London Urban Legends

by Scott Wood

  2

  THE HIDDEN INSULT

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  I like the idea of infiltrating an area that is

  not really exposed to me or my work.

  Alexander McQueen

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  Royally Rude

  When London-based fashion designer Alexander McQueen was found dead on 11 February 2010, the response was one of shock and grief. His suicide was all over the media and the loss was felt by even the scruffiest of Londoners.

  Remembering him in the 2010 obituaries in the 12 December edition of the Observer, Harriet Quick, fashion features director at Vogue, described his collections as ‘wildly imaginative’ whilst McQueen was a ‘shy, sensitive man’. Quick suggested that a McQueen fashion show had such power it could actually affect nature, remembering that ‘his shows were frequently accompanied by freak weather’, and she describes driving through a hurricane to see a show in New York in 2000. In past times and other lands the sky threatens at war, disaster or the death of a monarch or beloved leader. Alexander McQueen only needed to showcase some expensive clothes that most people could not wear for storms to descend.

  Another reason that McQueen was so loved was his background as a working-class east London boy who got to the top of fashion because of his skill, talent and vision. During the remembrance for him in the media a story emerged about a prank McQueen had pulled whilst an apprentice at Savile Row tailors Gieves & Hawkes. The young designer found himself making a jacket (or suit) for the Prince of Wales and could not resist the temptation to put a message within the lining of the jacket. The Radio 4 obituary show Last Word broadcast on 14 February 2010 described the story of McQueen writing ‘McQueen was here’ in the royal jacket as apocryphal, and his BBC online obituary recounts the story but puts a ‘reportedly’ ahead of it. Another version, alluded to on the London Design Museum website, is that McQueen actually wrote ‘I am a c***’ inside Prince Charles’ suit. This is much celebrated on the internet, and in the ‘Dressed to Thrill’ column of the New Yorker on 16 May 2011, Judith Thurman moved the scene of the crime to McQueen’s first apprenticeship at Anderson & Sheppherd and reported that the tailors recalled every jacket made for Prince Charles because of the alledged message.

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  These stories celebrate McQueen as an enfant terrible of the fashion world, slyly calling the establishment that fed him a c***. Like the world of artists and rock stars, the world of fashion designers is never knowingly under-mythologised and such a story feeds the myth. The swearword jacket story echoes another urban legend I heard about a car belonging to the Queen. Back in the early 1990s, I was working in a warehouse and heard a story in the staff canteen (a comfier and earlier version of the work water cooler as a place to share stories). One car – maybe more than one Rolls-Royce – constructed for the Queen had pornographic magazines secretly hidden in the body work. As well as being another rumour of royalty unwittingly carrying around obscenities, this urban legend also nods to a legend about the cars themselves. Rolls-Royce cars often glided through the popular imagination in the 1970s and ’80s and, as with anything, stories followed in their wake. The ‘Rolls of legend,’ wrote Rodney Dale in The Tumour in the Whale, ‘has a sealed bonnet, which must never be opened except at the factory.’ Perhaps knowing this legend inspired some factory workers to leave something inside the monarch’s car.

  There is a more fully formed, muscular American version of the car urban legend picked up by Jan Harold Brunvand in his book The Choking Doberman and Other ‘New’ Urban Legends. It literally delivers the message of class war in the narrative. A ‘wealthy professional man’ has ordered a new Cadillac, which is perfect except for a persistent rattling sound when the car is driven, particularly over railway tracks or a bumpy street. After a number of check-ups, the man has the car deconstructed piece by piece and a bottle or tin can, hidden in the body work, is found to be the culprit. Within the recepticle there is an insulting note that reads ‘You rich SOB – so you finally found the rattle!’

  Royalty to Celebrity

  The Prince of Wales is not the only affluent jacket wearer to be secretly insulted by a sly tailor. Popbitch, the celebrity gossip newsletter and website, told the story in its 2 July 2009 email of footballer Joe Cole’s ‘beautiful bespoke suit for his wedding’. Cole had recently left West Ham to join Chelsea, and ‘someone involved in stitching up the suit’ was a West Ham supporter. Knowing the suit was for Cole, the supporter chalked a full West Ham insignia on the lining and ‘a few choice words’, including ‘Judas’.

  Football folklore has its own traditions of hidden insults. Scottish memorabilia and tartan scarves can be found under the dugouts and turf of the new Wembley stadium, left at the heart of English football by Scottish construction workers. Outside of London, a similar story is told of the construction of Southampton’s new football ground, with some of the builders supporting local rivals Portsmouth. Three football shirts are buried beneath the turf, inscribed bricks are buried in the foundations and seeds were planted in the centre circle which would have, at some point, sprouted to spell out ‘Pompey’, Portsmouth’s nickname. The seed story reminds me of another legend I have heard, set during and after the Second World War, which takes us from football fans to Nazis. A German prisoner of war distinguished himself as a gardener at the English manor house where he had been put to work. The war ended and the time came for the POW to return home, and it was apparently with much sadness that he parted company with the people of the manor house. This sadness was jarred the following spring when a swastika of daffodils sprouted up on the lawn. As we shall see regularly throughout this book, urban legends, like flowers, are often seeded from older growths.

