London Urban Legends (4 page)

An unnamed Jaguar employee is quoted as saying; ‘It is one of those old traditions where people used to write things behind the seat panel of cars and they were never discovered unless there was an accident. But on this occasion it was not very funny.’ The discovery of the magazines and swastika resulted in the dismissal of an unnamed worker. Another unnamed source at the
Coventry Evening Telegraph
of 13 June 2001 described the insult as a regular prank by apprentices: ‘I have never understood if it’s for good luck or what, but the person knows the owner of the car will never see it. This one came to light, but normally they never do.’

The story of McQueen’s Savile Row prank is set in his early days, perhaps during his apprenticeship at Anderson & Sheppard. Apprentices have rituals and rites and, by their nature, apprentices are young and irreverent. Is there a tradition, particularly when producing something like a car or jacket for rich customers, of hiding something offensive within it?

Unlike the Queen’s car, the McQueen story does not have any evidence for it so far. The stories have generally been passed on informally. The
Daily Telegraph
, writing enthusiastically about Prince Charles’ fashion sense on 13 June 2012, claimed that the original was written in the lining of an overcoat by McQueen at Anderson & Sheppard, while a 2011 feature on the
Vogue
website, dated 11 May 2011, puts the scene of the fashion crime at Gieves & Hawkes, stating that McQueen was embroidering a suit, not making a coat. I have not been able to find a definitive interview with Alexander McQueen in which he states that there is any truth to the rumour. It does not seem like anyone else is referring back to an original article either, as the versions vary so much. There may be one out there somewhere, but the popularity of the myth of this hidden insult is because it perfectly encapsulates who Alexander McQueen was and how he did things.

It is always the underdog that leaves the insult, never a privileged bully hiding a ‘kick me’ sign on the back of an employee or minion. Even the Oasis
v
. Blur story relates to a time when middle-class Blur were the chart underdogs to the ‘champagne supernova’ of Oasis’s success. Oasis’ album at the time ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory’ spent ten weeks at No. 1 and sold 16 million copies. Apparently, it was not a member of Blur who hid the message in the desk but a studio producer.

Where is the reality in this? Urban myths often create more questions the deeper you look into them, but each question leads to a truth about our own selves and fears even if they lead away from any actual event. Is the hidden insult regularly concealed on the property of the prosperous by an insubordinate? By its very nature it is hard to tell. There is something known as ‘ostentation in folklore’. This describes people hearing a folk story or urban legend and, by copying it, making the story actually real. Had stories of the Queen’s car and Prince Charles’ jacket inspired a cheeky studio worker and a fed-up artist constructing a giant Olympic monument? And who wants to open up these objects and check?

Up the stairs to the balcony where King Edward VII, so the foreman told me, liked to have his chair to watch the dancers on the floor below.

Geoffrey Fletcher, The London Nobody Knows

 

L
ONDON IS A
city riddled with royalty, with statues of monarchs popping up in all manner of unexpected places (
See
‘The Suicidal Sculptor'
here
and ‘The Misadventures of Brandy Nan'
here
for more on those) and the hulking presence of Buckingham Palace at the edge of Green Park is a reminder of our present royal incumbents. From newspapers we know what the younger royals (mostly Prince Harry) like to get up to in the evening, but what about the Queen herself? How does she occupy herself when off duty?

The general idea, I think, is of Her Majesty sitting on a gilded seat watching
EastEnders
with Prince Philip muttering next to her in his dressing gown. Another suggestion, picked up by Rodney Dale in
The Tumour in the Whale
, came from a friend-of-a-friend who knew an under-footman at Buckingham Palace who said there is a secret side door and that late at night the Queen emerges and secretly goes window shopping around Piccadilly, Bond Street and Oxford Street.

Stories of royals among us are as old as England itself, and I'm sure everyone around my age remembers the Ladybird book with the image of King Alfred burning the cakes (or loaves) he was asked to mind by a peasant woman. The peasant woman scolded the incompetent kitchen help, without realising it was the king. Alfred was in disguise after fleeing to the Somerset Levels to hide from the Danes.

A more recent rumour was of the myth-magnet Diana, Princess of Wales sneaking out of Kensington Palace in a baseball cap and shades to visit the local newsagent, or simply walk along the high street unharassed. Other word-of-mouth stories had her going out clubbing in a dark wig. In his book
A Royal Duty
Paul Burrell described buying a long, dark wig and large glasses so that Diana could have a night out in Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in Soho. She even chatted up the man standing next to her in the queue who, she said to Burrell, didn't have a clue who she was.

Paul Burrell's role as the only man Diana trusted makes these stories difficult to verify and there is a whiff of myth about them. The meaning of them, like the Queen going window shopping, is handily given to us by Diana, marvelling at the freedom of disguise, when she said, ‘I can be me in a public place!'

