North London rubbish collectors, Haringey Enterprise, have been ordered to remove any soft toys they may have strapped to the front of their trucks as they pose a risk to small children who might be drawn to said, abducted squishies and thereby get squishied themselves, we presume. It's health and safety gone mad, do we hear you cry? Well yes, in a way it is. But we're also secretly relieved. Seeing Little Ted with......

We love it when great club nights not funded by some huge company come along. DIY night NoOneDied has been pumping it up at The Enterprise in Chalk Farm for over a year and given they even managed to survive the fire, we thought it was about time to check up on them. When and why did you set NoOneDied up? We planned No One Died around Christmas 2006, but the first night wasn't......

While the weekend's football may have been dominated by FA Cup upsets, for the red corner of North London, Sunday March 9th was memorable for a more unusual reason. St.Totteringham's Day is one of those arcane bits of football rivalry that makes the game so enjoyable. It falls every season on the day when it becomes mathematically impossible for Spurs to overtake rivals Arsenal in the Premier League. Despite the Gooner's anaemic draw against......

Boris Johnson might just have won himself the election with a pledge to abolish the bendy bus and bring back the Routemaster. Emotions were high today as the Bethnal Green tube station disaster was commemorated, 65 years on. Londonist is feeling left out: we want to climb up something and protest: today saw two up a crane grumbling about the EU Treaty. On the Olympic front, today saw the announcement that the IOC is......

It’s March already and the daffodils are blooming and we’re feeling all full of the joys of spring. So, of course, we’ll be settling in on the couch to watch some telly. But in a spring-like frame of mind, naturally. On TV, Londonist likes: Monday 3 March Withnail & I (Film4, 21:00-23:05) Enjoy the squalor of 1960s London in this classic film, which is one of our favourites featuring our fair city. Camden’s never......

Red Dwarf legend, Danny John Jules, was apparently arrested in his dressing gown yesterday for allegedly threatening a bin-man outside his house in North London. Eye witnesses seem keen to confirm he brandished a samurai sword at them and went "beserk" in a dispute over recycling but this seems as far fetched as suggesting that The Cat was simply reliving his heyday performing the "I'm going to eat you little fishie" classic as he......

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......

And now for something completely different. We stumbled upon Joey Herzfeld and some of Hooverville at the Carling Academy back in January. Their extraordinarily different sound, great musicianship and stage presence alienated half the crowd and transfixed the rest. Were they mental or brave musical pioneers? We couldn't resist snagging them for an interview purely on the basis of a song called "Cavity Search" and a frenetic gypsy dancing interlude. It went like this.........

38. London UFOs Part Four Newspapers across the world were being bombarded by UFO reports by the time the ‘50s had glided by. On July 15th 1963 a farmer from Charlton found a crater, measuring 2 ½ metres wide and the same deep on his land. Around the hole were four impressions, as if something had stood or landed there – soil and foliage surrounding the hole were scorched. Weird lights seen over the......

34. Phantom Assailants: Part Four Continued from episode 31… The London cat-rippings of 1998 continued into 1999. Even more bizarre was the RSPCA voice that stated, after several months of methodical research into the strange deaths, that vehicles were to blame! An inspector analysing the decapitations claimed that foxes, badgers and dogs had also been the cause, although I’m unaware of any animal native to England that kills in such a fashion. The vehicle......

Fed up of the froth, mirth and sentimentality of the Yuletide muzak yet? To bring you an antidote and alternative soundtrack for your Christmas holidays we caught up with the utterly charming Roi Robertson of Mechanical Cabaret over a sorbet and peppermint tea and ruminated on the band's latest single, pastoral London views and the fact that we've never seen him and Noel Fielding in the same room together... Who's in the band? I......

Jewish Free School (JFS) in North London, Britain’s top Jewish state school and indeed one of Britain’s largest schools overall, was yesterday charged with breaking anti-discrimination laws and ordered to remove a section of its admissions criteria that gives preference to ethnically Jewish children over religious Jewish children. The decision comes in light of a series of controversies in which the off-spring of Jewish converts have been rejected from a place at JFS on the......

Huge clouds of smoke can be seen over Bow, east London, visible from as far as Queen's Park. A disused warehouse on Waterden Road has caught fire and according to the news emerging right now, there are 15 fire engines and between 40 and 75 firefighters attending it. Waterden Road passes through the Olympic site and as you can imagine, people are anxious but remaining calm. The smoke cloud is drifting southwards towards Canary......

This Sunday TfL take over the North London Line. Yes, the service also known as the loony line and infamous for fare dodging and criminal activity on unmanned stations is getting a rebrand. Goodbye (good riddance) Silverlink! Hello London Overground. The long neglected, feared and cursed service that links Stratford with North London and pootles all the way around the West to Richmond is being brought into the TfL fold. It's even getting coloured......

