Tourists out for a gentle stroll today in Hyde Park had their peace shattered by African drumming, cars pipping and a wild man dressed as a Victorian explorer interviewing people dressed in all sorts of outfits. This was no anti-Mugabe rally, or some world music festival, rather the launch of the Africa Rally, the latest madcap crap car drive organised by the Adventurists, the Bristol-based people who aim to make the world a little......

Psst ... Wanna sample a selection of canapés accompanied by a few gin-based cocktails in a classy outdoor venue that’s usually not open to the general public? Yeah, us too. That’s why we’re looking forward to checking out Tanqueray Tables. “A series of intimate cocktail evenings hosted by the makers of Tanqueray gin and the folks from toptable.co.uk,” Tanqueray Tables is offering two occasions this summer to indulge in “an intensity of flavours through......

We may have jealously watched Glastonbury on TV, but that was forgotten tonight when we witnessed the last ever UK performance by The Police. Headlining Sunday's Hard Rock Calling, Sting, Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland took to the stage and rocked out on a high. Sticking to the setlist which they've played since reuniting last year, they delighted us in the blissful Sunday sun, opening with 'Message In A Bottle' & turning the 35,000......

If you've not headed off to a muddy field in Somerset but still want some live music this weekend, then fear not! There are plenty of muddy fields in London to enjoy instead. Twickenham is the place of action for Bon Jovi fans today and tomorrow, as the fists in the air band fill up the stadium for some almighty cheesy rocking out. We expect to hear Livin' On A Prayer well into West......

Nelson Mandela arrived in London yesterday in anticipation of his 90th birthday concert that takes place in Hyde Park this weekend. The former South African president is a frequent visitor to these parts: just last year he unveiled his statue in Parliament Square, and he has long recognised London's contribution to the overthrow of apartheid in his native country. Mandela probably wants little more than to relax, but for such a statesman, politics are......

The E4 Evel Knieval flying machine courtesy of nickstone333's Flickrstream This weekend saw the 2nd annual fest of flying and silliness that is the Red Bull Flugtag in Hyde Park... well, in the Serpentine, more like. Teams of amateur flying enthusiasts build ridiculously unaerodynamic contraptions and throw themselves off a platform into the Serpentine. Check out the results here. Thanks to nickstone333 and cherbert for the great photos. The Royal Swan taking off courtesy of......

Well, it would have been rude not to. After announcing a big 90th birthday bash in his honour two days ago, organisers have today revealed that Nelson Mandela will indeed be attending his June 27th Hyde Park party. Those conceding that, yes, Nelson lead the transition to multi-racial democracy in South Africa, and that true, he’s one of few people that can call themselves an international icon of peace and equality, but are unable......

Nelson Mandela is turning 90, and he’s doing it with style. A massive concert will be held in London for the former South-African president on 27 June to honour his life and work. A reformed Queen, now fronted by Paul Rodgers, Razorlight, Annie Lenox, Leona Lewis, and Simple Minds will be joined by South African artists for the Hyde Park concert as part of the 4664 Campaign. The 4664 Campaign takes its name from......

A couple of news items guaranteed to register on Prince Charles' carbuncle-ometer: plans for London commissions by two of modern architecture's most innovative practitioners took a step forward this week. Back in January Frank Gehry was announced as the designer of this year's Serpentine Pavilion, the temporary build that goes up during the summer and autumn in Kensington Gardens. The structure has now been unveiled. An "urban street" that provides a covered walkway from......

If you're currently on a quiet holiday, suffering from a non-debilitating but house-binding condition or idling away your notice period doing as little work as possible, here's a challenge: you have until Saturday to design a flying machine to launch off a 6m high platform and plunge into the Serpentine for those wacky chaps at E4 who've been given a place in this year's Red Bull Flugtag. As the current UK champ Tim Simpson......

If the Guardian hadn't given Will Hodgkinson £5000 to start a record label then Londonist wouldn't be spending Friday night in a folk club in Euston. But we're here for the album launch of Rosemarie, the debut long-player from new young folkers, Thistletown. Strangely the place does not fully resemble a hive of outcasts from The Wicker Man: bristling beards and woolly jumpers, curling tresses and flowing dresses. There are day we say it,......

We hope you’re standing up for this: A KCL study finds that sitting on your arse all day contributes to the ageing process. Whereas regular exercise apparently makes you look like Elle MacPherson. In a wholly uncorroborated and unscientific study undertaken in the last 5 minutes, Londonist notes that the rockstar lifestyle isn’t so bad an antidote to ageing either. Our evidence: 56-year-old Sting and 62-year-old Eric Clapton, who will headline Hyde Park’s Hard......

Photo courtesy of The Sizemore McCabe Project It's not difficult to spend money in London as just leaving the house seems to remove a fair amount of cash from the average wallet. But for those with a less than average wallet, it can be a bit of a challenge to spend in a less than average manner. Silly money deserves silly spending after all. Introducing... The Cinema Suite at the newly refurbished InterContinental Hotel, one......

