London Underground Olympics

Tube Olympics - part two

Last month I did a post on some Olympic sports that Tube travellers would excel in (to celebrate our 2012 Olympic bid win). Part two is a not a popular sport but certainly one that at least two London Underground travellers have tried

Bob Sledding or rather Escalator Sliding

However I think that the few Tube travellers who do this would probably be disqualified as it's likely they are under the influence of drugs, if not they are usually fairly well pissed.



This particular stirling effort was captured on film:

"Recently me and my mates attended a posh dinner thing at the Tower of London," writes Elliott Ingram, "It ended early so we were up for a bit of pissing around on the Tube. I filmed it all on my phone."

Basically a guy slides down the central bit of a really long escalator. And at the end falls off.

Enjoy the film it rocks! There's a bit of language in it, as you might imagine, so don't have your office speakers turned up too loudly.

Jon Justice had also sent me a photo of someone else doing the same so we know there's at least two Olympic Escalator Sliding competitors out there!

London Underground Books

I've been book tagged!



This is probably the first time another blogger has directly challenged me to reply to a meme or blog spreading virus (for want of a better word). Kris from Wireless Lanai in Hawaii has asked me to blog the number of books I own, last book I read, the last book I bought, the five books that mean the most to me. As the answers aren't totally London Underground related I've blogged my answers here.

However, in writing it I discovered that I do own a lot of books about the London Underground and that's just a few of them in the picture above. It was tough to say which one my favourite is but in the end I plumped for Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (see my reasons why), although Geoffrey the Tube Train and the Fat Comedian by Alexi Sayle would be a close second (blogged lots and lots of times), followed by the Underneath the Underground series by Anthea Turner.

Seven Ages of Blogging

So funny and so true

A quick diversion from Tube stuff - but you've got to read Diamond Geezer's excellent post about The Seven Ages of Blog based on Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man. And yes, I know I'm at Stage Five!!!

For more of my thoughts on this and another of Diamond Geezer's excellent posts check out my non tube blog.

Advertising Posters on the London Underground

Ones we can see versus ones we can't

There are some really good poster ads on the tube at the moment. I completely forgot to blog the fact that there were a whole platform full of the most "creative" ads at Leicester Square station. This was part of an ad agency competition for most creative London Underground advertising - "Copywriting goes Underground". They were on display until the end of August and some were pretty cool.



Very scary to see how long we can potentially spend looking at London Undeground ads - 3 billion minutes according to the poster above!

My favourite tube ads are ones that remind you that you're a commuter and play on some of the emotions you'll be experiencing while reading them - boredom, frustration, over heating, overcrowding, impatience, etc etc. A current one like this sells Britishness and apologises for disturbing you while waiting for your train.



You can almost hear Hugh Grant bumbling his way through the copy "Er excuse me. Awfully sorry for interrupting your journey. Mortified if you were waiting for a train........" The ad for Harrods' Truly British season then goes on to present examples of the British habit for apologising.

No Sex please, we're British

With the next ad - well done if you even managed to see it on the Tube as it was pulled more or less the before the poster paste had even dried.



The ad for a new reality show featuring Jerry Hall with lots of half naked men on leads drew complaints from people saying that it was sexist and showed people as sex objects. The Evening Standard reported that that the ad was pulled "because of its "sexually demeaning" content.

They ordered the posters, which promote her new VH1 series, "Kept", be torn down within hours of going up on the walls of Tube stations."......

"The show has already aired in America, where it had mixed reviews. "Seldom has whoring for ratings seemed quite so brazen," wrote Variety's TV critic. Sceptical minds might wonder if VH1's Tube posters were a publicity stunt." Indeed.

Other Tube posters which drew complaints were ones for the Tube horror flick "Creep" (which a group of us went to see earlier in the year) - although it was re-instated and a poster with a "stereotypical" view of an Italian butcher which almost caused a diplomatic incident! The mind boggles.

Any ads on the Tube that are currently rocking your boat or driving you mad?

What's your favourite London Underground Song?

Tube and subway songs

Most people would probably say hat's off to The Jam for coming up with some brilliant tube and underground related songs - "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" and "Going Underground" which inspired the name of my site and blog, and also led to the classic spoof song "Going Underground". I even managed to blog and record some buskers singing the original Going Underground on the tube itself.

My current favourite though is James Blunt's "You're Beautiful". "What?" you're saying, "She's finally gone mad, that's not about the tube". Well it may not specifically be about the London Underground, (although he's a Brit so why not?) but it's certainly about passing someone on a crowded subway and sharing a bit of a "moment" with them, thinking "They're beautiful" or "They're hot" and realising that you will never see them again (unless I saw you today.com can come to the rescue). Not something that happens to me a lot, I'll admit, but doing that mutual double take with someone on the Tube has certainly has happened a few times. The full lyrics to "You're Beautiful" are here and you can watch the realplay video or windows video here.

Anyway, there's more song titles that might inspire you to think of your favourite on my main site and also Geoff has done a round up of London Underground and train related songs too. Have we missed any, and what's your favourite? Have fun!