You know how it goes: there are three upturned cups and a small ball. The ball is placed underneath one of the cups, then the cups are swiftly swapped around several times, as a small crowd gathers, and observers are invited to place a bet on where the ball has ended up.
It’s a magician’s parlour trick, really, suitable for children’s birthday parties. Or perhaps you’d care to make it interesting? Nickie Aiken, the leader of Westminster city council, would not. She says these shell games are “clearly organised crime” and the scourge of Westminster Bridge, where as many as 14 “Romanian crime gangs” are currently operating. Aiken has vowed to bring the matter up personally with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick and, in fairness to the Met, 30 people have already been arrested for illegal gambling offences in Westminster this year.
We should all be comforted. Not by the council’s hard line or the swiftness of the police response but by the fact that ye olde three-cup shuffle is still performed (perpetrated?) on Westminster Bridge, just as it as was in your nan’s day, and her nan’s day before her. Isn’t it also cheering to learn that in this age of sophisticated deepfakes there are still enough analogue idiots about to make such scams profitable?
Are the perpetrator-performers really all recently immigrated Romanians? I’ve seen no passports, but assuming they are, a cap doff is also due for assimilating so quickly to our culture, and keeping London’s local customs alive. Make no mistake, this kind of thing has gone on for centuries. The only reason the medieval Square Mile doesn’t include a “Swindlers’ Alley” to go with such descriptive street names as “Milk Street”, “Poultry” and “Cock Lane” is because rip-off merchants have never limited themselves to a single trade.
Londoners learn to keep our wits about us and our wallets closer but we can still appreciate the show. Like those modern-day mountebank stalls on Oxford Street, where a barrowboy drums up custom by throwing out free samples of dodgy designer perfume to plants in the audience. They always leg it just before the police arrive.
We should all be comforted by the fact that ye olde three-cup shuffle is still performed as it was in your nan’s day
Or you’ll know which local market is the best bet for buying back your own bike, the morning after it was stolen at an extremely competitive price. Bargain! Perhaps we should feel more pity for the tourist targets but it’s much easier to envy them their innocence. You see, in this town, there are short-cons and then there are rip-offs and at least with the former you get a little bit of showmanship chucked in for your money.
Long-term Londoners are mostly too street-smart to be taken in but much more likely to have to put up with a series of unglamorous everyday rip-offs. Does your landlord flourish a silk handkerchief before charging you two-thirds of your income to live within 90 minutes of your workplace? No, mine neither.
There are bad smells that won’t go away ...
My old flatmate embezzled funds from our joint account, and regularly borrowed my clothes without asking, but she did also refuse to sign the lease on a place above a chicken shop.
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For that, all else is forgiven. I totally understood that once we moved in, both us and everything we owned would forever reek like a £2.99 box of spicy wings, but at the time I felt that was a fair exchange for cheap rent.
She could hardly get through the viewing without retching. In retrospect, she was right of course.
A public pong can ruin everything. Reflect on this the next time you’re passing through Kennington on the Northern line and wondering where that mysterious vomit smell comes from.
Wider social trends, such as nightclub closures and abstemious teens, have a similar whiff about them. Remember when the smoking ban was introduced in 2007?
Overnight, it became obvious that the stale nicotine fug of pubs and clubs had been masking an even less sexy odour; the BO of your fellow horny humans. No wonder Gen X would rather stay at home with a scented candle.
On the plus side, I’ve designed a range of artisan nose pegs which is going to make me a fortune.
Sure, there’s the core market of London Underground commuters but also — as detailed in the investment brochure — a potentially profitable sideline selling to style-conscious centrists hoping to vote in the next general election.
New series will leave you Starstruck
After Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (like a normal sitcom but for women), Roisin Conaty’s GameFace (like Fleabag but not for posh girls) and Aisling Bea’s This Way Up (like GameFace but more Irish), there’s a new, loosely autobiographical, life-in-London sitcom in the works.
New Zealander Rose Matafeo won last year’s Edinburgh Comedy Award and now her self-penned six-part series, Starstruck, has been snapped up by HBO and BBC Three.
It’s almost as if women’s lives are multitudinous and we deserve TV comedy which reflects that.
Can’t wait.