Frank Gehry will design this year’s Serpentine pavilion. The Kensington Gardens gallery gains a temporary annexe each year, designed by a guest architect with no previous London commissions. And they always bag a big name - Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Liebeskind, Oscar Niemeyer… So this year it will be Frank Gehry, who is perhaps best known for designing the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (pictured). It’s a shame he wasn’t the architect of 2007’s......

On Londonist we try to include as many different aspects of London as we can: it’s not all news, entertainment and parody….sometimes we aim for edification, things that we genuinely find absorbing or surprising. Things that make us go ‘ooh-er’, or even ‘gosh’ (‘cept to our chagrin we can’t say it quite the way that Joanna Lumley can). On Saturday afternoon, then, something both dramatic and interesting is happening. A march, from Speakers Corner to......

We already knew London was capital of the world, but 2007 has firmly cemented us as the best city by far musically. The Millennium Dome reopened as the O2 Arena, hosting not only 21 nights of Prince, the Rolling Stones, Take That, and the Spice Girls first UK dates for 10 years, but also the most anticipated gig for a good decade or so: Led Zeppelin’s reformation. Unfortunately this Londonista had to settle for some......

What we learned this weekend whilst you were enjoying all the fun of the fair: Weird statistic of the week: Emmas from Sutton and Evas from Kingston should not be allowed behind the wheel. How on earth do they get these stats? Two arrests have been made following Saturday’s night bus murder. Londonist would so like to like night buses, but it is hard. Find out what north-of-the-borderers make of us. Mummy gets a......

We love it when London gets all Christmas-y and a big part of that is the sudden belief that all of us can ice skate once December hits. We gave you a big round-up of the main ice skating rinks last week but there's just been a further addition to the fun with the launch of Hyde Park's Winter Wonderland. For five weeks from December 1, the area of Hyde Park between the Serpentine......

25. More Road-Related Horror! Lord John Angerstein’s coach has been sighted pulled by four headless horses, in the vicinity of Trafalgar Road, travelling onwards to Vanbrugh Hill in southeast London. Why the horses appear headless no one knows. On the Bayswater Road near Hyde Park, another phantom coach and horses is said to travel, without sound. But the most astonishing vehicle to haunt Greater London has to be that of a spectral bus, sighted......

Tutankamun's coming to town! First we had Anubis and now pyramids are popping up all over London. Created by Brazilian pop artist, cheeky looking Romero Britto, with the help of 1500 school kids, the biggest - a colourful 45fter - was unveiled at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park yesterday whilst its smaller sibling, just 25ft, will sit outside the O2 on Peninsula Square, guarding access to the first major exhibition at the sweetly named Bubble......

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......

Saturday Strangeness 15 – Dragons Over London? Dragons are probably the most celebrated yet misunderstood mythical creature across Britain, yet several sightings of such leathery legends have been recorded, and such monsters feature heavily in the lore of the British countryside (remember St George?). During modern times such leviathans have been relegated to the league of fantasy, where they only exist alongside unicorns and fairies. However, dragon-like 'sky serpents', which have also been connected to......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 30th July 1966: England defeat West Germany in the FIFA World Cup Final at Wembley Stadium, claiming the Jules Rimet Trophy (and, of course, the status of Football World Champions for the next four years). Tuesday – 31st July 1962: Violence erupts at a rally of the Union Movement (formerly known as the British Union of Fascists) in Dalston, East London. Sir Oswald Mosely, leader of the......

Bringing a bit of brightness to the capital this Sunday is the Hindu festival Rathayatra, a huge event for Lord Krishna and his followers. Starting at Hyde Park Corner at 12.00pm, three enormous, highly decorated beautiful carts each holding a deity will lead a procession to Trafalgar Square. The three deities transported by cart are the centrepiece of this celebration; Hindus and non-Hindus are welcome to follow the progress of Sri Jagannatha, Srimate Subhadra,......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 16th July 1924: Crowds of photographers, reporters and ‘autograph seekers’ greet the pilots of the first (successful) round-the-world flight as it landed at Croydon airport for its London stopover. Tuesday – 17th July 1974: A bomb explodes in a tourist-packed room of the Tower of London, killing one person and injuring 41 others. No-one claims responsibility for the bombing, and no culprits are found. Wednesday – 18th......

Given that a member of Transport for London's Special Projects Team had assured us in his interview only a couple of weeks ago that the celebrated Tour De France publicity caravan would be commencing its parade around the Prologue circuit at 1:30 pm last Saturday we were more than a little startled when, as we sauntered gently along Constitution Hill at about ten past one, the first klaxons blared, heralding the arrival of a......

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......

If you haven't had chance to yet, get down to Free Range this week to see what's happening. Joe Waller, a Camberwell graphic design student is one of the artists you can see exhibiting there. Tell us more about you and your artwork. I grew up in the West End of London so my environment has always stimulated my work. Much of my current artistic inspiration comes from my past writing graffiti and walking......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 25th June 1953: John Christie is sentenced to death for the murder of his wife, whose body was found with several others hidden beneath the floorboards of his house in Notting Hill, West London. His conviction casts serious doubts on a previous murder trial that resulted in the conviction and execution of his fellow tenant Timothy Evans, who would be posthumously pardoned in 1966. The resulting controversy......