This article originally appeared in The Telegraph on 25 March. You can read in full here.
I was in the theatre on Monday evening, on the stage, in fact. There were the usual few phone tinkles and notifications, just enough to distract any crowded house. But halfway through the second act, I thought someone was trying to drive a motorcycle into the set. The cacophony was, I finally realised, coming from Shaftesbury Avenue outside. The sound of a single engine had totally invaded the show. I wonder then: is London getting noisier?
I actually live bang in the centre of town, not far from where I’m working. London has always been pleasantly occupied. There is less of a deserted high-street crisis in “the smoke” than there is across the rest of urban Britain because, except in the City, we, the people, still live hugger-mugger with everything “commercial”.
But again, a week ago, at 2am, I started up in bed. We are a safe distance from the Soho “night-time economy”, but Bangkok, driving out demons, had roared in. I went to the window. A pink-lit rickshaw, pulsing like a deep-sea jelly fish had parked outside and was yowling into the night.
You may be unaware of this new drunk rubber-necker mobile hell. Smothered in day-glow fur, or Christmas tinsel, half their weight is made up of three fat women in short skirts and the other half of an amplification system turned up to 11. It wasn’t possible to distinguish the playlist. It was too distorted.
Generally, today’s traffic is quiet. Buses hum. Lorries purr. Pollution is hardly obvious. That’s why we chose to live there. But fun is noisy. A regular screaming, tearing shriek rends the air day and night. It’s a bloke on a motorcycle. He has removed the exhaust dampers on his hog. Blaring at 120 decibels, he will disturb thousands on his ride. He is officially louder than the loudest fire siren.
A biker told me that this was the point – to feel the throb between your legs and make a banshee howl. The number of bikes that get their systems modified seems to outnumber the ones that don’t. And, wow, the rider could get a terrifying fine, as much as 50 quid, if he was ever prosecuted.
The figures show that the real offenders are heading for the West End. The incidence of complaints there has risen. Both bikes and modified sports cars come to Piccadilly and rev up, for some sort of mad evening chorus of screaming engines. Nobody stops them.
And the buskers on the Tube, who might get my money if they gently plucked, now amplify their contribution. Perhaps they are competing. This racket has spread to the streets. But far from central authorities trying to police any of this, it is becoming clear that the Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan, wants more.
One of the reasons I usually avoid Oxford Street is because bands are allowed to set up in the open air at the junction with Tottenham Court Road and start churning out dire rock music at a deafening volume. This isn’t getting down with the kids. It’s getting down with the drunks. It is getting down with the downmarket as fast as possible.
Oxford Street is a chewing-gum-splattered open-air shopping mall of terrible shops and illegal candy stores. The mayor wants to big it up. Ignoring local concerns, he is going to pedestrianise it. A central part of his plan is to create a space for all-day concerts. All the traffic will head through the residential quarters to either side. So a bit more noise for the residents.
The design proposals are truly horrible. I am groovy enough to remember the thankfully departed ghastly coloured pavements of Carnaby Street. Here they are again. Combined with “planters” to take discarded coffee cups and fag packets.
Mayfair and Bond Street boast some of the richest and most sought-after retail real estate in the world, yet nearby Oxford Street is currently a dismal failure. And the solution demanded by the owners of the leases there? To turn it into a version of Blackpool front, all day and all night.
Sir Sadiq has decided that central London, up West, the mid town, is a commercial facility to be exploited for the benefit of his feoff – the rest of kidult London. His stated aim is to make London “a 24-hour city”. And the centre will pay the price.
He wants to extend the night-time economy. He seems to mean to create the sort of retrograde blasted-heath city interior that idiots in the 1970s tried to achieve as a national policy and which resulted in European guidebooks recommending visitors to avoid most large British cities.
London is a city of mixed residential villages. It has no middle. Sir Sadiq has recently backed new skyscrapers that will loom above Waterloo and Liverpool Street stations. He is now advocating the remorseless spread of a donut centre.
Speaking as the ex-prime minister that I currently impersonate, might I suggest you don’t hollow out London. Don’t allow Marks and Spencer (under the guise of “helping” the dying high street) to build unnecessary and unwanted offices on Oxford Street where their flagship store used to be. Don’t make my mistakes of the seventies.
Instead, help the citizens of London to live quietly across the entire urban fabric. Convert more failing retail areas back into housing, contain the night-time economy and encourage people to live closer to where they work and work to get closer to where the people live. It’s the proper, modern green solution.
Oh, and while you are at it, police the urban nuisances, please, including motorbikes, gum spitters and aggressive drunks so we can listen to the phone notifications in the auditorium in peace. Or will I have to stop wearing my hearing aids?
This article originally appeared in The Telegraph on 25 March. You can read in full here.
