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......

Pete Doherty wants to run the London marathon. We're sure many people will sneer at this idea, what with Pete's history of performance restricting drugs, his post-rehab bloatedness, and his jaunty hat, which will have to be held on with an elastic strap if he is to continue to look like a handsome East end libertine/bohemian counter cultural icon/twat* (*delete as appropriate). However, we welcome his decision to take up exercise. We're sure that he's......

London woman embezzles 4.3 million from her (patently rather stupid) employers, eventually gets caught and sentenced to 7 years in jail, gets out after 3, gets to keep her swanky ill-gottenly gained apartment and lands a plum job in the arts (albeit for a prison charity). Lord Luck clearly rides alongside this lady. Londonist is impressed by the scope for outrage here – the outrageous sum of money she stole, the surprisingly short sentence she......

Oh dear. The poor old Swiss Centre on Leicester Square seems to have gremlins in its giant billboard. Weren't they supposed to have demolished this place by now? Thanks to Walid Al Saqqaf for the image.......

Hackney Council's Parks Services has urged dog owners to stop their pets from 'strengthening their jaws' on park trees. Apparently, some dog owners are too cheap to buy their pets toys to munch on, and encourage them to chew on bark or—get this—hang from the branches of live trees in several of the borough's parks. This has caused severe damage to some 100 trees in the past few years. The Parks Services have been......

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......

Music, as Bono, Geldof, Martin or any of the members of Screwdriver will tell you, is a tool for peace and harmony. Selling memorabilia, on the other hand, would seem to be the domain of scrapping dogs, hound-like or otherwise. But now we hear that the owners of Elvisly Yours and The London Beatles Shop have settled their differences in a flurry of cheesy song references.* Story goes like this: Beatles guy (Howard Cohen)......

Children, children, Londonist wants to play a little game with you: it’s called “How to make you cry in one single snapshot.” The rules are pretty simple: you come equipped with your best smiles for the next school piccie and we’ll wipe them off your face instantly: black kids over there please ... yes, you ... Oh and you look a little dark of skin – over there as well please. Still smiling? Alright, Jewish......

What on earth possesses people to get an au pair? And why is there no shortage of applicants for such work? OK, Londonist isn’t stupid. There are lots of hardworking parents out there who either can’t afford proper childcare or can’t find anything suitable. And there are even more desperate young (for the most part) women who want to come to England to study but need that little financial boost. On paper it is the......

We clearly don't think as ambitiously as Tim Slater, organiser of the world's largest underwater dinner party who got 500 people in black tie and evening dress to eat a 3 course meal, underwater, in Acton on Saturday. After all, we thought growing beards for Battersea was a pretty wacky way to raise some cash. The key to underwater dinner is jelly; a fine coating of which made the salmon, vegetables and toffee apple......

Has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance between Dangermouse nemesis Baron von Greenback, and new Chelsea manager Avram Grant? No? Just us then.......

Film maker extraordinaire Quentin Tarantino has arrived in the UK to promote the DVD release of his latest film, Death Proof. Nothing newsworthy in that per se. But the whens, whos and wherefores of this publicity event are nothing short of astonishing. Londonist has learnt that the movie icon snucked (or was dragged) along to Wimbledon Dog Stadium on Monday evening where he watched the likes of Shayne Ward, Charlie Simpson (from Busted) and a......

We'll do anything to dull the pain of a long commute these days, even reading the free rags that have been forcibly thrust into our hands by over achieving paper persons on every street corner between work and the tube station. Once we've ignored the next fifteen Amy Wino / Pete Dogenderty stories we head straight to the puzzle pages since we can't afford one of those nifty Nintendo brain trainers. The question we......

Remember the London Urban Ironing Collective? These are the guys who, in exchange for a donation to cancer research, will iron clothing anywhere in London. These rapscallions of repassage have been busy since we last spoke to them - raising over £6500 for the cause, and de-creasing garments in the most outrageous places. They’re aiming for the big 10K, so please give generously and set them an imaginative challenge. In the meantime, here are a......

….you’re just pootling along the high street, minding your (or everybody else’s, if you’re a Londonist) business, when what do you espy? A piano. Just perched there on the pavement. You rub your eyes, and make a vow to cut back a bit on the old Lambrusco/JD/what you will. It cannot be. Ah, you think, it’s a practical joke: there’s a hidden camera somewhere…. Well, this slightly Python-esque scene is likely to be played......

Sometimes a story comes along that is so unbelievable it can only be presented in the style of The Sun, with lots of emboldened words. This is one such story. A couple face jail after inspectors found 316 rats in their one-bedroom flat. Stephanie Taylor and John Gooch of Staines kept the rodents in what sounds like atrocious conditions. The creatures were crammed into small cages, living on top of each other. Many had......

