THE Northern Echo's famous candle-girl - the girl whose smile graced the front page of our first paper of the new millennium - can today be named.

She is Lydia Maropoulos who is now seven and lives in Bearpark, near Durham City.

We've been searching for Lydia ever since our photographer, Mike Urwin, captured her on film in the candlelight parade winding its way through the streets of Durham City on New Year's Eve, 1999.

To us, her smile - lit by the flicker of the candle's flame - came to symbolise the promise of the moment, as we stepped hopefully into the third millennium.

Although Lydia was oblivious to our search, she was certainly not oblivious to her moment in the spotlight.

Her mother, Anne, remembers: "She went with her father to the newsagents on New Year's Day and, when she saw the paper, she phoned me on her dad's mobile and kept saying: 'I'm famous! I'm famous!'."

Lydia herself remembers: "I was excited and amazed."

"She was flabbergasted," says her eldest brother, Alexander, eight, who can be seen in the picture beside Lydia. He is also carrying a candle but has his hat pulled down over his head against the chill of the winter night.

Beside them in a cloth cap is their father Paul, the professor of engineering at Durham University.

Unseen towards the back of the group are Anne and George, Lydia's twin brother, who is proud to be 16 minutes older than her.

Lydia is in year three at Neville's Cross Primary School where her favourite subjects are art, history, English and maths. Her hobbies include swimming and skipping, and tae kwon do, in which she is hoping to get her yellow belt next month.

"I would like to be a doctor when I grow up," she says. "You get lots of money and it's an interesting job and you can be helpful to people."

The family of five - which will become six in April as Anne is expecting - went to the candlelight parade in an effort to make the turn of the millennium special for the children.

"We wanted them to remember that New Year's Eve but they were only little," said Anne. "After the service, we came home and had a party for them and watched the fireworks over the city."

Lydia's memories take over: "When we had the party poppers, they stuck on the Christmas tree and looked like a boat sailing."

From 10pm that night, Lydia was taking phone calls from her father's native Greece, which had entered the New Year two hours before England.

"At 12 o'clock," remembers Lydia, "we all cheered."

The Maropoulous then followed the traditional Greek custom of sitting down to a midnight pie - steak and mushroom - with a gold coin baked inside. It was spun round three times and whoever had the slice with the coin inside it was going to be lucky throughout the year.

One of Lydia's brothers won it on that first day of 2000 - but on the first day of 2001, which some might argue is the true start of the millennium, it was Lydia's slice that came up trumps.

And her luck is clearly in as once again - her smile is gracing the pages of The Northern Echo.