Famous London characters

benjybars

benjybars

village elder.
anyone else been cornered by the joke-telling irishman in Camden... not sure if he's homeless.. he's got glasses and looks a bit like a drunk Bill Nighy. He is a RELENTLESS joke teller!
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Horace who used to hang around North Finchley loudly wishing people 'The best of luck.", until the local kids would wind him up and then he'd go off on one.


Best of luck Horace.
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
benjybars said:
anyone else been cornered by the joke-telling irishman in Camden... not sure if he's homeless.. he's got glasses and looks a bit like a drunk Bill Nighy. He is a RELENTLESS joke teller!
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there used to be a similar guy in the village in nyc... see him in the west village and over on east side as well...

one of his classics:

what did the buddhist monk say to the hot dog vendor?

make me one with everything...
 
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Edward

+
Ooh I've heard the best of luck bloke somewhere in london....

When I use to work in Music & Video in Notting Hill there was a regular cast of "eccentrics" that used to come in but you'd probably only know them if you worked there too....
one guy was french or belgian or something with a grey ponytail and would play little tunes on any keyboard that was left set up and try and catch your eye to see if you were listening. he used to boast about owning a fairlight (monster 80s sampler/synth that used to cost more than a house in the 80s)
 
C

ChineseArithmetic

It is what it is
Edward said:
Ooh I've heard the best of luck bloke somewhere in london....

When I use to work in Music & Video in Notting Hill there was a regular cast of "eccentrics" that used to come in but you'd probably only know them if you worked there too....
one guy was french or belgian or something with a grey ponytail and would play little tunes on any keyboard that was left set up and try and catch your eye to see if you were listening. he used to boast about owning a fairlight (monster 80s sampler/synth that used to cost more than a house in the 80s)
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I used to live with a guy who worked at the Camden one a few years ago who would relate tales of 'man with two piles', 'classical nazi' and various others.

When I was seeing a lot of films in town on a Saturday night, going home there was always an old guy sitting on his own on the northbound Northern Line platform at Leicester Square who looks like Ivor Cutler and always had a piece of card stuck in the brim of his hat with a whacky slogan on it.
 
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tom pr

Well-known member
There used to be a guy who'd ride his wheelchair the wrong way up Cambridge Heath Road at around 3/4pm every day, shouting at cars and generally causing chaos. I haven't seen him in years, so I presume he finally got knocked down. He wasn't much of an eccentric anyway, just very loud.
 
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gabriel

The Heatwave
this very very camp black bloke with a bowler hat, pinstripes (i think), a cane and a bizarre kind of thong-type thing that he wore outside his trousers. i used to see him in camden and also in angel i think

also, some old music hall twins whose names i've forgotten who live(d?) around angel, two blokes who married two twin sisters, sadly one of the sisters died before the others though, when i last saw them about 10 years ago there was just three of them. not sure if they're still around?

edit: here they are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cox_Twins

actually not sure if they count as 'characters' particularly, i don;t think they're particularly eccentric or anything, but seeing all four of them together must have prompted a bit of a double-take!
 
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tom pr

Well-known member
Ah. I'm not sure how likely it is that anyone else would have spotted him, but one of the dads at my primary school in Islington used to pick up his son and daughter driving an ambulance, often wearing a vest with a budgie on his shoulder. Brilliantly, a mate of mine who went to Northbridge House in Camden went to secondary school with them, at which point the dad had traded in his ambulance for a canoe.
 
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simon silverdollar

Guest
did anyone see the photo in one of the free london papers yesterday, of the man who looked like fidel castro, driving round notting hill with a bear strapped into the passenger seat of his landrover?

can anyone shed anymore light on this 'character'?
 
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Jim Daze

Well-known member
"this very very camp black bloke with a bowler hat, pinstripes (i think), a cane and a bizarre kind of thong-type thing that he wore outside his trousers. i used to see him in camden and also in angel i think"

I used to see this guy all the time in Camden about six or seven years ago, I remember he would walk elegantly along the middle of the road oblivious to the traffic.We used to refer to him as 'Green Velvet'. Also that ''best of luck'' guy he was great haven't seen/heard of him for a while. Anyone remember those identical twins, old guys, used to see them in Camden quite alot. Think they were on tv once.
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
• the beautifully turned out black guy who sits on the park bench at paultons square on the kings road begging very discretely.
 
hucks

hucks

Your Message Here
martin said:
Does anyone remember the White Woman of Camberwell? Black woman who used to wear all white and paint her face white, with a baby doll strapped around her chest. She used to be terrifying if you saw her at night, though I once saw her at Carnival when she was nattering away to one of her mates about the weather. Used to be all sorts of stories connected to her, which may well be fake.
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Also in Camberwell was a white woman who used to black up and go begging. Absolutely fucking terrifying.
 
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mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
hucks said:
Also in Camberwell was a white woman who used to black up and go begging. Absolutely fucking terrifying.
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Lord.Of.God, well scary.


I worked in Soho for years and there were loads of freaks, two worthy of particular mention :



Jodie Foster man, who collected every printed mention of Jodie Foster. Ever. He would spend every lunchbreak going through copies of the magasines we sold, looking for mentions of her. He once came up and said "I bet you think I'm weird, right?". I was actually just thinking that I bet he still lived with his mother, but I didn't tell him that.

Slow Man, who moved around at an excruciatingly slow pace, everything he did was in slow motion, veeeeery slow motion. It was impossible not to stare at him once you'd seen him, but becuase he moved so slowly you'd often miss him, people often seemed to not notice he was there, like he was operating in a different dimension.
I once caught him just standing, holding a postcard of the 50s TV series 'Lost In Space' in his hand. It still haunts me, it was one of the most Lynchian moments I've ever had.
 
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mms

sometimes
an albino black guy in a silver suit and top hat, cab calloway style, who drank in the lord cecil in hackney and comes round and says hi to everyone.
big fellow in wood green who shouts all the time angrily, people are used to him though, when he's stopped shouting and has a calm moment to get his breath back , (as i think its involuntary and tiring) hes quite friendly.
 
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jahtao

Member
There is a man seen around Clapham, my friend tells me, known as THE BEE-KEEPER.

He is old, wears a trenchcoat, has one silver crutch... nothing unusual so far... and a homemade helmet type of thing with a seethru visor that covers his whole face, gaffer taped to a 'institution green', plastic, darthvader-shaped rear piece that covers all of the back and sides of his head. He also has big gardening gloves on, always. I think the idea is to seal him in. He doesn't look much like a bee-keeper (sadly) but (according to my mate), he is often seen swatting away invisible insects. Ladies and gentlemen, The Bee-Keeper.
 
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