Yes, you did read that right. Yesterday an undisclosed number of Zombies swarmed Leicester Square to break yet another world record. Now, to break the world record, this implies that there must have been a record in place already. Indeed there was. Last year a total of 894 Zombies descended on Pittsburgh last year. Unfortunately, these Zombies aren't real. Sorry to disappoint. No, as convincing as some of them were, it's really just people......

Sadly, Londonist is not fabulously wealthy, although we have high hopes for becoming so in the future. After all, eventually someone has to win all that money in the lottery, right? However, if we had more money than we knew what to do with, and we were also having a bit of trouble hearing, now we know where to shop. A hearing aid supplier based in Balham has designed a hearing aid worth a......

This weekend, a man was found dead in Orpington High Street. Apparently his death is being treated as 'sudden'. What's surprising about this is that although his death was sudden, no one spotted him for 13 hours. Think about this for a second. A whole day. We never really think about time passing. But we're starting to realise just how long a day really is. We'd like to think if we were sick, or......

We are curious. Last weekend we noticed this rather peculiar-looking contraption sitting in the middle of West India Dock. Despite quite a bit of slack-jawed staring, we are frankly none the wiser as to its purpose. One possible (and rather obvious) clue is the Crossrail sign that is affixed to it. But that still doesn’t help us much – we can’t imagine why a project that has been inexorably stalled for the last couple......

As the name suggests, this post could be something out of a fairy tale. Well, a modern day one anyway. So, are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. Once upon a time there was a lovely pensioner called Dick Whittington who left his home in Weston Super-Mare in Somerset to come to London to seek his fortune. Or, rather, his pension. He, like many others reckon it's about time there was a rise in......

Despite evidence to the contrary from Dr Who, alien visits to the UK appear to be on the wane. Newly released Ministry of Defence figures suggest a drop in UFO sightings, as LondonNet reports: In 1995 128 strange events in the skies over the UK were reported by the public, but by 2006 that figure had dropped to 97. As a comparison, in the same period, human tourism to Britain increased by close to......

If you carry a handbag on a regular basis, we're sure that, like us, you've had the joyful experience of finding a misplaced fiver tucked into a corner, or a pack of gum just when you fancy a piece, or your favourite lipgloss which you'd written off as lost. Handbags can be a treasure trove of hidden objects, and it's always delightful to find something unexpected inside. An elderly widower in Woking found treasure......

It used to be that the wealthy, with their high powered jobs that meant they couldn’t make it home in time to walk the dog, paid someone to do it for them. They got all the perks of having a dog without having to actually put on wellies, throw sticks and bag turds. The world’s gone topsy turvy though and, apparently, the wealthy animal lover about town now wants to pay someone else for......

We have to thank reader David Roots for sending in this little gem. Chelsea Theatre hosts a mesmerising programme of classes for people with problems – from narcotics abuse to pecuniary difficulties. But can you spot the odd ones out? And what the hell is ‘monkey music’? With apologies to Chelsea Theatre for lifting this from their site – we’re checking in to ‘image pilferers anonymous’ tonight, to correct our vice.......

. We're all aware that identity theft is a real problem. We've all been told to shred our personal documents before throwing them out and to keep our PIN details private so that unscrupulous people don't steal our identities and run us into debt by buying holidays to Mauritius and taking out loans in our name. We generally don't worry about our pets though. They don't have credit ratings, so we figured that their......

Over 270,000 people have signed a Christian petition to oppose the proposed building of a supposedly enormous mosque in Newham. The petition, which closed this week, stated: We the Christian population of this great country England would like the proposed plan to build a Mega Mosque in East London Scrapped. This will only cause terrible violence and suffering and more money should go into the NHS. Human rights organisation Blink lobbied the No. 10......

It's practically a childhood rite of passage - you're playing innocently in a playground and get stuck in a swing. It doesn't have to be a swing, of course. It could be a slide, or the monkey bars or a merry-go-round. But for a 12 year old boy in Watford on Saturday, it was a swing. He was standing on a nursery swing, slipped and got stuck. How embarrassing. We're sure he was even......

Whether we're happy about it or not, everyone is aware that the smoking ban is in full force. And going down surprisingly well for the most part. The one downside of the ban is that it will unfortunately have an impact on some pubs and restaurants. Especially those without outside seating areas. But two weeks into the ban and it seems that some people aren't too happy with this. They think that for some......

Shoppers in Wimbledon certainly got a shock when they popped into wholesome chainstore Lush for their smellies. Greeted only with a smile and an apron to protect their modesty as the shop workers took a novel stand on protesting. So what are they on about? Well, it appears they're none to pleased about, ahem, excessive packages. Environment wise. According to store manager Wendy Reiding, they're all about the recycling and they want to be......