When Soho Clubs & Bars, owner of Jewel in Piccadilly Circus and Wardour Street's Village, collapsed earlier this week, concerns were raised for the group's 300 or so employees. Happily, a buyer has stepped in and bought the seven venues, ensuring staff will remain in gainful employment. In possibly less encouraging news for the future of decent West End nightclubs, the buyer was today revealed as Novus Leisure, owner of Haymarket club and last......

Every now and then, a bit of London-centric news drifts around the Londonist newsroom (which doesn't exist but imagine a bunch of emails flying around in lieu of an actual office) and is not paid that much attention. However, there comes a time when something requires a closer look for what it is really saying, such as this report on a poll for the top ten London film locations. Commissioned by cinema advertising company......

In a story that's bound to excite Evening Standard headline writers, a group of four asylum seekers have attempted to smuggle themselves into Britain by hiding in Tony Blair's car. Before you get Jason Bourne-style visuals of dodgy-looking men clinging onto the chassis as our witless ex-PM is driven around town, we should make clear that this is in fact Tony's new motor. The custom BMW 7 Series model, complete with bulletproof glass and......

Or, stuff about London you think is true, but is actually rubbish. 1. The Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus. Ah, the Eros statue. A symbol of love in the midst of tourists and shoppers. How romantic. Er, actually, sorry to dissapoint you, but it's all rubbish. Think we're making it up? Allow us to explain. The statue is a memorial to The 7th Earl of Shaftsbury (yep, that's where the avenue got its name) and......

A nasty day in London, when it seems we came close to something even more horrific than 7 July two years ago. And rumours are circulating of another discovery in Park Lane. Sky News have a lead suggesting disaster was averted by the first cop on the scene, who saw the car was wired to blow, and diffused the device. The facts as we currently know them: • The attempted attack took place around......

Police have made safe a 'viable explosive device' on the Haymarket. The operation took place around 2am this morning, after reports of a suspicious vehicle. The area reamains cordoned off. 8:05 Update: The BBC now have a link. 8.20 Update: Sky News are going a little far with their editorialising..."Sources say the perpetrators were not Irish, suggesting Islamic extremists were behind the potential attack, outside an American Express foreign exchange." They also suggest the vehicle......

Londonist asks that most pressing of daily concerns: where to go on your lunch break. Toku Restaurant (at the Japan Culture Centre) 212 Piccadilly W1J 9HG Map Average Lunch Price: £10 Rating: 8 out of 10 Consistently ranked among the best Japanese restaurants in London (usually noted for its authenticity as in this ItchyLondon listing and this LondonTown.com review), bustling Toku is indeed a noteworthy Piccadilly Circus landmark to keep in mind. And it’s......

It's not a bad photo by a hasty tourist - it's a key London landmark in darkness. Finally, someone remembered to turn the lights off before they locked up for the night. Courtesy of the Lights Out London campaign organised by Capital 95.8, Londoners turned off all non-essential lights between 9pm and 10pm in order to show how much energy can be saved and how well we can function without a dozen different lamps......

Would you like to see the Queen gagged and blindfolded? If monarchy muzzling is one’s thing, one should really get oneself to Barbican Art Gallery. There, in homage to Liz’s Silver Jubilee and the 30th anniversary of the Sex Pistols’ romp down the river playing God Save The Queen, is an exhibition of punk art like never seen before in Britain. Forget bringing a picnic lunch and wading knee-deep through sproglets in the gift......

Jackie Danicki begins her blog post on November 24th with the words I am slightly miffed: The kid in the picture above doesn’t look very harmful, right? He’s reasonably well-dressed, anyway. But actually, he is quite a large fellow, and likes to assault random women with the help of an equally vile friend of his. Jackie posted the photograph on her blog and to her Flickr stream as well as passing a copy along......

If you've been down to Piccadilly Circus this week you might have noticed that the famous Coke advertising board has changed. Instead of being soley Coke, it's focusing on a joint promotion with iTunes which we love the sound of: Send a text message with the word specified on the day of entry on the illuminated “Coke + iTunes” sign located at Piccadilly Circus, London to the short code 85100 and you could win......

Saturday 2nd of December has been declared Very Important Pedestrian Day: Two of the most famous shopping streets in the UK will be traffic-free for the first time to help Christmas shoppers. Both Oxford Street and Regent Street in London's West End will be free of vehicles on Saturday 2 December. Ohhhhh that sounds like a good idea. Londonist of course does all its Christmas shopping online, but we'll happily wander the car free......

"Euston station," he said. "The only place where one is allowed to rest in comparative peace and comfort, free of charge." In his Collected Memoirs, the English writer and dandy, Julian Maclaren-Ross (1912-64), writes of nights spent sleeping in a variety of exotic venues in central London and environs (Turkish Baths, police station cells, railway station waiting rooms), whenever he was frequently hard-up or down-and-out. That was in the 1940s; a world now gone. In......

There's even more art-while-you-commute with London Underground's Platform For Art programme working with Royal Academy schools to decorate the ticket hall and subway 2 of Piccadilly Circus tube station. Until September 5th passengers can enjoy the works of five Royal Academy Schools artists - Maisie Kendall, Liane Lang, Robert Rush, Sinta Tantra and Amy Woolley - in the LINE-UP showcase. The exhibition is an opportunity for the artists to show their work in a......

