of acts from home and abroad will then entertain visitors until 5.30pm at four main sites around the town centre: Market Place, The Wylde, and two locations on The Rock.

Kay Gardens will be turned into an "environmental village" with music and activities for youngsters.

The day culminates with French street group Cacahuete's performance of The Wedding, a witty and provocative look at marriage.

Roads from the top of Bolton Street to the bottom of Market Street where it meets Broad Street will be closed to traffic from 6am to 6pm. All town centre car parks will be free.

Shopaholics will also be catered for - for the first time, the Mill Gate centre will be open on the day and many market traders will be setting up stalls on Market Street.

Bury art gallery will have a special exhibition of the streets of Bury, and Thomas the Tank Engine is visiting the East Lancashire Railway.

It's Bury's contribution to the Streets Ahead jamboree which takes place across Greater Manchester during the month of May. Artists who can be seen in Bury on Monday are:

A&P Theatre (from Germany): Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson on ostrichback.

Avanti Display: a new visual show called Crash!.

Big D: a metal-legged big beat machine.

Bippo the Clown: from Ramsbottom, the world's youngest clown, raising money to see the circus in Russia.

Boom or Bust: fiery women's samba band with puppets and gold breastplates.

Cacahuete (from France): provocative street performers.

Denis Rogers (USA): a member of the Navajo Nation of Northeastern Arizona, with sand painting and dances.

Dr Southall's Medicine Show: French-flavoured acrobatic hand balance.

Inner Sense: Latin American music.

Invisible Men: comic mime show with a stunning escapology finale.

IOU Theatre: releasing a huge blood-sucking leech!

John Teasdale: juggling on a unicycle.

Mahoney Brothers: bald, barking and lost: quite indescribable.

Mossley Community Arts: Glasnost meets refuse collection in "Volga Bin Men".

Mossley Minis'cool Arts: shopping with 13 dippy elves.

Primitives (from Belgium): slapstick cookery.

Sneakers: multi-instrumentalists.

Soca Survivors: soul and calypso music from a ten-piece band.

Weapons of Sound: funk music.

Whalley Range All Stars: street theatre, headless people, angels and a tailor's dummy.

Zambura: Bury's own samba band.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.