He’s climbed the world’s most iconic structures from the Eiffel Tower to the Petronas Towers. But French ‘Spiderman’ Alain Robert chose a curious challenge during his trip to London yesterday: Portland House on Victoria Street. Here’s the brute. As in, here’s Portland House, not Monsieur Robert. He’s much more gorgeous, see ---> The Gallic climber scaled the 320 ft building as a protest against climate change. On reaching the top, he was arrested for wasting......

Fans of pomp and circumstance will line the streets of the City tomorrow to watch one of London’s fine old traditions unfold. Each year, the City of London gets a new Lord Mayor (most certainly not to be confused with the more well-known mayor who inhabits the glass testicle near Tower Bridge). Indeed, the office of Lord Mayor is so tied up in the ceremonial that the official web site doesn’t even bother to......

We’re gob-smacked we are that Brits have a bad bed rep. As far as the eye can see, quite literally, we’re about as randy as a canine on heat. Sexual sighting number one: freshers strip during freshers week – now that sure is an original way to make friends (although the residents of Kingston might argue to the contrary). Sexual sighting number two: Swedish porn at the ICA. This really qualifies as six sightings,......

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......

We think everybody who attended Saturday's sun-soaked Tour de France Prologue would agree that, on the whole, it was a well-organised, popular success. However, with the shadow of the Olympics hanging over every large scale sporting happening in London between now and 2012 our experiences at the race lead us to believe that there are still a few important tweaks that could be made for events like this in the lead up to the......

As the buzz surrounding the weekend's Tour de France action in London builds steadily, more and more people are asking where will be the best places to watch, especially during the Prologue individual time trial on Saturday afternoon. Unlike the annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, where the best vantage points are well established, there's no obvious form to go on for this one-off cycling spectacular in terms of where to set out your viewing stall......

An astonishingly workaday title for a book that features a singing otter, flying dinosaurs and a sheet of electronic tissue paper. Welcome to the madcap world of Paul Ewen, a softly spoken New Zealander with a knack of finding trouble in public houses. It’s a world not unlike that of Michael Hodges, only with less vitriol and more adjectives. The just-published paperback collects together 44 ripping yarns, each set in one of London’s famous......

BBC: A woman has been taken to hospital after police were called to deal with a suspect package at premises in central London. Bomb disposal experts are at the scene in Victoria Street in Victoria after police received a call at 0940 GMT. London Ambulance said the female employee had suffered minor injuries. The main road outside the building, which is just 200 yards from Scotland Yard, was closed off with a cordon set......

Queen Liz wants to leave the palace lights on all night because tourists might not be able 'to see the royal landmark at night'. Greenpeace et al are none too happy. Scientology has come to London in a big way. £23m of Scientoligism just landed on Queen Victoria Street. It's official: Hackney is crap. Or is it? Noise map of London shows (not unsurprisingly) that London is noisy. Note to London waiters: Don't serve......

Guardian writer Julian Glover thinks he knows just the man for the Tory Mayoral candidacy: The applicant must have proven executive experience at high levels in government or business and clear and longstanding links with London. Ok... An interest in sport (especially the Olympics) will be taken into consideration as will international experience. Must be used to dealing with a hostile media, good at talking to people in the street and on television. A......

Just when you’re wondering how you could ever live without a pair of live televised football matches per day you suddenly get forty eight hours of cold turkey during which it dawns on you that there are only eight games left in the 2006 world cup. Half of those take place today and tomorrow in the footballing no man’s land that is the quarter finals. If you’ve got this far you can’t really be......

Good news for Iain Sinclair. The Temple of Mithras is going home. First the back-story. Lost for centuries, the Roman temple was rediscovered in the 1950s, after the Luftwaffe gave excavations a head start. Subsequent poking around uncovered some of the most important archaeological finds in the city’s history. 1700 years of mithraic splendour, hidden right beneath the banker's noses, was suddenly revealed. So what did they do to this site of significant historical......

Walking past the new Cardinal Place building on Victoria Street recently, Londonist was startled to hear the sickening sound of crunching glass coming from on high. But was it: (a) Simple construction accident? (b) Needlessly complicated smash and grab raid? (c) Claustrophobic office worker determined to open that unopenable window by any expedient? (d) None of the above. Answers in the comments section, if you please.......

Number 27: Window of the Albert Tavern This charming little boozer can be found at 52 Victoria Street. Or should that be Victoria’s treat? For if you look closely at the frosted windows, you’ll notice a blatant representation of what we presume is the late consort’s penis. The august member is artfully depicted at the moment of discharge, with a stream of manspatter tastefully woven into a delicate melange of foliage and woodland scenery. The......

Browsing through the ever-excellent Things Magazine this morning we came across a link to Cinema Treasures, a site "devoted to movie theater preservation and awareness, uniting movie theater owners and enthusiasts in a common cause - to save the last remaining movie palaces across the country." As it's primarily a US site we turned right to the page marked UK and found the London cinemas that are listed there. There's quite a few... and......

It's probably a good job we don't have an -Ist outpost in the Antipodean regions otherwise there may have been a bit of gloating going on yesterday. As it is we here at Londonist will be able to placate our celebratory appetites by joining tens of thousands of other people who will "line the streets of London" today to congratulate the England cricket team as they are paraded through the city upon the traditional......