The blackouts in Soho yesterday hit more than 3,000 businesses. Energy comapny EDF are warning that sporadic power outages will likely continue into Friday in the area between Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus. Two men at the centre of the largest gun conversion racket ever uncovered by the Met have been convicted at the Old Bailey. Battersea MP Martin Linton has been laying out the advantages of an 'M25 for rail passengers' in the......

Brian the pigeon is in the running for Londoner of the year. The capital's smallest, most-winged blogger has taken the media by storm, appearing in TimeOut, The Guardian and even starring in his own movies. We caught up with the little fellow to find out what he thinks about bird flu, big bad Ken and, as usual, whether he's ever vomited on the Tube... Tell us a bit about yourself? Well… my name is......

(Note to taggers: Prescott is not a keyword) Now here’s something you don’t see every day. Unless you’re Sean Ryder. A time-travelling, 42-tonne, 40-foot high mechanical elephant is coming to the streets of London. Yes, you read that correctly. The Sultan’s Elephant sounds both incredible and non-credible, but appears to be true. The mechanoid pachyderm will make slow but steady progress around Westminster’s streets for four days next month, in what is billed as......

Claridge's hotel has, rather predictably, been awarded the Top London Afternoon Tea 2006 award (yes, it really exists). The hotel beat the Dorchester, the Four Seasons and the Wolseley to the prize which was awarded by the Tea Guild, "a prestigious and unique organisation that represents and encourages those outlets who are dedicated to both brewing and serving tea to the high standards desired by The Tea Council" (nice website by the way Tea......

We wanted to review Sarah Waters' The Night Watch as part of our fresh commitment to do a tad more reading on Londonist in 2006, but every time we picked up the book we kept having visions of girls in gasmasks asking us if we were their mummy and had to put it down and sit on our hands for a little while. A much safer bet was asking in a more level head......

Every now and again we ask old grandmother Londonist for a little extra pocket money* so we can take a cab and laugh at all the people struggling with ticket machines as we whiz across the city knocking pedestrians and cyclists asunder like they were infected, cutting up drivers and tipping extra to see the turning circle in use. You've got to get your thrills where you can. But now we may have to......

No it's not a satellite being launched in the rough direction of Uranus in an attempt to discover if aliens are wearing unseasonal clothing, but the more down to Earth matter of our current Terrorist-Finder General facing an investigation into exactly why he told us a pack of lies. Ian Blair would probably feel better if this had been left as an internal matter and swept under the carpet with one last run through......

The body which represents West End retailers has made public its plans to improve the area by cutting traffic and creating more pedestrian areas. The New West End Company unveiled its 'stretegic study' called Choices for a Better West End (PDF) at the end of last week at an exhibition in John Lewis on Oxford Street. The exhibition (which is free and runs until the 18th) outlines "innovative and exciting ideas on how the......

There are some stories going around today that a "multimillion dollar sexual 'theme park" is due to be opened near Piccadilly Circus. Now what exactly would a 'sexual theme park' entail we here you ask. Variations on Alton Towers' Corkscrew ride, or Blackpool's 'The Big One'? Maybe a hall of mirrors that just makes certain anatomical features much larger than they actually are? And what about Soho? Doesn't that have the 'sexual theme park'......

Will the Routemaster debacle never die? After all the fuss over the decomissioning of the buses and then the arguments over whether bendy buses really did have quicker boarding times or not, now the Routmaster's new role is being criticised for being "seriously defective". The Routemaster 'heritage tours' which were due to start in December have become the target for the Lib Dem's who can't understand why the proposed routes miss out sights such......

For those who haven't left work yet, here's the latest from TFL: 4.55pm Services are currently operating as follows and include service suspensions that were already in effect following incidents on 7 July 2005. Bakerloo - suspended between Paddington to Piccadilly Circus Central - normal service Circle - suspended District - suspended between Edgware Road and High Street Kensington East London - normal service Hammersmith & City - suspended Jubilee - normal service Metropolitan -......

With the violent death of 24-year-old bank manager, Saad Mohiuddin, still fresh in everyone's minds, the Independent have been out on patrol with the man who caught the whole thing on video camera. Ian Wilder is 58-years-old accountant who has been out on the streets of the West End, recording anti-social scenes for six years now. His love of the West End comes from the fact that his grandparents set up a tailors in......

We want! We want! We want! London is often at its prettiest under snow - that way you can't see the grime, BNP stickers and occasional axe wound. But now we don't need to freeze to see London as it should be thanks to Eboy! And by London as it should be we mean of course skinny dippers in the crystal blue Thames, Tower Bridge menaced in a cute way by giant squid and......

We have to admit, we weren't too excited by the reports of Destiny's Child's appearance at Piccadilly Circus on Monday. After all, when the NME is forced to report that "Kelly Rowland sported a new afro hairstyle, while Beyonce Knowles wore jeans and a suede and fur jacket" you can be pretty sure that nothing genuinely exciting happened. However, the pop trio's visit did confirm that the delicate art of stalking is still alive and......