The blink-or-you'll-miss-it honeymoon that Gordon Brown enjoyed last summer seems a lifetime ago. Amidst the Northern Rock fiasco, poll drubbings by the Tories and an economy on the turn, along comes another, devastating blow to the PM's authority: Madam Tussauds has declared that he is "too obscure" to merit a waxwork. The Marylebone tourist magnet has announced that they will not be making a waxwork of Brown for their World Leaders department, citing his......

It's officially Spring and by Pisces it's lovely out there in the sunshine. Crocuses have been spotted in Highbury Fields so our biggest recommendation for expenditure light trips this week is get to the parks and into the gardens and witness the miracles of the changing seasons. If you're in need of more artificial stimulation, however, and are squirrelling all your spare cash into your ISA before the end of the tax year then......

The world of English football wobbled a few degrees off its axis yesterday when a club not called Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool won a major trophy. This hadn't happened for four years, since Middlesbrough were victorious in the Football League Cup final against Bolton, but Jonathan Woodgate's one-two with Petr Cech ensured that Tottenham Hotspur would claim their first proper silverware since they won the same competition in 1999 under the stewardship......

David Garrett is "part maverick, part genius, total virtuoso". He's also a dreamboat; unfortunately, at present, a dreamboat in bits over his precious Stradivarius which is also in bits since he fell down some stairs onto his violin case after a concert at the Barbican before Christmas. Smash. Oh dear... We don't know if Barbican wine was to blame. The 290 year old instrument is/was priceless; a priceless jigsaw puzzle right now. Estimates for......

lol Scientology courtesy of Joe Lee They came, they saw, they protested. And trolled Scientology IRL. Meme-heavy but fun, good-natured and above all peaceful, the hordes of Anonymous donned their V masks and descended on the sites of the Church of Scientology, at Blackfriars and at Goodge St. The 'organisers' of the protest - although Anonymous is more an anarcho-syndicalist commune than a top-down hierarchy - professed themselves thrilled with the turn-out, which ran to......

On a cold winter night in North London, we meet with hotly tipped indie pop beat combo The Wave Pictures before their gig at the Islington Bar Academy. Counting Jeffrey Lewis, Dean Wareham, Darren Hayman and Herman Düne as fans David Tattersall (vocals, guitar), Franic Rozycki (bass) and Jonny 'Huddersfield' Helm talk to us about their inspirations and what it's like to be finally getting recognition after years of obscurity. How would you describe......

Philadelphia experimental indie stars Enon play the Luminaire on Monday night, with around 17 tickets left (at time of writing) on We Got Tickets. Support comes in the shape of Ill Ease, which features "Elizabeth Sharp playing guitar, bass, drums, tambourine, shaker, car horn and anything else that rattles, buzzes, shakes or hums in a riff-o-matic racket" apparently. Should be good. Meanwhile over at 93 Feet East, Seattle singer-songwriter David Bazan plays his folk-rock. Tickets......

While lesser politicians find themselves embroiled in the mundane tracasseries of campaign funding, our Mayor takes a more creative tact. Twenty artists, including Banksy, Antony Gormley and Marc Quinn, are selling their work to raise money for Livingstone’s re-election. The ‘Bid For Ken’ auction takes place at 7pm on 6 March at the Aquarium Gallery in Farringdon. Boris Johnson is courting the creatives too. He of the humorous initials is focussing on ’singers, rappers......

Book-lovers will be checking out a unique new venue on Saturday [2 Feb]: St James Street Open-Air Library in Walthamstow. No payment, no tickets – just bring as many books as you like, and swap them. Fab, but Brrrrrr. Its hours are brief; from 1-3pm the first Saturday of the month. And its book stock is the few hundred its organisers have rounded up from supporters – plus whatever anyone brings. But it’s handily......

Another reason (as if one was needed) for Londoners to be interested in the US presidential race: Democratic hopeful Barack Obama has revealed that he is a West Ham fan.. The White House hopeful's love for all things claret 'n blue stems from a visit to England five years ago, when his Kent-dwelling extended family introduced him to the passion of the Boleyn Ground faithful, and he's been hooked ever since. If Londonist recalls......

Our weekly roundup of film reviews returns, courtesy of James Bryan… As we wallow in the truly miserable news that Aliens Vs Predator made more money at the box office last week than No Country for Old Men, we sigh and turn our attentions to this week’s offerings. The three biggest releases this week are all stamped with Oscar. We’ve got Johnny Depp singing in Cockney and slicing throats in Sweeney Todd, Tommy Lee......

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......

Be there first Circus-style theatre comes to London in Afrika! Afrika! opening this week after heavy advertising which has been around for months. Performers from 17 different African nations make up the show; contortionists, acrobatics, jugglers, high-wire acts, musicians, singers, the list goes on. If you're thinking of joining the reported 1.5 million who've seen the show since it launched in Germany in 2005, bear in mind: ticket prices are up with the high......

Last year, Icelandic theatre company Vesturport, in collaboration with the Lyric Hammersmith, staged a performance based on Franz Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis to great acclaim, and the theatre reported a 100% sell-out run. Now the Icelanders and the Lyric’s Artistic Director David Farr bring the play back for a brief three weeks, before touring it internationally. The cast has changed, but the story remains the same, as does the haunting music by Nick Cave and......

There's some bickering occurring in the London Assembly over just how much crime is occurring on London buses. While Tory transport committee chairman Roger Evans is saying that crime levels have risen on buses, Labour Assembly members John Biggs and Murad Qureshi are contesting this, accusing Evans of scaremongering and twisting the findings in the transport committee report to provoke fear and support prejudices. Biggs and Qureshi have produced a separate report that backs......

