London Underground's Strangest Tales

by Iain Spragg

  Until 1968, diligent drivers would remind passengers they were one misguided step away from oblivion each time they left the train, but that all seemed a bit archaic and London Underground finally decided to record a safety message. Hence the legendary ‘Mind the Gap’ reprise was invented.

  The first voice commuters heard imploring them not to plummet beneath the train belonged to sound engineer Peter Lodge. He had originally been asked to help record an actor speaking the words, but the acquisitive thesp suddenly demanded royalties every time his message was played and London Underground understandably told him to take a running jump. Lodge had already recorded the phrase to test sound levels on the equipment and Tube bosses decided that it was cheaper to stick with his effort rather than bother Equity again.

  Lodge’s dulcet tones were soon heard across the network helping to save life and limb, but he’s not the only person to record the message. Tim Bentinck, a.k.a. David Archer in Radio 4’s The Archers, is the man behind the voice on Piccadilly Line trains, while the phrase got the feminine touch in 1999 when Emma Clarke hit the recording studio.

  The working relationship lasted eight years but all ended rather acrimoniously in 2007 when an interview in the Daily Mail seemed to suggest Clarke was not exactly an avid fan of Underground commuting and everyone got rather hot under the collar. Clarke claimed she’d been misquoted, Transport for London claimed she’d betrayed them and her P45 was in the post before she could say ‘the next station is West Brompton’.

  ‘Mind the Gap’, however, has done quite well without her and is now used on transport systems from Brazil to China, Sweden and Portugal, proving gaps really are an international menace.

  The phrase has also permeated into popular culture with at least four books, a movie production company, a theatre company and a board game having ‘borrowed’ the three little words of warning for their own name.

  Minding the gap, it seems, has never been so popular.

  THE MISPLACED PISTOLS OF FINSBURY PARK

  1968

  Passengers who regularly use Finsbury Park Station on the Victoria Line will be familiar with the elegant tile motif on the platform that depicts a pair of duelling pistols, but most commuters probably don’t realise the guns really shouldn’t be there.

  The pistols were commissioned by London Underground for the new Finsbury Park Station, which was opened in 1968 when the Victoria Line came into service. English poster artist Tom Eckersley was approached to design an eye-catching motif and, in a nod to the area’s history as a site for duelling in the early nineteenth century, it was decided a pistols theme would be appropriate.

  Which would make a nice story were it not for the fact London Underground dropped a bit of an historical clanger and confused Finsbury Park for Finsbury Fields, a more central location in Islington that really was used by disgruntled toffs with shooters to settle their arguments.

  All 16 of the new Victoria Line stations were adorned with tile mosaics back in the 1960s but thankfully there were no more embarrassing mistakes, which explains why the network boasts a silhouette of Queen Victoria at Victoria and a black horse motif at, well, Blackhorse Road Station.

  Brixton has a pile of bricks – an artistic play on words – while Oxford Circus is decorated with a geometric snakes and ladders motif of blue, red and brown dots to represent how people change between the Victoria, Central and Bakerloo Lines through a maze of passageways.

  Thankfully, a motif for Cockfosters was never commissioned.

  THE DARK SIDE OF TUBE TRAVEL

  1972

  Although the barrage of CCTV cameras ensure the London Underground is statistically one of the safest forms of public transport, there is still something a little eerie and sinister about the Tube should you find yourself all alone on a deserted platform, cut off from the world above.

  The sense of menace has led to many macabre urban myths about the network, but perhaps the most well-worn is the terrifying tale of the young woman who gets on a train late at night and only narrowly escapes meeting with a grisly fate.

  The women, the story goes, gets onto the carriage to find just one other passenger, a young man, on board. At the next stop, however, two men carry what seems like a sleeping woman onto the train and as it rumbles on, the first man approaches the lady passenger and whispers conspiratorially in her ear, ‘Get off at the next stop.’

  She’s obviously suspicious but, glancing at the other three late-night commuters, she senses something is seriously wrong and decides to take his advice. The pair disembark and as she looks nervously at the departing carriage, she sees the back of the trio’s heads and suddenly notices a pair of scissors sticking out of the dead women’s skull.

  The Underground has also been both the inspiration and setting for two rather gruesome horror films and those of a nervous disposition who are also regular Tube users would be well advised to stop reading now.

  The first – Death Line – was released in 1972 and tells the unsettling story of a family of cannibals descended from Victorian railway workers who live in the network’s dark tunnels and feast on unsuspecting passengers at Russell Square and Holborn. The flesh-eaters, however, make a big mistake when they kidnap and devour an important politician and are subsequently hunted down by the Met’s finest.

  In 2004, Creep was premiered and had the stomachs of audiences churning with its graphic portrayal of a young woman who accidentally gets locked in overnight at an Underground station and is subsequently mercilessly stalked by a hideously deformed and deranged serial killer (a.k.a. Creep), who butchers anyone she meets almost as soon as she can cry, ‘Can you help me?’

  Needless to say, she eventually escapes his murderous clutches, there are no other survivors (although a cute dog does make it out) and the villain meets a suitably over-the-top and anatomically revealing end.

