View from the Oval: 'This is a little bit of payback'

For Leon Paige, 40, the triumph was a moment of catharsis. "I was in Australia two years ago and it's hard work watching us get battered - this is a little bit of payback."

The desperate and the daring sought alternative vantage points. The 50 or so fans perched on the pitched roof of The Cricketers pub - their England flags stuck into white chimney pots - appeared to teeter as the first wickets fell.

Three streakers culminated with a man pirouetting in a pink tutu. He had the good sense of waiting until afternoon before being ejected for his exhibitionism.

Pietersen's afternoon heroics spurred the ranks of the Barmy Army into their full repertoire. Three "convicts'' and a woman police officer in micro skirt and fishnets led a version of "Jerusalem" before the serious Aussie-bashing began.

For Glenn McGrath there was no hiding from his overoptimistic pre-Ashes prediction of a whitewash. Fielding on the boundary, he was taunted with a thousand cries of "5-0'' and can hardly have been enamoured with a chorus of "We all live in a convict colony'' to the tune of " Yellow Submarine".

On the flight to Sydney tonight he will be able to empathise with Warne, taunted for spilling a chance from Pietersen with "Warney's dropped the Ashes''.