Like ravenous caged animals, they are jostling for position, desperate to get a glimpse of the world's biggest teen idol, Zac Efron.
Thousands of teenagers outside London's Disney store have been queuing and even camping on the pavement overnight to await his arrival.
If you're the mother or father of a child between four and 15, then you'll know the television movie High School Musical is described as a bigger phenomenon than Grease - the hit film starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John, which had the world jiving 30 years ago.
Hollywood's latest heart-throb Zac Efron, star of High School Musical and its' sequel which has been described as a bigger phenomenon than Grease
But if you haven't got a child in that age bracket you might even now not be aware of the tidal wave that has turned a simple made-for-TV movie into the biggest musical sensation in modern times.
And even if you are cynical about the mass hysteria that's normally associated with boy bands, you can hardly doubt the chutzpah that's transformed the £2million it cost to make the film into the £50 million it's netted worldwide.
And that's not counting the spin-off albums, sequels, tours, stage versions, on-ice versions, books and merchandising lines.
So where did it come from? Well certainly it taps into well-known Grease territory.
Teen sensation: Zac and the cast in London this week
Boy meets girl on holiday, goes back to high school, discovers she's a new girl and at the risk of forfeiting his cool - he's captain of the basketball team, she's a maths genius - they audition for the leads in the school musical.
Cue some very catchy tunes - they may not quite seem up to the "Tell me more, tell me more" standard of those old Grease favourites, but to the tween generation they've struck gold, literally.
The album was the best seller in the U.S. last year and went double platinum in the UK. It also holds the Guinness World Record for most successful songs from a single soundtrack.
Cue also the inevitable sequel - High School Musical 2 - which premieres in London on Sunday, will be aired on TV in September and notched up 17.2 million viewers when it went out in America last week.
And cue a new, squeaky-clean heart-throb who appeared bare-chested on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.
Like the film itself there's not a sniff of rebellion about him, or sexual innuendo.
Zac Efron has instant allure for the teen market.
Zan in action in High School Musical 2
While he gives off an aura that anyone who meets him can be his friend, when you look closer, he's clearly a star who guards his privacy closely the moment the spotlight is turned off.
Zac, who plays the basketball prodigy-turned-musical star Troy, is the reason why all these girls - and boys - are screaming.
So why is he, according to your kids, the coolest guy, like, ever?
Don't expect the suave sophistication and sexual allure of Travolta, Efron is a diminutive, fine-boned, unassuming floppy-fringed teen, who is still trying his best to act like a normal 19-year-old in the face of this mania.
Girls are crying and hyperventilating wherever you turn.
In the midst of it all even the adults, who have never seen anything like it, say they are nervous of the surging body of teenagers.
A suggestion that we venture outside to photograph Efron next to a London bus is laughed away as insane. No wonder the Los Angeles Times recently said HSM is bigger than The Beatles.
"It's so funny. It's not the 10,000 people screaming. It's when you look down at the one person who is either going crazy or crying," notes Efron, who is wearing his trademark woollen beanie hat.
It's calm talk from a star who admits he's still agog that he is - by chance - the actor, singer, dancer and now universal heart-throb from the blockbusting film.
With 200 million viewers worldwide, it's been suggested he can command more than $5million for the already-planned third film, which is aimed at a cinema release rather than the small screen.
But what's even more extraordinary is that Efron has become the star of a musical in which he didn't even sing.
Nor is it him on the album.
His voice was dubbed by a superior-sounding chap called Andrew Seeley, who, of course, is nowhere to be seen in the maelstrom that HSM has become.
So what's going on?
Efron's voice is now barely audible above the screams from the sea of fans. They clearly do not care whether he is really singing or not. They're here now to see him promote High School Musical 2, in which he fought, this time, to be able to sing and not be dubbed.
"It was definitely a sore point and disappointing for me not to sing first time round," he says.
"The fans are really supportive because it wasn't my voice in the first movie and I didn't even sing on the first album, although I wanted to.
"I've got more of a raw, untrained voice and they wanted more of a pop sound."
Disney, who made the film for its television channel, clearly realised that Efron's poster-boy appeal was so secure that unleashing his real voice on the world would not dent the financial success of the sequel.
Either that, or it would become just too embarrassing second time round to have a musical in which the star scarcely sings a note.
Efron felt confident in having enough clout to insist on being allowed to sing second time round. But did executives make him take singing lessons?
"No, I've not taken any lessons. It was a challenge, but I have actually been singing all my life."
Why, then, was Efron the only one to sit out when High School Musical's cast went on tour?
"There were scheduling issues," he says, before adding more candidly: "If I had to hear the High School Musical songs any more, I probably would have jumped off something very tall."