  In literature, the dark side of the Tube was celebrated in 2010 with the publication of an anthology of terrifying tales entitled The End of the Line.

  ‘This collection of stories from some of horror fiction’s best authors will glue you to the page,’ promised the press release. ‘But watch out, it may leave you too afraid to take the metro to work. In deep tunnels something stirs, borne on a warm breath of wind, reeking of diesel and blood. The spaces between stations hold secrets too terrible for the upper world to comprehend and the steel lines sing with the songs of the dead.’

  It’s probably safe to assume they’re not talking about Elvis’s greatest hits.

  COMMUTERS GET A CULINARY SURPRISE

  1979

  The London Underground is not, by any stretch of the imagination, renowned for its excellent cuisine. If you’re lucky you might find yourself tucking into a bag of cheese and onion crisps from a vending machine, but if you’re really unfortunate you’ll be forced to sit next to an inebriated idiot chomping their way through a particularly smelly takeaway on the journey home.

  In short, the Tube and good food are virtual strangers.

  But that all briefly changed in May 1979 when the Jubilee Line was opened to the public for the first time and the unsuspecting passengers who boarded one of the new trains at Bond Street Station were offered a delicious cordon bleu meal. On a real plate.

  The commuters wolfed down their meal accompanied by the strains of a string quartet, who had been parachuted in to add a touch of elegance to proceedings, and everyone agreed that the Jubilee Line was without doubt a class above the network’s other lines.

  Sadly, they got the shock of their lives the following day when they arrived at Bond Street to discover it was back to business as usual and the only free food on offer was a half-eaten ham sandwich thrown on the carriage floor.

  At least the lucky passengers who did get a gratis lunch had a better experience of the grand opening than poor old Prince Charles, who was bundled into a driver’s cab in one of the new trains for an awkward photo opportunity.

  The pictures of the heir apparent smiling inanely in the cab are trul
y terrible and made a nonsense of the argument that Charles wasn’t earning his annual Civil List salary.

  A QUICK PINT ON THE PLATFORM

  1985

  A long, hot Tube journey can force even the most hardened Underground commuter to turn to drink and until 1985, dehydrated passengers didn’t even have to leave Sloane Square Station to quench their thirst.

  Like many other stations on the network, Sloane Square boasted its very own pub. Called the ‘Hole In The Wall’, the watering hole was on the westbound platform of the station and was so famous it features heavily in the 1975 book A Word Child by Iris Murdoch.

  ‘After leaving the office I would travel either to Sloane Square or to Liverpool Street to have a drink in the station buffet,’ the lead character relates.

  In the whole extension of the Underground system those two stations are, as far as I’ve been able to discover, the only ones which have bars actually upon the platform. The concept of the tube station platform bar excited me.

  In fact the whole Underground region moved me, I felt as if it were in some sense my natural home. These two bars were not just a cosy after-the-office treat, they were the source of a dark excitement, places of profound communication with London, with the sources of life, with the caverns of resignation to grief and to mortality.

  Drinking there between six and seven in the shifting crowds of rush-hour travellers, one could feel on one’s shoulder as a curiously soothing yoke the weariness of toiling London, that blanked released tiredness after work which can somehow console even the bored, even the frenzied.

  There were at one time more than 30 licensed premises on the Tube, which were often open outside normal licensing hours, but sadly one by one they were closed down as London Underground decided that hordes of tipsy travellers wandering around the network was an accident waiting to happen.

  London Mayor Boris Johnson went a step further in 2008 when he banned alcohol on the network completely, ensuring sobriety rather than silliness was the order of the day.

  ANIMAL MAP MAGIC

  1988

  Join-the-dots has been a simple childhood favourite for decades but it also happens to be the inspiration for an unusual art project and merchandising operation based on Harry Beck’s iconic Tube map.

  ‘Animals On The Underground’ began life in 1988 when illustrator Paul Middlewick was using the network and suddenly realised he could create the outlines of a series of creatures simply by joining up the map’s lines, stations and junctions.

  ‘I got the idea when I was travelling on the Tube,’ Middlewick said. ‘It gets very boring commuting daily on the Underground and I’d stare at the map as I waited for my train. After a while, I started to see shapes in the Tube map, particularly animals. I sketched them down and “Animals On The Underground” was born.

  ‘Since then, I have picked out over 20 different animals from the intersecting lines and stations on the map. My favourite animal has to be the Elephant. He’s the first animal I spotted and remains, to me at least, the cutest one.

  ‘I do have loads of other animals, possibly as many as 50. However, I set myself very high standards and only publish the ones I feel are good enough for everyone to enjoy. I still surprise myself by spotting new ones. I have spotted other items such as bottles, buildings and vehicles but it’s always the animals which are the most memorable and appealing.’

  His creations range from the everyday to the exotic and all are prefixed by the name of one of the stations found within the design, meaning visitors to his website can feast their eyes on the Queen’s Park Cat and Barking the Dog, as well as the Whitechapel Polar Bear and Hornchurch the Rhino.

