Hot-foot it to St Pancras, buy a ticket, board the Eurostar, and you could be swanning down the Champs-Élysées or loafing through the Jardin du Luxembourg in a little over 2 hours. Not quick enough for you? What if the journey time was reduced to under two hours. Impossible? Not according to Air France who, despite their aviation-inspired name, are planning to run trains through the Channel Tunnel when Eurostar's monopoly ends in 2010.......

The V & A have bought the sticky-outty-tongue made famous by the Rolling Stones. Bidding is on to run a new prison at Belmarsh. The Saatchi Gallery has reopened at a new venue on the Kings Road, and there is no longer an admission fee. Useless information of the day: there are more pregnant smokers in Enfield than anywhere else in the UK. A man got away with a charge of manslaughter after he......

The London Marathon’s got itself a new sugar daddy. After a highly public breakup back in December (“it’s not you, it’s us” was Flora’s graceless exit strategy), the London Marathon has been wandering adrift, at sea, not quite sure what the future would bring after the 2009 race. No worries – she’s a hot little lucrative number and we knew it wouldn’t be long before someone swooped in to occupy the vacant space by......

Just the tonic we needed after walking to work on a cold, blustery March morn: Richard Branson is mulling over introducing a direct service between London and Kerala. Pressed during a holiday to the south Indian region about whether a connecting flight is on the cards, the Virgin Atlantic boss offered this gnomic reply: "It could be, but there is no immediate plan". Okay, it's hardly a ringing endorsement, but it has got Londonist......

20. A Chronicle Of Oddness Reaching the twentieth episode in the Saturday Strangeness is somewhat of a mini-milestone for me, and so to celebrate the capital’s frequent bouts of weirdness, here’s a brief catalogue of high strangeness pertaining to the weird, wonderful and downright sinister which has plagued London for the last twenty years. January 1987: Location – Stanmore A domestic cat named Peppi goes for its usual stroll around Anmer Lodge old folk’s......

Londonist’s second-favourite weekend of the year is almost upon us. Open Garden Squares, this Saturday and Sunday, sees 160 of London’s private and not-so-private gardens opening to the public. The event is once again sponsored by Loire Valley Wines, who will be offering their wares at a selection of the locations. Here’s our pick: SOAS roof garden. Sparse, stony, and probably the least verdant garden you’ve ever seen. Still, its attractive oriental style, and......

Such was the misinformed delighted squeal from the official Big Brother forum today as the first shots of 2007’s house of pain in Elstree were revealed. Yep, this year it’s all arse about face; the fridge is in the garden, the bath is in the living room, the chickens are encased in glass. "Modernistic sur-reality" apparently. It’s not yet clear where the cooker actually is but we can all be put out of our......

Space is the Virgin frontier. Richard Branson's much-publicised rocketship business, Virgin Galactic, is well into the development phase and should be launching next year for test flights. But if you can't quite afford the £100,000 asking price for a trip beyond the atmosphere, you can settle for a sneak preview of the ship at the Science Museum. Well, so the PR says. In fact, it's just a mock-up of the interior decor, designed by......

Michael Halls-Moore is a man on a mission. Or, rather, a man wanting to be on a mission. His dream is to go into space. But he's a student at Imperial College, and not the most likely client for Richard Branson's 100-grand-a-shot Virgin Galactic trips. No matter. He's going to get there anyway thanks to a cunning internet scheme based on the Milliondollarhomepage concept of pixel-based advertising. On his website, BuyMeToTheStars.com, you can purchase......

Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic Airways has announced a new London-U.S. route to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to begin on 23 April, 2007. This will help open up Virgin to the midwest and heartland of the U.S. It will also be a convenient hub for travel to and from Canada and the north and northwest of the USA. Currently the only direct flights to Canada Virgin provides stop at Ottawa and Quebec, leaving the western......

A new report says that Muslims should 'play a greater role' in London's politics and the economy to help stem prejudice and discrimination. In the meantime, the City apparently needs to do more business with China and India. Looks like they might spray the Tube with anti-flu disinfectant. It works in Hong Kong by all accounts. A 'location aware' adventure game at the Tower of London you say? Where do we sign up? Dirty......

Keep saving those air miles. Alan Watts from Harrow is about to swap his for the ultimate upgrade – a ride into space. Mr Watts, manager of an electrical engineering firm, has accumulated over 2 million air miles on Virgin jets. And that’s enough to qualify for a free trip on one of Richard Branson’s fleet of space ships, due to enter service in 2009. I saved up my flying club miles to go......

As space buffs, we’ve been waiting months for some kind of out-of-this-world story with a London link…and then two come along at once. (Though the second one’s as tenuous as the Martian atmosphere.) First, our picture. Some clever space cadet called Pedro Sondas has superimposed a topical Martian feature over Trafalgar Square (little green pigeons not pictured). Victoria Crater is a half-mile diameter impact site on the Red Planet. It’s in the news today......

You know how London buildings always get nicknames (gherkin, cheesegrater, giant glass testicle, yada, yada, yada)? Well we’re wondering what this one’s going to be called. The Translucent Egg? The Floaty Ovum? The Breast Implant? This is the cracking design for the 2006 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, by Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond. Each year, a leading architect is asked to create a striking and innovative temporary structure to adorn the grounds of the Serpentine......

London is to get an extra £22 million next year to tackle climate change and improve the environment. My Pal the Psychopath says today's Sun, describing the "astonishing video"of George Galloway in a 20-minute meeting with Saddam Hussein's son Uday in an Iraqi palace. It's not all work, work, work: police charge the ex-assistant manager of the Wandsworth high street branch of Lloyds TSB with corruption and theft as part of a two year investigation......

It was a strange day for those using the trains yesterday. First tens of thousands of commuters got a free ride when the Oyster card system collapsed. Then passengers at Euston were delayed for 45 minutes while armed police officers got ready to swoop on a train carrying men responsible for a casino heist in Birmingham. Better than the usual 'leaves on the line' excuse. And finally on the way home commuters were hit......

If you're thinking of traveling to Australia next summer you could be one of the first passengers on the new gargantuan Airbus A380. It seems that London is set to be one of the first cities to play host to the world's largest passenger aircraft when Singapore Airlines begins using the plane on flights between here and Sydney. Virgin Atlantic is also planning to use the A380 but not before 2008. The wait may......

"Carrying on with our 'the future is here' theme for today, may we point you in the direction of this report, which examines the possibility that the skies above London will soon be filled with flying cars (or 'jetpods' as they're called). The report profiles the claims of London-based firm Avcen who hope to get what they call "personal aircraft" into the sky sometime around 2010. The managing director of Avcen has given an interview......