Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Countryfolk of Borsetshire - in the heart of London


Tim Bentinck who plays David in The Archersis the voice of Mind the Gap on the Piccadilly Line.
That's it, really. I didn't like to adulterate such a good titbit with anything else.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Famous Cameos

Did you know?

Sheryl Crow was a backing singer for Michael Jackson on his Bad tour in 1988?

Or that Michael and Jermaine Jackson provided vocals for Rockwell's 1984 hit "Somebody's Watching Me"

Sting co-wrote Dire Straits Money for Nothing and also features on the backing track.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

They Sell Fridges, Don't They?



Selfridges, on the north side of Oxford Street is where I go when I'm feeling low, much in the same way that Holly Golightly does in Tiffany's.

Original plans for the building at the turn of the twentieth century included a huge central dome, taller than St Paul's but even in those days, rich Americans had problems with planning permission. Selfridge's was one of the first and largest steel-framed buildings in Britain, (the very first was the Ritz)

The statue above the famous Selfridge's clock is called the Queen of Time. It's usually used as a point of reference for lesser establishments across the road who imaginatively use it in their advertising, "opposite Selfridge's clock".
She represents the spirit of Commerce and there's also a statue to Commerce on Holborn Viaduct)

The Central Line trundles worryingly close to the bowels of the building and the rumour that Gordon Selfridge had his own private underground station has never been disproved. Certainly part of the building were used as secret US intelligence headquarters during World War 2.

Selfridges - my retail heaven

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Dam dead people


This, courtesy of my friends at JournoBiz, that the first and last people to die in construction of the Hoover Dam were J.G. Tierney and P.W. Tierney-father and son and they both died on December 20 (13 years apart). Tierney Senior who died in 1922 drowned in the Colorado River while undertaking a geological survey in the preparations of the dam and his son fell from one of the intake towers.
Here's a cheery list of the industrial fatalites - though there were plenty more deaths caused by heat and exhaustion.