Thursday 8th January  0:48 am Good Evening

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Nelson's Column July Sandwiched Out 24th July 2008 Human billboards given their marching orders ‘The End is Nigh’ or so it seems for those sandwich board men on London’s busiest shopping streets. Traditionally used by doom mongers to warn the rest of us about the impending apocalypse, sandwich boards are shortly to meet their own untimely end. By mid August Westminster City Council plans to rid Oxford Street and Covent Garden of those unsightly signs – now more commonly neon coloured and informing shoppers of a bargain ‘Golf Sale’ just around the corner. Placards on Oxford Street have been part of London’s street furniture for more than 100 years. Granted they make the street look ‘cluttered’ – the justification for slapping them with a £2,500 fine – but so do plenty of other unsightly additions. Chewing gum, cigarette butts, people gobbing and, well… people in general. The 100,000 shoppers you have to dodge past just to get from one end of the street to the other are very un-feng shui. I suppose it would be ridiculous to ban them. There are plenty more irritations that living in London entails – the 'Sinner, Winner' guy at Oxford Circus and the free newspapers thrust into your hand at the busiest public transport hubs are two that immediately spring to mind. But is the pole bearer – or the human advertisement – really the worst of them? And so bad, in fact, they need to make up laws to ban them? I’d argue that they perform a public information service. OK, so you might not want to know where the ‘Golf Sale’ is but plenty of people do (or presumably the shop keeper wouldn’t pay someone £4 an hour to stand there with a neon sign all day). Holding a board upright for eight hours a day while avoiding streams of stressed out shoppers hardly seems the most rewarding job but it’s still work for plenty of people – most newly arrived in the country – keeping them off the streets, metaphorically at least. Once, freemen of the city were granted such freedoms as being permitted to herd their sheep across London Bridge. Merrily they could swagger around the City with their sword drawn and get uproariously drunk without fear of arrest. Now we’re not even allowed to stand in Covent Garden with a piece of cardboard strapped to our chests. It strikes me that getting rid of the billboard-on-legs is just another case of the ‘bah humbug’ spirit that sees such innocent things as the sound of the ice cream van reduced to a mere four seconds. As if their seasonally affected wage wasn’t precarious enough, ice cream sellers are – like the sandwich boarders – having their means of making a living swiped from under them. Just think of the untold damage these kind of petty laws are doing to the city’s entrepreneurial spirit. Next, we won’t be able to buy an umbrella from a street stall that springs up in the middle of a downpour. Or those sugar coated roasted chestnuts will suddenly disappear. Then where will we be? Cold, hungry and sodden, that’s where. When you’re dodging out of the way of the cut-price theatre tickets sign, stop, look and appreciate it – most likely this’ll be the first time you’ve done this, if we’re honest, as well as the last. What you’re looking at may have little artistic merit, printed in an unremarkable font and could possibly be hand written in black marker pen. But just think, London will be a less colourful place without it. And now how are you going to know when the end is nigh? Stars of Screen and Stage London’s theatres had more people through their doors in 2007 than ever before and this - cue a Royal Box full of reality TV stars with jazz hands - helped along considerably by tickets sold off the back of ‘Grease is the Word’ (you guessed it, finding Danny and Sandy for ‘Grease’) and that other terrible one ‘Any Dream Will Do’ for Joseph-wannabes. Surely Shakespeare is doing theatrical somersaults in his grave, or at least a soliloquy or two, to prove that London’s theatre scene is indeed worthy of record-breaking praise but that all of London’s a stage, above and beyond 'The Sound of Music'. Could I See You by the Lake, 3pm? Do you remember getting excited at school when your teachers said you could have a lesson outside? St James’s Park recently hosted the grown-up version of this by setting up an al fresco office. It’s all part of a campaign to get Londoners to make the most of the capital’s outdoor spaces and we like the gimmicky ‘nature’ of it all but, in reality, no one ventures outside their stuffy offices to actually work – so they could have forgotten about the Wi-Fi and boardroom and just put out some more deckchairs. Top Architects