Alfred was in isolation and pondering his fate when the cakes burnt, like Robert the Bruce when he was inspired by a tenacious spider. His story, unlike Diana and Queen Elizabeth's, shows how different he was to ordinary citizens; he was pondering the fate of his nation as the baked goods burned, while the twentieth-century tales suggest that royalty can yearn for something that resembles normal life. Another story of royal otherness, as well as enforcing the ancient advice of always being polite to strangers, is of King James and the tinker. It's a ballad that tells of the king slipping his retinue whilst hunting to go ‘in hope of some pass time'. Like a lot of unsupervised men (and incognito Princesses of Wales) with time on their hands, James went to an alehouse and fell into conversation with a tinker over a beer or two. After a while the tinker let slip that he'd heard the king was in the forest, so James got him to jump up on his horse so they could find him. They found James's entourage, and the tinker asked which one was the king. James said it was the only one with a hat on, which was he, and the poor tinker fell to his knees to beg for forgiveness. The king knighted his new drinking buddy, who kept his sack of tinker-tools hanging up in his new, grand hall. The location of the story varies; some claim it is Enfield in north London, where there is a King and Tinker pub that commemorates the story if not any actual event. Norwood in Surrey also claims the story, and there are other, similar stories told about different monarchs in Tamworth and Mansfield.

A recurring theme with these legends is that celebrity increasingly replaces royalty as the subject of the story. When the eccentric and much-loved New Cross pub, the Montague Arms, closed in early 2012, the local blog ‘Transpontine' asked for readers' reminiscences of nights and events there. The pub was famous for the blind keyboard player who played cover versions to bemused locals, and coach parties on their way in or out of London. Pete, the keyboard player, would invite members of the audience (including this author) up on stage to sing. One response to Transpontine's request began at this point and was told to one contributor by the pub's former barman, Stan: ‘This funny fellah wearing white gloves took to the key board and played the most amazing tunes – 'twas like magic running through his fingertips…'

Who was it? None other than Mr Michael Jackson!

Criminal Tourism

Michael Jackson and Ronnie and Reggie Kray may not have too many things in common, but all three were said to have visited the Montague Arms. The visit, like the description of a similar visit by the gangsters to Peter Cook's club The Establishment, treats their appearance as almost a celebrity endorsement rather than a demand for money.

London's most famous criminals, from Dick Turpin to the Kray twins, have taken on a legendary status different to the rest of the stories in this book. They are folk heroes who are celebrated for their rough individuality and rule-breaking, and are even thought to be protectors of the common man. One warm Friday night in July 2012, I passed the bus stop opposite Shoreditch Town Hall and a woman, appalled by the hipsters and trendies swaggering past her along this East End street, shouted: ‘If only the Krays were still here. They'd sort this out!' Murdering, bully gangsters are now the protectors of the common people who would keep the fey and pretentious out of east London, a vigilante fashion and lifestyle police. I think the attraction to organised criminals like the Krays, the Richardsons and Dick Turpin is that they live successfully by their own rules and not according to the limitations of bureaucracy, government or corporate values. It is imagined that they then become an informal sheriff of their area, not tolerating any crime other than their own.

Whilst not as popular as nearby Jack the Ripper tours, Kray tours have been written so visitors can see the sights of their crime spree. The Blind Beggar pub in Bethnal Green is where Ronnie Kray murdered rival gangster George Cornell. Tourists regularly arrive, looking for the bullet holes from the murder. They should be directed to the Magdela pub on South Hill Park near Hampstead Heath station. Here, a drunk Ruth Ellis shot her boyfriend David Blakely on 10 April 1955 as he left the pub, famously making herself the last woman to be executed in Britain. The four or five bullet holes have been visible since and are regularly referred to in many pub guides. Pubs are, of course, commercial enterprises and keen to use any means to bring people to the site. This could be a ghost, an historical artefact or a story with the evidence for all to see, like a bullet hole, a modern version of the indelible bloodstain that testifies to an ancient murder.

The holes from Ellis' gun are said to be visible in the white wall of the pub and a plaque was hung by them, explaining what the pock-marks on the building are. The plaque has since been stolen or removed; it got the year of the murder wrong, saying that Blakely was shot in 1954. It has been suggested that these marks were enhanced by a previous landlady and may not be linked to the murder at all.

Crime tourism is not new in London. Dick Turpin is one character who seemed to drink and take shelter in pretty much every pub across London except the ones Claude Duval, the Dandy Highwayman, drank in. The London pub most closely associated with Dick Turpin is the Spaniards Inn, which once boasted knives and forks used by him, as well as a small window where the highwayman could be aided and abetted by pub staff who would pass him food, money and drink while he was still in his saddle.
Old and New London
describes the Coach and Horses pub in Hockley in the Hole, now Ray Street, where a valise marked ‘R. Turpin' was found in the cellars along with blank keys used for lock-breaking. Also at the Coach and Horses, still on Ray Street and a backstreet, was said to be a passage from the pub cellar that lead out to the banks of the Fleet river which was used by highwaymen or, as the book calls them, ‘minions of the moon'. Turpin also left another unholy relic, a pistol engraved with ‘Dick's Friend' in the rafters of the Anchor Inn in Shepperton and another within the walls of Ye Old King's Head in Chigwell.