55. A Fishy Story! If pigs could fly, the world would be an even weirder place. However, it appears that as only fish can fly, or at least fall from the sky... then the world must be simply just quirky! Let me take you back to a crisp autumn evening of 1893. On Kensington High Street, a young gentleman is taking his usual stroll home from a hard day at work – his day......

You may have noticed that not every element of London's media was truly fair and balanced in their coverage of the Race for City Hall. Chickens, you may commence roosting: one of Boris' bandwagon-jumpers has been given his marching orders for encouraging people to vote for our new Conservative chieftain. Talksport's James Whale has been sacked after breaching Ofcom rules that ban presenters from showing bias towards a political party prior to an election.......

Buttercup Cake Shop 16 St. Alban’s Grove, W8 5BP Nearest Tube: High Street Kensington www.buttercupcakeshop.co.uk 020 7937 1473 Expect to Pay: £2.50 for a cupcake Buttercup Cake Shop is tucked away on a lovely wee side street in the heart of posh Kensington. From the High Street Kensington tube stop, you pass T.S. Eliot’s house on the way – there, now it’s a cultural bakery visit. See those cupcakes in that photo above? They......

Paris Hilton arrives at a nightclub, then leaves. The end. Yes, you can all go home now. Class dismissed. Oh, you want more? Fine. That's right folks, London be a lucky place this week. Paris is in town, and the hacks are getting excited at reports she was paid £70,000 to roll up at Kensington's own Mahiki with her rocker boyf and waddle lethargically around, a look of bored insouciance dolled onto her kisser,......

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......

The joy of living in such a multi-cultural metropolis, is that there is always a party going on somewhere. Now you might have thought that it was enough already that this week starts with Guinness and St. Patrick and ends up with that mega-choc-fest, Easter…. but arguably the most interesting knees-up this week is the Persian New Year Festivities: Nowrooz. And as there are something like 40,000 ex-pat Iranians living in London (most of......

Chris at Cheese and Biscuits, lists the top ten things he hates about London restaurants. We heartily agree with point #10. Stonch’s Beer Blog takes its readers on an 1881 pub crawl in Clerkenwell. The ladies at Cupcakes Take the Cake interview the owner of Kensington’s Buttercup Cake Shop. An American in London has a ocakbasi overdose in Dalston. Photography by Chris Osburn © 2008......

Here's a novel idea for a film festival: instead of just showing a director's oeuvre straight, why not throw in a handful of films that complement, or contradict, or just plain go nicely with the main work? Ciné Lumière is doing just that with a "retrospective in context" of the work of Michael Haneke, the Austrian director who has made a career out of cracking apart the complaisant, cosseted world of the continental middle......

Prior to Mohamad al-Fayed's sensational appearance at the Royal Courts of Justice this week, with his sober critiques and totally non-insane, honest-to-Gawd guaranteed truthful claims of murder most foul, the hitherto dull proceedings of the Diana Inquiry have been enlivened by John Loughrey. Mr. Loughrey describes himself as "Diana's Number One fan", and in living proof of his dedication to what is clearly a hotly contested title, he has attended every single sodding day......

Hang on to your TLSs. Literary London is a lioness roaring in a few weeks ahead of her regularly scheduled appearance in March. With both the London Word Festival and Jewish Book Week launching this week, we’ve got enough events in our diary to keep us busy until spring. Keep an eye on this space as we highlight our favourites from these festivals over the next couple of weeks. Monday: You want poetry? RADA’s......

It was a delightfully dry and bright, crisp and chilly weekend in London... except for a sudden bit of flooding along Edgware Road on Sunday morning. Not from the heavens opening in a repeat of the 2007 deluges but from what has been reported as a mechanical digger failure at the crucial junction of Sussex Gardens and Edgware Road not far from Marble Arch. This is the junction where traffic from Paddington Station comes......

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......

Jens Lehmann might be damaging his chances of playing in goal for Germany by allowing himself to spend an extended period on Arsenal's substitutes' bench since being dropped early in the season, but there's no way he's going to try his luck back in his native country, or probably even outside the M25. Speaking as rumours of a move to former club Borussia Dortmund surfaced, the often forthright custodian explained: Crime levels are really......

Perhaps your New Year’s resolutions have all made their way to the rubbish bin by now. You’re sneaking ciggies again, you’re spending more nights at the pub than not, and you’ve worked out exactly two times, despite the shiny new gym membership. Don’t worry, you’re in good company. The history of literature is filled with stories of writers and their vices. It may just be a sign of genius. Still, you can up your......

You wouldn’t think Jacqui Smith scares easily. In her time as Home Secretary she’s dealt with car bombs and blazing jeeps, and she’s lately been facing down a bunch of mightily annoyed cops. But in an interview appearing today in the Sunday Times, Jacqui revealed that she wouldn’t dare walk down a London street alone at night. Would she feel safe walking alone at night in, say, Hackney, east London? She looks alarmed: “No.......

