Army Staff Sergeant Derrick Brooks got to play Barack Obama yesterday as he stood in for the President-elect during a giant dress rehearsal in Washington for next week's inauguration.

In the bitter cold that is likely to mark Mr Obama's swearing-in as President next Tuesday, Sergeant Brooks was sworn in at the west front of the US Capitol, standing next to US Navy Yeoman First Class LaSean McCray, who played Michelle Obama, with the soon-to-be First Lady's name hung around her neck.

Looking on were stand-ins for their two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7: schoolgirls Dominique Sewell and Gianna Justice Samora-Nixon.

About 5,000 people, mostly from the US military, took part in two dress rehearsals, one with pauses to correct mistakes, the second a straight run-through. The US Marine Band played Hail to the Chief, while the Old Guard salute artillery battery fired from Taft Park, north of the Capitol - but only the first and last shots of what will be a 21-gun salute next week.

Mr Obama said yesterday that he had been working hard on his inaugural speech. He said that every time he reads Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address - considered perhaps the best in US history - “you start getting intimidated”. He added: “I think the main task for me in an inauguration speech, and I think this is true for my presidency generally, is to try to capture as best I can the moment we are in ... to project confidence that, if we take the right measures, that we once again can be that country, that beacon for the world.”

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