Two weeks into the New Year and it's important to find things to distract yourself from the grey weather, gym timetables, failing diets and attempts to avoid alcohol. If you're still feeling the pinch post festive season then we've got some excellently cheap things for you to do this week to cheer, edify, inspire and amuse you. Monday: Happy days! The Fonz will be at Forbidden Planet for a book signing between 5-6pm. It's......

We love to be dazzled by youth. Be it Zadie Smith's precocious debut novel, the Arctic Monkeys storming straight to No.1 or Lewis Hamilton tearing up the track in his first F1 season, we are consistently enraptured and delighted by the ability of the young upstart to reach heights to which they have no right and to let rip with flair and skill that is unencumbered by the fear of failure that haunts the......

The Mayoral race has been quiet recently. Londonist suspects that it is the calm before the shitstorm. According to a recent poll, Boris is only one point behind Ken. A sign that campaigning is going to start making a dent on the Winehouse news in the London Lite is that Boris, from the blue corner, has launched a new Back Boris website. The photo gallery shows us that recently the campaign trail has taken......

It’s now over ten years since the Spice Girls entrenched themselves into the mindsets of teenyboppers around the world. Now all of those teenyboppers are in their early to mid-twenties and apparently desperate for a slice of retro-tastic cheese. Armed with plenty of alcohol in our system and a set of fuzzily fond memories we set off to the O2 to see the reunited Spice Girls in action. A quick glance round the audience......

Have a nice relaxing Sunday in front of the telly, resting up for that last minute dash at shopping tomorrow. Here are a few options you might want to take a peek at. On TV, Londonist likes: Heston’s Perfect Christmas Dinner (BBC2, 14:45-15:45) If you’re feeling nervous about cooking Christmas dinner, this maybe isn’t the programme for you. You’ll very likely feel intimidated and that your dinner doesn’t match up. But if you want......

It’s almost Christmas! Over the Christmas holidays, we’ll be here every day recommending the best of what’s on television. We’ll do the hard work, slogging through the TV listings, and let you sit back with a nice hot drink and a mince pie. Enjoy! On TV, Londonist likes: Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1, 17:50-19:15 and 21:25-22:10) While we haven’t been keeping up with the excitement of this year’s dancing fun, we know lots of you......

It's a horrible feeling, getting caught by the traffic warden. Your heart just plummets when you return to your car and realise you read the parking restrictions wrong or, in the time it took you to get to your friend's front door to pick up a parking voucher and get back across the street, the damn car's already been ticketed. £60 down a very unfair toilet. Well, maybe next time you need not feel......

If you’re having a stroll along the South Bank tonight, be on the lookout for friendly hawkers trying to push books into your hands. We’re told that Canongate Books will be handing out 1,000 free copies – that’s free, folks – of Lewis Hyde’s 1983 classic, The Gift, along the South Bank at 6.00pm this evening. If you’re not familiar with the book, expect some heavy but worthwhile questions about the role of creativity......

Every day this month the Londonist team will be pointing you in the direction of a Christmas present that (with a bit of luck) you won't already have on your list. Climb up onto our collective lap and we'll see what we can move from our sack to your stockings... If you collected the specially commissioned posters from TfL then it's likely you'll fancy this book. Platform for Art: Art on the Underground cunningly......

Damien Hirst has made the Tate's Christmas by gifting them 4 of his art works. The infamous cow and calf bisected and suspended in formaldehyde, "Mother and Child Divided" is the Turner Prize winning crowning glory. This is a high profile donation, timed for maximum festivity and goodwill but Hirst's generosity is not spontaneous or even his own idea. He pledged works to the Tate back in 2004 as part of the Building the......

We've not lately delved into what's been bubbling away in the run-up to London's elections next year. So Wilkommen, Bienvenu, Welcome to this new and possibly occasional feature to catch up with what's going on out there. Let's have a rummage and see who's up and who's down: Mayor Ken fights back in a hefty spat with Evening Standard over a hatchet-job on his race advisor. Standard's tactics are questionable, but the story went......

30. Phantom Assailants: Part Two One hundred years before the fog-saturated reign of Jack The Ripper there was the London Monster of 1788 (see previous episode). Fifty years later came the bewildering spectacle of the iron-clawed Spring Heeled Jack (episode 11), another tormentor and slasher of females. Fast-forward almost thirty-years and gasp at the horror of the Phantom Skirt-Slasher Of Piccadilly, who for a terrifying reign of six-months prowled the London underground like some......

Ahoy hoy, book grocery shoppers! The metaphorical book grocer aisles are stocked high with choice meats and sweet confections this December, so whatever your tastes, fill up your shopping cart and gorge yourself on this week’s selection of literary events – they’ll give you much less of a stomach-ache than mince pies. Monday: Revisit Sylvia Plath by attending the aptly named Sylvia Plath Revisited, at the ICA (7pm in the Nash Room £10 nonmembers/£9......

Advent is upon us. Hanukkah starts on Wednesday. Office parties are already everywhere. Tis the season to be jolly, jolly, jolly but we know this can be draining, emotionally and financially. Don't let the state of your wallet throw you over the edge. We can't afford to buy tickets to the BFI IMAX all-nighter next weekend and we're not allowed to enter our own competition. But we can do the following splendid things for......

This dance theatre performance based on Australian David Hicks' experiences as a detainee at Guantanamo Bay packs a lot of visual punches but doesn't speak up enough. Director Nigel Jamieson and choreographer Garry Stewart have created a powerful and breath-taking production that depicts the treatment of those kept by the US government without charge or trial through an astonishing series of aerial work and dance performed inside a huge metal cage. Projections of text......