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Riding the whole Central Line: the ten most dogshit things to do in London

PLANNING a trip to the big smoke? Want that authentically wretched London experience the residents keep for themselves? Try these ten must-miss activities:  

Riding the whole Central Line

Who hasn’t dreamed of going all the way from Epping to West Ruislip in just an hour and a half, on a rattling tube of fast-food flatulence filled with angry commuters? The self-loathing is palpable.

Queueing for the changing rooms at Oxford Street Primark

No trip to the busiest, most rundown Primark in the country is complete without queueing for 45 minutes for the six available changing rooms while staff treat you like a shoplifter!

Finding your platform at Euston

Where’s your train? Why won’t anyone tell you? Everyone’s running! Quick, join their stampede! You’re on a train! It’s the wrong train but it’s leaving in two minutes! You’re going to Leeds!

Watching a shite breakdancer in Leicester Square

To think, talented dancers from all over the world come to central London just to cause a spectacle while their mate pickpockets you.

Getting a midnight McDonald’s in Brixton

A Big Mac is available anywhere, but wouldn’t it feel special trying to eat it while simultaneously being sold drugs and mugged, often by the same person?

Racing to find a free toilet in Covent Garden

Refuse to pay £2 to use a filthy toilet? Have irritable bowels or a lactose intolerance? Then spend your afternoon racing around trying to interpret Google Maps while clenching your sphincter.

A urine-scenting tour of Shoreditch

Banksy tours are for the tourists. Instead you’ll be sampling pungent piss in all the locations this cool area has to offer, from alleyways to stairwells to underpasses to bus shelters. Damien Hirst once had a slash here, you know.

Getting your bag searched at the British Museum

Don’t bother sticking around for looted treasures. Just enjoy having your private possessions rifled through by a surly guard who will confiscate your sandwiches.

Taking an autumn stroll through a South London council estate

Best done late. For added thrills, find out a neighbouring postcode and wear a big badge with it on.

Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross

It’s just a gift shop, for f**k’s sake.

The Le Creuset sale, and other middle-class riots waiting to happen

POLICE were called to a Le Creuset warehouse sale at the weekend as owners of Cockapoos threatened to turn tastefully ugly. These are the other riots waiting to happen: 

A Sally Rooney signing

The author herself, the one person who has successfully captured the aching blandness of comfortable lives, is doing a signing. In an independent bookshop, naturally. But tickets are limited and readers are circling, all breathless to tell her she reflected their feelings of listless infidelity so gracefully. A fight ensures. Torn Lululemon litters the streets.

The scramble for places at grammar school

The local grammar school, which has such good Oxbridge links it’s really better than going private, announces it does not have enough places for every detached home in catchment. Some pupils, regardless of potential, will be cast out. The ensuing uprising sees lawyers and doctors fighting tooth and claw. The school is burned down.

The opening of a Gail’s bakery

So minimalist in branding, the apostrophe delicately employed, and likely to add between £10,000-£20,000 to the value of your house. How could anyone not be there on opening day? When they cannot meet demand for Soho buns and the queue turns into a crazed mob of looters? The borekitas are still delicious, even with a modicum of broken glass.

A Pedro Almodóvar film festival

The arthouse cinema is holding a festival of Spain’s most transgressive filmmaker. You must be there. You’ve seen his entire oeuvre, after all. Half of these so-called cineastes aren’t even familiar with his early shorts. But they get in, just because they’ve queued since 8am? Nuh-huh. You come back in the Audi Q5 and drive it into the foyer.

The opportunity to talk about how talented your children are at a dinner party

Larissa is a demon on the French horn, and Lance is so talented a linguist he could be a translator at the UN even though he’s five. But will any of these bores stop barking about their own prodigies long enough for you to get a word in? Desperate, you discharge a pistol into the John Lewis chandelier. Pandemonium ensues.

Waitrose, 6am, December 23rd

Only the common shop on Christmas Eve, The sensible stock up the day before and rise bloody early to do it, only to find every other Boden clone has the same idea. The aisles are a rampage of privilege with pannetone used as clubs. But it’s worth the lacerations and a minor charge of affray to make a perfectly lovely Christmas.

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