  The hidden insult has travelled from royalty to celebrity. This is not surprising considering pop stars, sport stars and television personalities are our newest form of rich aristocracy and are, at present, even more in the public eye than royalty. In the 1990s the rising stars of the Britpop movement – Blur and Oasis – developed a bitter rivalry, sparked off, partly (these things are messy), by Blur releasing the single ‘Country House’ on the same day (14 August 1995) as Oasis’s single ‘Roll With It’. Egged on by the media, the race to No. 1 became a class war between the northern working-class lads of Oasis and the southern, middle-class art students of Blur, which peaked with Oasis’s songwriter Noel Gallagher wishing death by AIDS on Blur’s lead singer Damon Albarn. Once again we refer to the Popbitch newsletter, this time from 21 August 2009. It contained the story of Oasis buying a vintage EMI TG mixing desk from a studio in Australia. A ‘famous record producer’ heard the band were buying it and carved the name of their rivals Blur on the inside of it. Popbitch reported that the producer said: ‘He’s always wondered if the Gallaghers ever found his handiwork.’

  Back in London, and hidden insults are not only aimed at football teams but whole sporting events. On 28 February 2012, the 150-day mark before the start of the London Olympics, 37ft high, 82ft wide Olympic rings were floated up the Thames. These iconic symbols were to be paraded and displayed all around London to herald the Olympics, at a reported cost of £3.2 million. This generated comments from within London of the cost when the city, along with the rest of Great Britain, was suffering from unemployment, crime and rioting, pay cuts, pay freezes and funding cuts to the arts and libraries. The fanfare of the Olympics and its expense seemed garish and crude in comparison. ‘There were better things to have spent this money on,’ said the Green Party’s 2012 mayoral candidate Jenny Jones. This attitude remained until Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, and a lot of talented Britons achieving medals finally won over even the curmudgeonliest of taxpayers. So, perhaps it was not surprising that the 22 March 2012 edition of Popbitch had the following story: ‘We’re told that there’s something special about one of the rings. Someone involved in their construction had a bit of a downer on the whole Olympics in London thing. So he took a shit inside one of the rings. And then had it welded shut.’

&nbs
p; Finding the Hidden Insult

  To be completely fair to Popbitch, they are not some golly-gosh, typo-ridden vacuous scandal rag. The newsletter often writes intelligently about the nature of celebrity and of the media, and they have a passion for music that steps outside the present pop charts. When repeating these urban legends, they are frequently in the company of the BBC, the Guardian and the Design Museum websites. Popbitch have shown themselves to be urban legend savvy when repeating the story of the rich premiership footballer paying off a couple’s mortgage so he could take their booking for the wedding venue of his choice. ‘It’s one of the oldest shaggy dog stories going’, they wrote in their 12 April 2012 newsletter before going on to reference an old legend of a female actor and television personality famous for doing on someone’s chest, or onto a glass-topped coffee table, what some disgruntled person did into one of the giant Olympic rings. The next week they even produced a desperate email saying the children of the celebrity have ‘worked their arses off’ to keep her off the internet for fear that she might stumble across the mortifying rumour.

  Seeking the hidden insult may provoke similar responses: who does one ask about a rumoured swearword or stool hidden in a public place or on the back of a public figure? I have wondered about contacting Clarence House, the seat for the Prince of Wales, but perhaps they too are working very hard to keep this rumour away from his royal ears. I would not wish to be instrumental in His Royal Highness glaring at his old jackets as his butler dresses him.

  The McQueen story’s popularity after the designer’s death prompted his old company Anderson & Sheppard to issue a statement about the rumour on their blog. It denied the possibility of McQueen writing an insult into a suit or jacket:

  Alexander McQueen joined here in 1984 or 1985. He didn’t have an introduction I don’t think, he just came in to apply in person. The firm’s policy at the time was to take young people who had not been to college as they were easier to train. Sixteen was a typical age for apprentices joining the firm.

  He worked under a tailor called Cornelius O’Callaghan – one of the best coatmakers that the firm had. Cornelius was known as Con, and was the strictest tailor at the firm. He checked his apprentices’ work thoroughly. Despite rumours that things were scribbled inside the lining of a coat for Prince Charles, Con wouldn’t have permitted that. And in fact the coat was recalled and checked after the story came out – nothing was found.

  The story of the insulting objects hidden inside the Queen’s car is true. The car was a Jaguar rather than a Rolls-Royce, and pornographic magazines and a swastika were found behind a seat panel when the car was being bomb-proofed. These, perhaps, were the most offensive things the prankster could think of, as are all of the hidden insults discussed. Even a football shirt hidden in the foundations of a rival’s grounds can be viewed as a deadly insult. Stories appeared in the press in June 2001, and one in the Buckingham Post dated 14 June also referenced the McQueen story as ‘McQueen Woz Ere’ rather than ‘was here’.

  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?

  3

  THE QUEEN’S HEAD AND THE KRAYS’ ARMS

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  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

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  LONDON 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 sai
d 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.