According to London lore, it’s never easy to persuade a cabbie to take you south of the river. Unless that cabbie is Mark Thurbin. He recently accepted a very strange fare from a couple of passengers, which tested his Knowledge to the limit.

Far from requesting a short ride to Waterloo station as Mark had expected, Richard Connolly and Steve Shanyaski asked him to take them on a journey taking several days, a journey that would take them through Europe, across the Mediterranean and into North Africa.

Destination: Marrakech. The duo in the back were working for that quality periodical ‘Zoo’, and wanted to film a journey overland to Morocco for an ad campaign.

Mark grabbed his passport and set off that very day, giddy with the prospect of a week’s adventure. And what a rollicking barrel of fun it sounds like:

We were getting a bit bored driving through this barren part of Spain and it was really hot. One of the lads suggested we turn off the air conditioning and close all the windows to see how long we could stand it. We managed to last an hour and a quarter.

You can watch examples of this hilarious hi-jinx over on the Zootube site.

Oh yes, and the fare. The intercontinental odyssey netted Mark either £8000 or £10,000, depending which source you believe.