  Since coming up with the idea, Middlewick has marketed a series of T-shirts showcasing his creations and ‘Animals On The Underground’ has made quite an impression on popular culture. In 2003, the concept was used in a poster campaign to advertise London Zoo and in 2008 the International Fund for Animal Welfare ran a poster campaign using Middlewick’s seal, elephant and whale images to raise awareness of illegal hunting. In 2010 a children’s book called Lost Property was published featuring characters called Elephant & Castle and Angel the Angel Fish.

  So next time you’re staring blankly at a Tube map, why not see how many you can find?

  FARE-DODGING PIGEONS

  1995

  Pigeons are extremely intelligent creatures. They know, for example, exactly when you’ve just had your car cleaned or you’re about to enjoy a sandwich on a park bench, while their ability to find their way home from over hundreds of miles away is legendary.

  And now it seems our feathered friends have added another trick to their impressive repertoire – travelling on the Underground.

  Reports of pigeons casually hopping on and off the Tube first surfaced in 1995, and ever since sightings of the birds commuting up and down the network (without ever buying a ticket) have been flooding in.

  ‘Pigeons are catching the Underground to save flying time across London, according to a flurry of correspondence to a scientific journal,’ reported the Daily Telegraph, continuing:

  The letters were triggered when Rachel Robson of Bayswater wrote to describe how she saw a pigeon board a Tube train and travel one stop from Paddington. ‘With their renowned navigational abilities, is it possible the pigeon knew where it was going?’ she wrote to the New Scientist.

  The birds are not blundering into the trains, but deliberately hopping on board to save time and energy commuting across London, according to letters published yesterday. Unfortunately for the birds, travel does have its drawbacks. ‘Pigeons are classified as vermin,’ said a spokesman for London Underground. ‘If they are caught they should be destroyed.’

  The Tube’s pigeon passengers were caught on camera in 2012 by the BBC programme Natural World: Unnatural History of London, but opinion remains split whether the birds are travelling in search of food or have simply become too lazy to fly around the capital.

  Pigeons have become such a problem on the Underground that TfL has been forced to employ drastic measures to scare them off. At Paddington Station, Sally the hawk is unleashed three times a week to intimidate her feathered cousins while the roof of Wembley Park Station is adorned with a series of fake owls to ‘persuade’ the local pigeons to take up residence elsewhere.

  In 1999 the bosses at TfL were so worried that the opening of the Millennium Dome and North Greenwich Tube Station would be ruined by unwelcome pigeon deposits that they drafted in Hamish the Harris hawk to ensure everything would remain nice and clean.

  ‘He doesn’t kill the birds,’ insisted Wayne Davis, Hamish’s owner. ‘He’s a deterrent, so we do the job without guns or poison. Pigeons don’t only foul and damage buildings – they spread tuberculosis, salmonella, ornithosis and other respiratory diseases to humans.’

  Perhaps something to think of before you next throw one a bit of your sandwich …

  BEWARE THE TUBE’S NEW BREED OF BITING BUG

  1998

  The miles of dark and invitingly damp tunnels of the London Underground produced a startling revelation in 1998 when scientists discovered the network was home to a previously undiscovered species of rather moody mosquito.

  The new breed was quickly christened Culex pipiens f. molestus in recognition of its voracious appetite for biting the Tube’s resident mice and rats – not to mention beleaguered maintenance workers – and scientists were particularly stunned when they realised these subterranean insects were a separate species from their above-ground relatives.

  Mosquitoes first found their way beneath the surface of the capital when the Underground’s tunnels were dug over a century ago, attracted by the system’s warm conditions and pools of stagnant water for breeding, but scientists assumed the subterranean adventurers had simply adapted to life in the depths rather than evolved into a new species.

  That all changed in 1998 when tests conducted by Kate Byrne and Richard Nichols of Queen Mary & Westfield College in London confirmed th
at the Tube dwellers had developed into something altogether different.

  ‘It’s a remarkable story of evolution,’ said Roz Cox, editor of the BBC’s Wildlife magazine. ‘The scientists say that the differences between the above- and below-ground forms are as great as if the species had been separated for thousands of years.’

  Attempts to mate the two species failed, despite suitably low lighting and romantic music, and the only conclusion was that the Underground’s unique ecosystem had speeded up the natural evolution process, creating a new breed in the space of 150 years that can now only survive down in the Underground’s tunnels.

  The original, above-ground mosquitoes feed on birds rather than mammals but their underground counterparts quickly switched their diet to the plentiful supply of rodents, as well as any unfortunate Tube staff tasked with working below the streets of London.

  The first bites from Culex pipiens f. molestus were recorded during the Second World War when people took refuge from the Blitz on the system’s deserted platforms.

  But while the London Tube appears to have been the first to experience the unwelcome attentions of the bug, it is not the world’s only underground system to be affected by the upstart insect and in the summer of 2011, the New York subway was also plagued by the newly discovered scientific oddity. Being on the other side of the Atlantic, however, the American subway mosquitoes were naturally bigger than their Tube cousins.

  THE WATER HOLES THAT SAVE LIVES

  1999

  Suicides on the London Underground are, tragically, a regular occurrence but the mortality rate beneath the streets of the capital would be much, much higher were it not for a strange quirk of fate concerning the Tube’s original design and the need to stop the network flooding.