VIDEO: Aquarel pompier soaks the crowds. For Apple TV and iPods.

The riders in the Tour de France whizz past at speed. But it's a spectacle all day long and it starts with the passing of the 'caravane publicitaire', a collection of 220 promo vehicles from which 11 million freebies will be disgorged

The publicity caravan is a mobile carnival, with dancers, 12-ft motorised tea-pots and Aquarel 'firemen' who hose the crowd with high-pressure jets of cold water. London has never seen anything like it!

Here's what will be handed out over the three weeks of Le Tour:

1 million bottles of Aquarel water
1 million Haribo sweets
600,000 Bouygues Telecom CDs
500,000 SeaFrance pens
400,000 Pik’Croq and Vache Qui Rit samples
300,000 Etap Hotel luminous key rings
200,000 Caisse d’Epargne key rings
15,000 Transport for London bracelets

Some of the products – such as the TfL bracelets – are specific to London, and not all of the France-specific freebies will be seen in London.

Many of the vehicles and promotional floats are supplied by Ideactif, France’s leading 'experiential' agency. The agency has just opened an office in London.

Ideactif has designed and will be operating experiential road shows for nine brands in this year's caravane publicitaire.

"Each brand’s experiential event will take place on spectacular and interactive vehicles with theatrical and magical characters and sets," says Marine de Mascarel, UK sales executive for Ideactif.

The Ideactif brands are: Nestlé Aquarel, Caisse d’Epargne, Vache Qui Rit/Laughing Cow, Nesquick, Transport For London, SeaFrance, Etap Hotel-Accor, Bouygues Telecom and Haribo.

http://www.ideactif.co.uk

The washing/lubing video produced for Weldtite is the most popular of the Quickrelease.tv videos on YouTube. It's had nearly 20,000 views. By popular demand here is the Apple TV version of the video. All the 'basic bicycle maintenance' videos can be found at http://uk.youtube.com/group/bicyclemaintenance

There's a lo-res clip of this trailer on YouTube, posted by MGM, but here's a more hi-res version. Watch out for more clips from the movie on Quickrelease.tv

CELLPHONE VERSION: Last year the CTC Charitible Trust won a grant of £295,000 from Defra's Tomorrow's Climate Today's Challenge programme to produce and distribute a cinema advert extoling the virtues of cycling as a means to tackle climage change.

The 60-second ad will have its premiere at a special screening at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square, London on Monday 18th June. The ad will be followed by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

'Cycle Hero' will be shown in cinemas across the UK from June 30th for six weeks, reaching an estimated audience of over 3 million people.

There's lots of background info on the advert at CycleHero.com.

The advert stars American actress Genevieve Love Lake as the Cycle Hero. She lives, works and cycles in London.

She said: "I am a keen cyclist and it was great to film the cycling scenes along with the other stars of the ad and the hundreds of cycling extras. As a model and actress I like to keep fit, so knowing I can count calories while counting carbon helps me feel a whole lot better. Knowing that simple - and fun - things like cycling can really make a difference in tackling global warming is so cool."

Last year the CTC Charitible Trust won a grant of £295,000 from Defra’s Tomorrow’s Climate Today’s Challenge programme to produce and distribute a cinema advert extoling the virtues of cycling as a means to tackle climage change.

The 60-second ad will have its premiere at a special screening at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square, London on Monday 18th June. The ad will be followed by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

'Cycle Hero' will be shown in cinemas across the UK from June 30th for six weeks, reaching an estimated audience of over 3 million people.

There's lots of background info on the advert at CycleHero.com.

The advert stars American actress Genevieve Love Lake as the Cycle Hero. She lives, works and cycles in London.

She said: "I am a keen cyclist and it was great to film the cycling scenes along with the other stars of the ad and the hundreds of cycling extras. As a model and actress I like to keep fit, so knowing I can count calories while counting carbon helps me feel a whole lot better. Knowing that simple - and fun - things like cycling can really make a difference in tackling global warming is so cool."

Thomas Edison, the American inventor and businessman who developed key devices such as the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb*, also worked on an early motion picture camera, the Kinetograph.

More than 300 of his early films survive, starting with a camera test dated to 1891. The clip above of a trick cyclist riding a fixed wheel bike was shot in 1899 by the Edison Manufacturing Co. It's also the first moving pictures of a ‘BMX bar-spin’.

This is a longer version of the YouTube clip embedded on http://www.Quickrelease.tv . It includes a second helping of the 1899 clip, set to 'No cure' by Pain Factor, available from http://www.magnatune.com

* Joseph Swann of Newcastle on Tyne, my home town, invented the first light bulb. Edison patented his a year after Swann and had to later withdraw his US patent.

PODCAST SPONSOR: Condor Cycles, London, http://www.condorcycles.com

This video short from Quickrelease.tv is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79cmQlACL6s but download this 3GP version for use on mobile phones and PDAs.

THE POWER OF BICYCLES is a short film that tells the World Bicycle Relief story and highlights the work being done in the African nation of Zambia to put 26,000 bicycles in the hands of volunteer, community-based HIV/AIDS care workers.