We all know the Wombling song; that they're tidy and clean and make good use of the things the everyday folks leave behind. A lesser known line in the full version of the popular Wimbledon Common song is Wombles are "incredibly, utterly devious" and hey ho, that's been borne out today as locals living close to the All England Club are flogging their special Tournament resident parking permits on eBay. These were special yellow......

Evidence that public transport announcements of "please make sure you take all your belongings with you when you leave the train" have very little impact on an evening commuter's brain is that one hapless Robert Napier left his violin on a train from London to Taunton, 2 and a half months ago. No cheap fiddle, this. No. He'd just been to get it valued. It's a violin worth around £180,000 and a 17th century......

Sometimes it's the little ones that grab ya. Man breaks into cemetery, steals ten grand's worth of grave digging kit, then wheelbarrows it out to his car. That's it. No more. No word on whether the police have found him yet and to be honest, we're highly unlikely to follow this one up unless there's a spate of grave robing in the Sunbury area. Still, you can now spend the weekend pondering what the......

Anybody who's spent an afternoon walking around Upper Street, iBook in hand, trying to log on to Islington council's "Technology Mile" service may smirk, but a new report says Londoners are the most wifi-happy people on the planet. According to the Wi-Fi Hotspot Index, networks set up by the likes of BT and The Cloud in London account for one tenth of the UK's wireless usage, and just over 1% of the worldwide total......

It seems that half the country (and Londonist staff) is on holiday at the moment. Still, here's the best of what's on musically across the capital this week.Jazz singer-songwriter Norah Jones  is the highlight of Bank Holiday Monday night, playing with M. Ward at Hammersmith Apollo. Tickets are sold out, however be sure to check out scarlet mist and other providers. Meanwhile hardcore punk stars Bane play Underworld, with £10 tickets available either on the......

As bands jump across the Atlantic to play this weekend's V Festival and next weekend's Reading and Leeds festivals London is treated to a wealth of bands that rarely play these shores. Here's a selection of the best. Monday night sees the amazing Rilo Kiley play the Carling Academy Islington – tickets sold out pretty quickly, but there are a few floating around on eBay etc for what is sure to be one of their......

Surrey towns have always been known for being a bit lacklustre, but one is taking on the distinction of being heartless as well. In an act that would’ve made Jerry and Margo proud, more than 100 residents of Ashtead, near Epsom, have objected to a request by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) for planning permission to convert a local property into a six-bedroom guest house. The house would be used by......

If you're eager to go to that sold out gig that you didn't hear about in time or get the best seats at sporting events like Wimbledon without queueing overnight, chances are you're going to be delving into the world of secondary ticketing. The traditional image of this market involves risky transactions secured with wads of cash within sight of the relevant venue, but increasingly deals take place online well before the day. Many......

Oxford Street last night was the scene of yet more unfathomable shopping madness akin to the great Primark palava of, ooh, a month ago, as Topshop unveiled its violently hyped Kate Moss collection to adoring and seemingly psychologically imbalanced hordes. Queuing started at noon with thousands of shoppers turning up for the special 8pm opening (apparently tailing back to Marble Arch… Marble Arch!). The woman herself made an obligatory but unintentionally fleeting appearance in......

Forget locking up your daughters – lock up your bikes! New statistics indicate that bike theft is up 10% in England, bringing the average to one bike stolen every 71 seconds. Though the thieves are not quite up to snuff, stealing something every 60 seconds like Nicolas Cage with his muscle cars, it’s still a pretty impressive number. The areas of the capital in which you are most likely to be parted from your......

Vintage Banksy on Brick Lane, last summer and (inset) a few days ago. Spot the difference? Someone’s gone and half-inched his number. The BBC quote regular passer-by John Brophy: Every time I walk past it there is always someone taking photos of it. Everyone knows that area as the Banksy Bridge so I think he should come back and do it again. Unlikely. We’ll have to rechristen it the Eine bridge, assuming the similar......

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... Gothamist spent the week writing about New Yorkers behaving badly: at the post office, at the Garden, and at the fertility clinic. Calvin Klein may not be misbehaving, but he's just a little dirty, and in a completely different way than some NYC kitchens. SFist had its share of misbehave-rs, too, like......

This Day In London’s History 1988: The Bank of England withdraws the £1 note from circulation. In 1797 the Bank of England started printing banknotes in denominations of one pound sterling on a regular basis. To quote their website: In 1759, gold shortages caused by the Seven Years War forced the Bank to issue a £10 note for the first time. The first £5 notes followed in 1793 at the start of the war......

We love freecycle. We've waxed lyrical about it before.. Since then we have received a book and are still waiting to hear back from a woman about some dinosaur stickers. While browsing through lists of beds and curtains and the implausible amount of doors that always seem to come up, we came across a chap called Matthew Smith who takes broken iPods, fixes them, and gives them back out to the freecycle community for......

As the world holds it's breath, teetering precariously on the cusp of the Super Bowl (well, at least in America), the wheels of the -ists keep on turning. Austinist was in a musical frame of mind as they listened to the new Shins album, updated the SXSW band listings and got called "punk rock" for their efforts by MTV. And an ice storm swept through the area. Bostonist said goodbye to John Kerry's plans......

