Time was when getting into the Guinness Book of World Records really meant something. You had to walk 130 kilometres with a milk bottle balanced on your head. Or keep on teasing the ladies with your Hot Stuff routine well into your sixties in order to qualify as the world’s Oldest Male Stripper. Now, it seems, all you have to do is drink a cup of coffee. At least we know that we all......

Jermyn Street Theatre is a tiny space. And when we say tiny, we mean tiny. We'd guess at 80-100 seats. And if you're over 5ft 10, you can forget about leg room for the evening. Luckily, Opera on the Run's delightfully light-hearted show, The Perfect Picnic should be more than enough to divert your ears and eyes away from any cramp forming in your legs. Recently-redundant David doesn't want to go the opera; he's......

A night of clubbing is as much about the music you want to hear as it is the experience you hope to get out of it. Whilst there are endless opportunities to don your best threads and brave the night buses to see and be seen, we prefer to come as we are, get sweaty and get down. With their irresistible selection of post-punk and electro classics and obscurities, Our Disco ticks all our......

Gorillas have been getting a rather good press of late in London. The Gorilla Kingdom at London Zoo, which opened in March, has seen huge numbers of visitors trudging up Regent's Park way to gawp at resident lowland gorillas Bobby, Zaire and Effie swing about their new home. Meanwhile, a television ad featuring a sullen simian being sparked into life by the crashing drum break of Phil Collins 'In The Air Tonight' has become......

When Lisa Connell hit the local press last month we were impressed by her spirited determination and charitable entrepreneurship in the face of personal adversity. We caught up with her this weekend to find out how the fundraising's going, whether there's been any naughty business yet and just where should you take Barnet's finest once you've bid her up? So, how’s the dating going? Well its still in the early stages. I’ve managed to......

Transport for London thinks Londoners are lazy. They're suggesting that Londoners start adding at least 2 kilometres walking each day to their journeys, rather than driving or taking the tube or bus. While we suspect they may have ulterior motives in suggesting this (perhaps reducing the strain on London's transport system?), it's actually not a bad idea. After all, it's recommended that we walk 10,000 steps per day, and walking an extra 2km every......

Nobody would have guessed that Stephen Tyler is a mere 59 years old judging by his performance at last night’s Hyde Park Calling finale with Aerosmith headlining a day of stellar bands. Strutting around the stage like only he can, Tyler had the audience in the palm of his hand from the opener “Love in an Elevator”. Whilst Aerosmith undoubtedly stole the show, Hyde Park Calling was a three stage festival which showcases the best......

If raucous, loud music festivals don't rock your boat, then this weekends Homefires Festival could be just the ticket for you. Now in its 4th year, it's billed as the a festival which "showcases the best of left-field *quiet* music" and will be held on Saturday and Sunday at Holborn's Conway Hall. Run by UK folkster Adem, Saturday's bill is topped by Nina Nastasia, and also features Fionn Regan, St Vincent, Barbarossa, Emmy The......

"My god. Run. A giant ant is attacking London!" Ho, ho, don't you worry, gentle readers. It's not real. But this image from Sparticus is crying out for a witty caption. Which is where you come in... If you've got an unusual image of the capital that you'd like us to consider for this slot, either upload to Flickr and tag it Londonist, or email to londonist - at - gmail - dot -......

London's running schedule is hotting up next month. Alongside the capital's tussle with Liverpool and Glasgow on the morning of Sunday 3 June, workers in The City and Docklands have their own chances to nip out, buy some emergency trainers and get some kilometres under their belts (which might be straining if they've been investing their inflated xmas bonuses in too much rich food and Krug). First up we have the Canary Wharf Jog......

When you woke up this morning, your first thought was most likely “It’s St. George’s Day!” You undoubtedly leapt out of bed, barely able to contain your excitement, ready to kick up your heels and start celebrating in style. However, you might find yourself stumped as to what you can do to commemorate this special occasion, seeing as you most likely have to work (unless you happen to be employed by this guy). But......

What's your name and which part of London do you live in? Paul Kneeshaw - I live at Canvey Island in Essex. How long have you been running for? Around 2½ years. Is this your first Marathon? No, I have done the Great North Run twice, and last year's London Marathon. What inspired you to enter the Marathon? Running for The Prostate Cancer Charity - to raise money to fight the disease that claimed......

Our share of the ''mounting NHS debt crisis' is even bigger than previously expected according to new figures. The technical term for the situation appears to be 'meltdown'. Ken Livingstone has sent a 'message of support' to London's Muslim community to coincide with 70th anniversary of the defeat of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts at Cable Street. A Natural History Museum curator has discovered a new species of bird while leading an expedition to the remote......

It's officially autumn in London when Culture Crawl retreats indoors and the weekend stretches ahead full of things to see and do in enclosed spaces. That's no bad thing: the crawl is very cool this week... Saturday 23 September Design Mart continues at the Design Museum. Seven specially-selected product and furniture designers who have graduated within the last five years are featured as new and exciting names to know in this annual survey of......

On the 8 October this year two members of the Londonist team will be taking part in the Run London event in Hyde Park. As the theme of this year's race is North v South it's fitting that our competitors come from opposing sides of the river, and to make things a little more interesting one is a Run London veteran having taken part in 2005, while the other is a complete beginner (plus......