Many comedy fans will already have experienced the pleasure of watching Pappy's Fun Club, the if.comedy nominated sketch troupe who are arguably the most exciting act working on the live comedy circuit. For the uninitiated, Pappy's are a four-piece band of boys whose silly, upbeat and joyous sketches leave audiences with a severe bout of happiness. They have a lovely, fresh take on the traditional live sketch format - by breaking down the fourth......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 24th September 1917: A zeppelin drops a 50 kilogram bomb that lands just outside the Bedford Hotel on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, central London. 13 people are killed and a further 26 injured. Tuesday – 25th September 1818: The first human-to-human blood transfusion is performed at Guy’s Hospital. Previous blood transfusions had used animals’ blood. Wednesday – 26th September 1850: The first stretch of the North London......

19. Freakish Falls! During the August of 1920 in Woodford, stones poured from the sky for three consecutive days without explanation. Four years later at Eltham, Plumstead, Woolwich and Shooters Hill a great ice storm battered the area, despite the afternoon being the hottest for two years! The hailstones were the size of eggs, and some jagged in nature, measuring five-inches which fell from the sky, cutting residents who ran for cover. In January......

The fourth in our series of interviews with potential candidates for next year's Mayoral election. Previously: Victoria Borwick (Tory), Andrew Boff (Tory) and Warwick Lightfoot (Tory). Sian Berry is the Green's candidate for next year's elections. Unlike the Tory rivals we've previously interviewed, she is a strong supporter of the congestion charge. She's the only person we've ever known to use the words 'The North London Line is good'. And she's also got a......

Here's what else has been going on while you've been at The Notting Hill Festival: This weekend's news: It's possible there could be a new Thames Barrier built. More people have been shot in North London. Toddler dies in swimming pool. Authorities agree to give bus drivers more toilets. How nice. Mum fights web drug dealers. Hooray for cyber mum! And here's what we think might happen next week: Pete Doherty arrested. Again. Amy......

This Week In London’s History Monday – 23rd July 1986: Prince Andrew marries Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey. As a wedding present (of sorts), the Queen grants them the title of Duke and Duchess of York. Tuesday – 24th July 1987: At the High Court, Jeffrey Archer wins damages of £500,000 in his libel case against the Daily Star. 14 years later he would be convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice......

Off to see Timberlake at the new-look Dome tonight? Make sure you don’t get the wrong venue. The Greenwich attraction isn’t the only O2 in town… The O2, Greenwich Peninsula Function: Entertainment venue, including stadium, 11-screen cinema and exhibition space. Includes Justin Timberlake. Age: 7.5 years. Opened at the end of 1999 as the Millennium Dome, now recalled to life as the O2. Capacity: 20,000 in the main arena. Size: 365 m diameter and the......

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......

'If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy all her friends?', and 'Where has all my money gone' are two of the imponderables listed on the Any Questions Answered text service's website as favourites. In the latter case, the wonga may well have been frittered away on the addictive information service, which charges £1 to answer anything from the number of the local Chinese to 'Will I get lucky tonight?'. Armed......

150 forced to leave their homes after gas cylinder fire in Wimbledon. The plot thickens! Did British secret security services have a hand in Litvinenko's death? Motorized wheelchair in hit and run incident. A potato that looks just like a duck has been discovered in a North London nursery. "Staff said that the potato would definitely not be eaten and they are now keeping it in a cupboard and trying to figure out how......

Apologies for the first-person perspective - normal service will resume after this post. About a year ago, Phil, a friend of mine, had a run-in with the British Transport Police over the use of a four-letter word - "shit" - when describing the accuracy or otherwise of a metal detector set up at Highbury & Islington station. I witnessed the whole thing and wrote about it on Londonist; the story was then picked up......

Greg Cristal is on a mission to visit every pub, bar and club in the UK. Starting in Barnet. Barblog is where he posts his reviews of each establishment; these reviews are full of spelling mistakes so this man is the real deal. Given that London alone has over five thousand pubs, we asked Greg what the Hell he thinks he's doing: Who are you, Greg Cristal, and what's Barblog all about? I am......

Although largely un-reported by the mainstream press, Arsenal Ladies Football Club have this week have put the cherry on top of a feat which is a minor miracle in football terms. This accomplishment has never been bettered or equalled by their English counterparts, male or female, and unlikely to occur again. By securing the Premier League title, The UEFA Cup, the League Cup and the FA Cup they have powered their way to an......

Transatlantic rumours reach us that North London's finest, Amy Winehouse, is about to get hitched this week at a ceremony with a handful of mates. When husband-to-be Blake Fielder-Civil popped the question, she should surely have responded with "I say - No, No, No." Rejection would normally have been reasonable on the grounds of his remarkably silly name - although this would be tough to argue as she already has it emblazoned somewhere on......

What's the skinny? Remi Nicole is the latest London based singer-songwriter to get a buzz going about her. Signed to Island Records late last year, Remi is 23 and a veritable London melting pot of Austrian, English, Trinidadian and Jewish backgrounds. But she's a North London girl through and through having lived in Holloway, Islington, Highgate, Tufnell Park and Highbury. She might be young, female and sassy, but Remi Nicole isn't just the "new......

In the UK, public inquiries are used as a way of scrutinising our systems and making sure they work as they ought to. The tragic death of Victoria Climbié rightly triggered an inquiry which concluded that had timely action been taken on any one of twelve opportunities for intervention which were identified, Victoria might still be alive. More widely, the inquiry looked into how well – or how badly – public bodies work with......