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......

Mere days after warning us about 'white flight' and the perils of living in modern London, scribes at the Telegraph have had a volte-face, and declared their love for our flawed yet fantastic city with a special report on the top 10 property hotspots for 2008. First up on the list: well, colour us a shade of surprised blue - the Telegraph's only singled out the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, home to Notting......

Call us starry-eyed saps, but when we learned today that J.M. Barrie’s former home is up for sale, we couldn’t help that we were filled with whimsical visions of left-behind shadows, fanciful fantasies of flights to Neverland, and an urge to occupy the place immediately. With the friendly ghost of Barrie and an inexhaustible supply of fairy dust, we’re pretty sure we’d crank out seventeen Londonist posts a day. Write our first novels. Never......

A quick poll amongst the people milling beneath the Londonist penthouse reveals that, while mayoral candidate Boris Johnson may have the jet-pack of publicity strapped to his back, folk are less sure about his policies. The Henley MP is trying to rectify that. In addition to his Back Boris website, and promise to resurrect the Routemaster, Boris is now bringing out the big guns, with a vow to scrap the western congestion charge zone.......

35. London UFOs Part One When the new millennium dawned, many UFO buffs, researchers and spotters packed up their binoculars and disposed of their files because UFOs weren’t ‘in’ anymore. Sightings had allegedly dissipated and the sceptics were rubbing their hands. However, whilst no strange craft appeared to be crashing in the deserts of the U.S. or buzzing witnesses in Mexico with any frequency, the millennium still offered much in the way of alleged......

Transport anarchy is threatening to break out in W12. TfL's plan to close Shepherd's Bush station on the Central Line in early February for escalator upgrade work has been met with a stentorian campaign by locals to keep it open. The protesters claim that the work - to fix up the station in anticipation of the hordes of shoppers flooding to the £1.6 billion Westfield complex, scheduled to open later this year - is......

Having closed its doors in 2004, and playing host to squatters in recent months, there's finally some good news to report about the Commonwealth Institute in west London. The disused building is to be the welcome recipient of £20 million development plan, with hopes to turn it into an art gallery (yay!), museum (double-yay!) or "centre for a corporate foundation" (erm, possibly yay - we're not sure what that means). This should hopefully mean......

More Olympic cost rumbling Get inside MI5 via radio4 Lottery winners in Ealing, Islington and Kensington & Chelsea are running out of time Good Ken: Green500 scheme gets big firms to commit to reducing emissions Bad Ken: pigeons are starving in Trafalgar Square Image courtesy of Orhan via the Londonist flickr group.......

We at Londonist hope you’re having a great weekend, and – if we’re not overstepping the bounds of our relationship here – maybe even a bit of a sexy weekend. But if these chilly November days haven’t contained quite so much hanky panky as you’d hoped, there are a few hours left to get to the Erotica 2007 show being held this weekend at the Kensington Olympia where you can, ahem, warm your cockles.......

26. Going Underground Urban legends of the more sinister variety have always intrigued me, so continuous whispers and friend-of-a-friend tales concerning a mutant race of beings inhabiting the dark tunnel systems, sewers and subterranean passages beneath the capital are always welcome, even if unfounded (despite rumours circulating as far back as the nineteenth century). However, one thing us folklorists do know is that the underbelly of the city is teeming with all manner of......

Ken Livingstone, bless him, has brought us six new buses that are more environmentally friendly than our existing red beasts. They'll soon be putting the green back into Greenwich on the 129 route, and chugging round the 360 route between E&C and Kensington. The new buses are to enter service alongside six that are already on the streets; but the Mayor isn't content yet. By 2012, he wants every new bus joining the fleet......

Postal strike continues. Maybe. Possibly. Best stick to email and reading Londonist. Skinheads with a difference in Kensington. Claridge's charge £50 for a bottle of water. Bargain. Chocolate week starts here! Celebrate by eating a Wispa bar. We like Wispa bars. Image courtesy of windscreen fly via the Londonist flickr group.......

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......

Sometimes, Londonist stumbles across fantastic new bands by accident. (In this case getting drunk on wine playing video games.) We were introduced to Mitch. And now we're introducing Mitch to you. Meet Mitch. Who's in the band? Darren - Vocals, Guitars Jason - Guitars, Vocals James - Bass, Vocals Justin - Drums Whereabouts in London are you based and what's ace about it? Darren - We're based in all 4 corners of London -......

Apparently many CCTV cameras may as well be doing just that for all the good they are. The Lib Dems have drawn attention to the apparently arbitrary relationship between the number of cameras in each London borough and their respective crime solution rates. There are some councils who have loads and loads of the things (Wandsworth leads the pack here with 993), and yet they are no more successful at the old apprehension of felons......