Instead, Andrew Seeley, who dubbed his voice, did the tour.
"He is an incredibly nice bloke and was outstanding," says Efron graciously.
"But I felt very embarrassed when the entire cast, including me, was invited to accept a music award at the Billboard Awards. My voice was only on the album in just a few lines, so I felt extremely guilty."
Efron seems secretly pleased to have a less synthetic voice.
He is, in many ways, a reluctant celebrity and the voice issue has cast him in a cooler - more aloof - light than the rest of the cast.
While other members have signed record contracts, Efron has turned down all offers.
His co-star Vanessa Hudgens, who plays Gabriella, the Hispanic maths genius and new girl at school, proudly announces that her album went gold in the States.
Before that, she wanted to be a Victoria's Secret lingerie model, she says.
Efron, meanwhile, has his heights set higher. He has already impressed critics in his role as Link in the film Hairspray, alongside Travolta, and is signed up for a remake of the 1984 musical film Footloose, which made Kevin Bacon the Zac Efron of his day.
Hairspray's director Adam Shankman is also developing a comedy for him called Seventeen.
And he admits he is already focusing elsewhere: "I could act, sing and fake my way through a dance. But singing and being in musicals wasn't what I set out to do. It happened on the way, but I don't want it to be a major part of my career."
Though High School Musical may spawn many more sequels, Efron has said he'd "hopefully not do any more."
But now he adds diplomatically that if High School Musical 3 is to be made for the big screen: "I'd want to be part of it because it would be a testimony to its enormous success."
Directed by Kenny Ortega, famous for choreographing Dirty Dancing, High School Musical's appeal is in the fact it's like a modern re-telling of Romeo and Juliet.
The sequel continues the story when school's out for summer and offers up more catchy songs, powerful ballads and dancing. Once again the story concentrates on heart-versuspeer pressure as the rich girl/villainess attempts to lure Troy away from Gabriella by getting her father to offer him a basketball scholarship to college.
But will this virtuous pop-culture image haunt - and even brand - Efron for life?
"Not necessarily," he insists.
"I am going to be who I am without High School Musical.
"I think this is helped by the fact that I make every effort to keep my work and personal life separate."
He's not yet 20, but he's been sufficiently well-briefed on how to dead-bat questions about his romantic life. So does he rule out on-set romances?
He rolls his head laughing, before politely saying: "I don't know where to go with this question."
I think he was going to say that an on-set romance isn't out of the question, which may have been an honest answer considering the rumours that he's dating co-star Hudgens in real life as well as in the movie.
They were photographed kissing in Hawaii after the filming of High School Musical 2 ended.
"I just wasn't ready for those photographers. But it's a small price to pay for the benefits we receive.
"Who cares if a few photos came out? But I don't want to be the 19-year- old kid who talks about his relationships in interviews," he says, aware that his fan base needs him to be single and available.
One of his co-stars, Monique Coleman, reveals: "Zac has a way of wooing the women by making every single girl feel like they could be his girlfriend."
At school, however, Efron admits to having been something of a geek. '
"I didn't get much attention from the chicks.
"I got good grades. You'd have called me a nerd."
Efron's refuge is his small hometown, San Luis Obispo, three hours north of LA, where he lives alone in a two-bedroom flat.
He goes to his parent's house any time he has two consecutive days off.
"I have a boot full of laundry and I go and sleep in my old bunk bed.
"You just don't realise how amazing it is to wake up to a hot breakfast made by your mum until it's gone."
He can credit his parents, David and Starla, for his no-nonsense approach to celebrity.
"I had a protected childhood. I was lucky."
He even laughs off the I Hate Zac Efron Clubs springing up over the world thanks to jealous, hormonal boys.
"If there are people who are devoted enough to hate me, then I must be doing something right."
Efron signed with an acting agent in Los Angeles while still at school in California.
His first high-profile TV spot was a guest role in ER in 2003 - he died on the operating table.
The following year he won a part in a shortlived TV series called Summerland and then he auditioned for High School Musical.
He may be planning his break away from it now, but Efron is grateful for the way it has transformed him into a leading man. Efron evinces the real clean-living deal.
He says he has never even been inside a Hollywood nightclub.
Famously amenable when girls approach him, he is known to escort fans outside his favourite cafe to allow for better photos.
But he is happy to finger the real perpetrators of the mayhem surrounding him: the parents.
"They're the ones who really want the pictures. The girls are too shy. It's the parents who get really excited."
I take one last look. With his tiny frame, Efron seems unlikely to have the serious sex appeal required for adult males in Hollywood. But the throng of girls all around may well prove me wrong.
• High School Musical 2 premieres this Sunday. It airs in the UK on the Disney Channel on September 21 at 6pm.
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