Belfast city centre shoppers were stopped in their tracks on Saturday afternoon by the most bizarre of sights — a public pillow fight in Custom House square.

Around 50 young people gathered armed with pillows at 3pm and proceeded to thrash each other through giggles.

The event was organised on the social networking website Facebook, although there was confusion over the location with some would-be pillow warriors waiting for the off that never came at the City Hall.

Organiser Mike Smith described the gathering as “Just for the helluvit!! — one big giant pillow fight!” but said he wanted at least 200 people to take part to “make it worthwhile”.

Around 250 people agreed to take part while a further 434 turned it down, although the numbers that turned up were smaller.

Water bombs and coloured powder had been mooted but in the event participants stuck to pillows.

The only health and safety type requirement was a request that no feather pillows be used, although an explosion of down towards the end of the event proved this instruction was disregarded.

A couple of hours earlier, Belfast performer Duke Special made a surprise appearance, busking to promote his Dukebox gig at Belsonic.

Large scale pillow fights are popular in the United States, the biggest one recorded was between 10,000 people at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, Georgia on October 6, 2006. Other events, usually organised by students and promoted online, have taken place in London, Tel Aviv, Toronto and an annual St Valentine’s Day pillow fight in San Francisco.