Texas is thawing, the Northeast is freezing, and a sort of natural order seems almost restored to the Ist-A-Verse. Almost. Londonist HQ—that is to say, the city of London—was battered by heavy winds, making it a bad time to be a twelve-meter (nearly forty-foot) tall snowman. Still, not everyone decided to keep warmly covered. Meanwhile, back indoors, the Big Brother racism is now causing all kinds of headaches for international diplomats, and Londonist got into......

Poor old MI5. It's never really been the same since Tom left - Danny got shot in the head and Zoe shacked up with some git in Chile. Some people insist that Spooks is more fictional drama than documentary, but we find it comforting to believe that Peter Firth is actually in charge of stopping us getting exploded and stuff. Sometimes though we have our doubts. Would Harry really think that sending out terror......

People have started buying tickets for Di-Aid. Other people want to buy tickets for Di-Aid. Touts have now set up base camp on eBay creating a kind of virtual Dodo island where the weak minded and musically challenged are being clubbed in the face with inflated prices: Barry Osborn, from Hythe in Kent, thought he was in with a good chance as he works from home. "I hit that button just seconds after 9am......

Tickets have just been released for a rare chance to see Nine Inch Nails perform at Brixton Academy next March 10th (a third night has been added due to demand). They're bound to go pretty quickly and end up on eBay at twice the face value so get yours here. Not only will you get to see Trent strutting his industrial stuff but the rhythm section are set to steal the show - Josh......

Bridget Jones' giant pants are being put on eBay this Sunday to raise money for The Royal Parks Foundation, a charity who manage all eight Royal Parks. "The pants, which have been signed by actor Hugh Grant with the message "Hello Mummy! Lots of love and kisses", were first auctioned on 14 September" but the winning bidder, a trustee of the charity, wants to auction them internationally in the hope of raising even more......

The London Transport Museum has gone eBay crazy this month: This fundraising auction is being held by the Friends of London’s Transport Museum to raise money for the redevelopment of the popular central London museum. All proceeds will go towards new exhibitions and education facilities which will be enjoyed by hundreds of thousands people and schools in the years to come. Please help us to realise this important project. So what are they are......

A bit of weekend silliness in a good cause: A 23-year-old woman has paid £210 for the privilege of slapping a stranger around the face with a wet fish. Student Lucy Berry won the chance to slap Ben Fillmore, 24, who had begun an auction on the eBay website to raise money for the Stroke Association UK. And now for something completely different: Just to bring the London connection full circle, that particular skit was......

Jeremy Clarkson is easy to dislike - we've used his snarling image for just about every congestion charge/traffic related post on Londonist - but he's also funny from time to time. Top Gear is hard to stomach unless you live in the fantasy land of wanting to own a new car every fortnight or get a thrill from the idea of standing in a garage looking at Clarkson's jean clad backside, but we're happy......

Londonist favourites Lucky Soul release their new single Lips Are Unhappy today. In contrast to debut single My Brittle Heart's brilliant kitchen sink melodrama, Lips Are Unhappy is a toe-tapping stomp of a song that can't fail to have even the most rhythmically-challenged listener shaking their booty along to it. Ali Howard's vocals provide the perfect melancholy soul in contrast to the soaring happy beat of the instrumental backing, and yet again Lucky Soul......

Remember those stranded tube passengers from earlier this week? Well they're to get £100 compensation for their ordeal. The 'eBay avenger' (called Tom Sawyer weirdly enough) has agreed to take down the page if he receives an apology and refund from Amir Tofangsazan, the 18-year-old A-level student from Barnet. Edinburgh needs a Ken Livingstone apparently. Well, they can't have ours. Will we get a Concorde fly over for the 2012 opening ceremony? Rachel Stevens......

The animals went in two by two, hurrah. Hurrah! There'll be something else to watch on telly apart from the bloody football! And, good news for all us addicts across the land, the inhabitants of the Big Brother ark this year are weirder than ever. Last night's opening ceremony - or casting-off, maybe? - was a treat, despite the fact that it clashed with the Eurovision semi-finals (did anyone else catch presenter Paddy O'Connell......

David Hasselhoff in Wimbledon, dressed as a pirate. That sentence isn't the product of some surreal, word asociation exercise. It's fact. David Hasselfhoff is coming to town and he'll be dressed like a pirate. And standing next to him will be Bobby Davro. The Baywatch star has agreed to play Captain Hook in a Christmas production of Peter Pan, reports the Sun. 'The Hoff' is reportedly being paid £300,000 to make his panto debut......

If you were planning to pop along to Christie's thinking that a couple of beams from a tenth century mosque were just the thing you needed to compliment your new Ikea shelving units then we have some bad news: Christie's auction house said on Monday that it had withdrawn the controversial auction of five wooden beams from the Great Mosque of Cordoba in southern Spain from Tuesday's sale in order to negotiate with the......

It's not a great news Friday what with Wembley not being Wembley, tube lines closing and the fact that there's going to be a huge shortage of coke this weekend. So here's one to warm your wellies as you wait for the weekend to wash away your working worries. A Wycombe pensioner has been given a bus pass valid for 203 years. Sprightly seventy one year old Elizabeth Bateman's pass, issued as part of......

There are few things that Londonist Nick loves more than his iPod Video (of course, other mp3 players are available!). Isn't it great to have all your music in one place, to listen to whenever you like? Isn't it great to watch the A-Team on the Tube? Isn't it great to download podcasts of your favourite radio shows and listen to them when YOU want? Doesn't it make CDs look crap in comparison? Hold......