Choose Un-shaky Ground Richard Rogers’ Terminal 5 at Heathrow hasn’t made the shortlist for this year’s Stirling Prize, awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects, but perhaps it’s for the best that this salt is not rubbed into that particular wound; labelling the sparkling-new, really rather large terminal architecturally attractive in some way could really send the Heathrow protestors over the edge. Much safer water is the nomination of the Royal Festival Hall for its iconic revamp, restoring it to its 1950s splendour and doing the South Bank proud in the process; it’s the only older building in the running. December 2008 23rd December January is on the Horizon 20th December Merry Christmas November 2008 26th November All The World's A Stage 20th November Surviving the Crunch October 2008 24th October Boris v Jingjing 17th October Soaps in Pole Position September 2008 23rd September Chips too Chavvy for Chelsea 16th September The London Restaurant Awards August 2008 26th August No Smoking, No Ducks, No Barbecues 20th August The Olympics July 2008 24th July Sandwiched Out 17th July The Show Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Lady's on Page 3 June 2008 26th June Love All at Wimbledon 16th June Miller Puts the Heat on Tennant May 2008 27th May Booze Banned on Buses 20th May Same Again? April 2008 23rd April By George 11th April Back to the 80s March 2008 28th March How do You Solve A Problem Like Medea? 20th March Flight Fantastic February 2008 20th February Dark, Satanic Turnmills 6th February A Diamond in the Drink January 2008 21st January People Wanted for Plinth 14th January Boo! Hiss! December 2007 28th December Tate That - A Hirst for Art 20th December Christmas Shopping November 2007 27th November Mind the Gap 26th November London On A Tray October 2007 26th October Leaving the Station 14th October The Sky's the Limit September 2007 26th September The Play Within A Play 19th September Fashion, Frocks and Celeb Shocks 12th September Saying Tanks for the Mammaries August 2007 24th August Heathrow under Siege 17th August Gormless 10th August Losing Face July 2007 24th July Are We Reaching Boiling Point Yet This Summer? 13th July Red Ken versus Blonde Boris June 2007 22nd June Last Orders at the Fag Machine 11th June London the Musical May 2007 21st May What Lurks Beneath 10th May The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of April 2007 27th April London’s Walk on the Wild Side 20th April Stand Behind the Yellow Line 13th April Like Water for Chocolate March 2007 23rd March So, Another Magazine 16th March Avoiding iContact February 2007 23rd February Sex and Art... 16th February C-Charge Protest Fails to Bring Down Government 9th February Live Earth London January 2007 26th January A Vote for Shilpa is a Vote for Britain 18th January Carriage on up the West End December 2006 29th December Food for Thought 22nd December A Poisonous Marketing Campaign 15th December In for a Penny, In for Five Pounds November 2006 17th November Big Department Stores Leave Santa Out in the Cold 10th November Failing to Save the World October 2006 27th October Frozen Prawns and Melting Icecaps 20th October Predatory Pelicans and Happy Woodland Folk 13th October Hope at last for east end of Oxford Street September 2006 16th September Lite the Blue Paper and Stand Well Back 9th September Of Poles and Twiglets August 2006 25th August Free Fares For the Fat and the Fashionable 11th August London Friendly 4th August Archway To Organic Heaven July 2006 21st July London - Celebrity Frat House 7th July Out of the Galleries into the Streets June 2006 23rd June Mayors, Nightmares and Marias 16th June Downright Rude in Paris and London 9th June Enter the Inferno May 2006 26th May Curvaceous Border 12th May Vegging Out April 2006 21st April The Camden Crawl 17th April Down the Pan 13th April I Want to Break Free 9th April Big Brother seems to have been left in a bar somewhere 7th April Don't Box Me In March 2006 24th March Political Correctness Reaches New Heights February 2006 24th February A Stadium's Tale: Cup Final Goes West 17th February Modern Musicals are Rubbish 10th February The City-Side Alliance January 2006 20th January February Sales 20th January Moby Sick 13th January Glass Half Full 3rd January Three Cheers for the Tube Station Workers December 2005 22nd December January Bites 16th December A Remarkable Year November 2005 25th November And a Partridge in a JCB 11th November Driving Miss Sadie 4th November Spam, Spam, Spammity-Spam, Shakespeare, Zorro, Chico and Rasputin October 2005 28th October Trick or Treat? 21st October We Don't Mind a Little Delay... 14th October Final Resting Place for Young British Artists