London Ambulance Service (LAS) has just had its busiest weekend of the year.

Final figures are still being counted, but the service says it took nearly 2,400 calls in a nine-hour period between 7pm on Friday (December 16) and 4am on Saturday (December 17).

It was expecting the rush during the night one council had called "the busiest office party day of the year " , and others had dubbed "Mad Friday", "Black Friday" and "Black Eye Friday".

The increase in emergency calls was anticipated as the weekend was the one before Christmas .

Prior to the day, LAS had urged party goers to think about the consequences of drinking too much.

In 2015 the service was so busy that it attended almost 50 people in one hour who had indulged in too much drink.

It was expecting to deal with up to 900 alcohol related incidents, as Londoners begun their festive celebrations.

LAS confirmed the majority of call-outs on Friday night were to people who had injured themselves in a fall while drinking, been assaulted or been found unconscious after too much to drink.

Dr Fenella Wrigley, medical director at London Ambulance Service, said: “We launched our latest campaign ‘Getting drunk is not a game’ in the hope of educating people on the impact that excessive drinking can have on our other patients.

“Every ambulance crew responding to someone who has simply had too much to drink, is an ambulance crew not responding to an ill or injured person who needs them.

“We want Londoners to have a great time during this party season but, we also need them to look after themselves and their friends.

"Too often over the festive season, our crews can spend much of their night caring for people who are vomiting, violent or unconscious after a night out drinking, leaving them unable to respond to other emergencies.”

The weekend was its busiest since 2010, with more than 16,600 emergency calls in total across the service.

LAS put put a plea via Twitter to "only call us in a genuine emergency".

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