Reading on Trains Number 44: 'Tube Talks'

For most of the 1990s, I wrote a column called Tube Talk in the Evening Standard magazine: pieces of social observation and Underground history. It occurs to me to revive it on an occasional basis in this Substack, and what follows is a modern Tube Talk item, followed by four historic ones, with framing notes in italics.

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In 2008, Boris Johnson banned drinking on the Tube. It went against his libertarian persona, just as covid lockdowns would do, but I suppose his political advisers told him: ‘Now that you’re Mayor of London, you’d better do something’, so he did that. The ban is lightly enforced, and many people are unaware of it. The man I saw drinking from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag on the ‘up’ escalator at Tottenham Court Road on 19 December presumably was aware of it, hence the bag.

I associate drinking from a bottle in a bag with America, specifically wintry episodes of Kojak. The American vibe at TCR was also suggested by a man playing excellent Chicago blues harmonica at the foot of the escalator, which reminds me that Sugar Blue was supposedly given the job of playing harmonica on the Stones LP Some Girls (including the brilliant solo on Miss You) when Mick Jagger saw him busking on the Paris Metro. It’s probably just a myth, but I can imagine Jagger on the Paris Metro much more readily than on the London Underground.

Sugar Blue

On the northbound Northern Line train from TCR, a middle-class couple (Daunt’s tote bag at their feet) were drinking wine from those 187ml quarter bottles that I believe were first introduced in Britain on the Golden Arrow and that, to my irritation, Marks & Spencer’s don’t keep refrigerated. The woman was saying excitedly to the man, ‘But we can’t just move to Brighton…can we?’

Then, at Mornington Crescent, I saw a woman crying on a platform bench. During the dwell-time of the train, I saw her take two sips from one of those little cans that are increasingly displacing the quarter bottles. Whatever was inside was helping her rally, because, as my train departed, she was delicately poking away the last of her tears.

As we pulled into Archway, a bona fide drunk lurched towards the train door, nearly tripping over my feet, for which he slurrily apologised. He wore a lapel badge reading, ‘I’m One of Santa’s…’ and then a word I couldn’t make out. He hadn’t actually been drinking on the train, so he hadn’t broken Johnson’s bye-law, which, incidentally, was a successor to the closure of the last Underground station pub: the Hole in the Wall, on the westbound platform at Sloane Square, in 1985. Its closure followed the introduction in that year of a smoking ban, by the chain-smoking Transport Secretary, Nicholas Ridley, at all wholly or partly subterranean stations. I once spoke to a woman who remembered the pub (which is now a shop) in full swing. ‘It was like a little community. The barmaid knew all the regulars’ drinks and their trains; I remember her calling out, “Tel! It’s your Wimbledon!”’

There was also a pub on the concourse at Baker Street, and a ticket collector who remembered it told me, ‘It was very spartan, like a betting office. No chairs, and just a narrow shelf to put your drink on. The idea was to discourage people from lingering, but I tell you what…They did linger.’

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When I saw this poster revived and displayed (and coming unstuck) at Knightsbridge station the other day, I was reminded of a character mentioned in Tube Talk on 22 November, 1996…

A correspondent from Belsize Park writes to tell of a character he calls ‘the glue man’. About a month ago my correspondent was riding northbound on the Northern Line. Suddenly, the man opposite him stood up and, with a small tube of glue, quickly stuck down a curled-up corner of an advert above a nearby seat. He returned to his place. A couple of stops later, having noticed that a corner of the Tube map in the carriage was fluttering slightly, he stuck that down too.

My correspondent got talking to the man, who looked ‘perfectly normal…slim, grey-haired, about 60.’ Apparently, he’d recently lost his job in ‘the security business’ and was now devoting most of his time to going around London on the Tube and glueing things down. On a purely voluntary basis, of course. According to my correspondent, the man was acting out of pure public-spiritedness. The man admitted that a couple of LU staff, having observed him at work, had reprimanded him, but only in the mildest terms. (‘Why are you doing that? You don’t have to do it, you know?’)

Speaking as someone who recently saw teenage thug rip a Northern Line diagram off a carriage wall, I think this person’s adhesive mission should be allowed to continue. We all need a glue man in our lives.

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I’m not sure of the exact date when this next item appeared, but it seems timely to revisit it, given that Kentish Town station re-opened just before Christmas.

A year ago, I mentioned in this column a sign which appeared at Kentish Town Tube station. It read, ‘Warning, Keep Clear, The Grille May Be Dirty.’ The station staff have now kindly sent me the sign as a present. It is, for anyone who never saw it, a substantial metal affair, obviously specially commissioned to sit on a grubby ventilator grill.

Picture the scene. The bosses of Kentish Town station are assembled in a meeting. ‘Okay,’ says the top bod. ‘Item one on the agenda. We’ve got this dirty ventilator grille. Now what the hell are we going to do about it?’ Long silence. Furrowed brows. ‘I know,’ says some young bright spark, ‘let’s put up a sign telling everyone it’s dirty.’

‘Good thinking,’ says the boss. ‘Get on it straightaway.’

Six months later, another meeting. ‘Okay,’ says the top bod, ‘that sign saying the grille is dirty is getting very dirty. Any suggestions?’ The bright spark pipes up. ‘Why don’t we put another sign on top of the sign on the grille saying, “Warning: Sign Warning of Dirt On Grille May Be Dirty”.’

‘Nice one,’ says the boss, ‘let’s do it.’

I just made that last part up, of course, and I can now report that the problem of the dirty grille has been resolved by the installation of another grille. I went to look at it recently, and a member of the station staff said, ‘You’re probably wondering why we didn’t just clean the old grille?’ I said the thought had occurred to me. ‘It was just impossible to keep clean,’ he said, with the sorrowful head-shaking of one who has spent hours futilely scrubbing away.

Postscript: I don’t have a picture of the sign, which my wife forced me to get rid of asap (it being so dirty). But when I went to pristine-looking, newly reopened Kentish Town last week, I was interested to see that gnomic signage remains a hallmark of the station:

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This next one dates from from 28 June 1996…