Well we finally got our own American style terrorist threat level and it's already gone all the way up to 4: The government today made public its official assessment of the threat of a terrorist attack, warning that it is "severe" - meaning an attack is highly likely. The five-level categorisation is published for the first time on the MI5 website, and is one degree short of the most severe rating - "critical", which......

Friday: Club NME: You know we don't really like Club NME. Maybe we're being harsh, maybe we've just not been in the right mood or maybe we're just getting old, but every time we've been it has seemed to be full of really really drunk teenagers who are all just a little bit too messy. The thing is though, the DJs do play some corking tunes, and the clout of the NME means they......

The North London vs. South London divide exists. Really, it does: it is a marketing tool. It is a dangling carrot. It is the latest way to get Londoners running in this year's Nike 10km Run London event. Last year, Londonist was encouraged to join for far more individual and introspective reasons but this year, we're doing it to settle, once and for all which side of the river is the better London. While......

Haven't Snow Patrol done well for themselves? By exchanging the one last chance nothing spared push of The Final Straw for a more of the same efficiency on whatever the new one's called, they've only gone and upgraded themselves to arena band status. If you can get anywhere near the front of Wembley Aircraft Hanger on December 18th, you'll see that Gary Lightbody still looks close to tears each time the audience sings Run......

The Londonist Literary List appears every Tuesday. If you’d like to bring an event to our attention, please email londonistlit@gmail.com. It's all about the Indies this week, with an event by a publishing house, a literary magazine, and a Bookslammer rounding out the highlighted events below... That said, we 'd like to use this space to appeal to Waterstone's, that ubiquitous chain, to start putting more thought and effort into hosting quality readings and......

Estate agents, Tess Daly, and racists - sounds grim, doesn't it? Yes, perhaps to reflect the unrelenting yuckiness of the weather (look, it's almost April - please can we have a little, just a little sunshine?) the TV schedules are about s appetising as day-old tramp sick. Apart from the old stalwarts (Footballers Wive$ Thur 9pm ITV1 - Tanya is back! With Joan Collins!, and Desperate Housewives Wed 10pm C4 - getting better again......

Since discovering that her marriage into British Royalty might have been based around an early Heat poll a month or so after Lock, Stock etc was released, Madonna's further excavation of her family tree has revealed that she's perhaps a little closer to the real thing than she might ever have imagined. Now you might be wondering why this is in anyway worthy of coverage, anywhere, but read on faithful Londonistas as we reveal......

Anyone with even a hint of taste and decency will know that the only time to drink Carling is after you've been atomised by a particularly nasty nuclear power station meltdown. And yet still their indominatable quest to tie up every concert venue in the country continues, as does their role as foremost sponsors of UK indie-guitar rock. As they have done for the past couple of years, they're endeavouring to kick off the......

Happy New Year to everyone from the Music Dungeonistas. We trust you found solace in some decent music while 'Best ofs' and Reality TV Rubbish polluted tweeters, woofers and sub-woofers over the break. In a bizarre collision of mainstream and alternative, we spent New Year's Eve doing a karaoke version of Run DMC's It's Tricky on Singstar. Still, it's the start of a new year and the start of the Music Dungeon's resolution to focus......

We've spent more time than is good for us in the Trocadero Centre. It hosts the Raindance Film Festival, has a cheap as chips cinema and is still the best place to impress members of the opposite sex with your mole bashing skills. Best of all it's an actual tourist trap in that once you get stuck inside one of the arcades you may as well give up on any hope of ever seeing......

What is it about professional footballers and Luther Vandross? The dearly departed crooner has been name-checked by famous footballers so many times that we are beginning to suspect that this is some kind of football in-joke and that the public at large are being made fun of. Or maybe they're just trying to make us feel better, so that we can consol ourselves with the thought that although we don't earn £30K a week,......

Foot Locker. JJB. JD Sports. You could be anywhere on this sceptred isle, be it Balham or Bognor, and your experience of buying running shoes will be the same. You will be pushed and pulled as you compete for scarce space against a multitude of teens desperate to get their hands on the latest tracksuits, and you will find that glaciers will melt before you are assisted by a clueless member of staff. If......

Most Londoners (well, most Londonistas anyway) have a considered and careful plan of where to go if the city was taken over by zombies. Zombies move slowly, frequently bump into things and aren't fussy about traffic; if the day of the dead really did spring itself upon us, most of us would know what to do and where to go. But how prepared are we for an invasion of really fast non-zombies? What should......

There is exactly one month to go before London finds itself filled to the brim with heaving, huffing and puffing runners all trying to clock 10km for the Nike 10km Run. The three simultaneous 10km runs in Battersea Park, Hyde Park and Victoria Park on Sunday 16th October are closer than ever and though it's not a race, it's definitely a trial as the many folks pounding the pavements in preparation for the big......

My my, those red adverts are just about everywhere now aren't they? Staring up at you from your copy of the Metro, in your face on the tube platform and frenetically tapping away at your subconscious as they roll past you on the side of a bus. For those who have no intention of destroying their knee joints as they slalom past dog turds and hooded youths, these ads are an irritant. But they're......