The Greatest Cities in the World - Unseen London with Griff Rhys Jones
by the year 2010 half the population of the planet would live in cities this one is capital of what was once the greatest empire the world has ever seen look at that the moon the river the whole place made out in front of me it's played many roles through its history but what really lies behind the well-known face of london during the course of a typical 24 hours i intend to try and get an overview of this extraordinary place i want to discover how history still courses through its streets i want to get immersed in its living traditions and by meeting her people i want to understand why they love the great sprawling metropolis westminster an hour before dawn you never know what you're going to find in a big city the bigger they are the more you turn up the unexpected and london is a monster it's four in the morning and i'm in the middle of a city of seven and a half million people and at this moment about seven million of them are fast asleep all around me and i hope they stay that way it's one of the miracles of urban life but i've come here to trafalgar square because there's something here that's very significant for london there's a statue and i don't mean nelson it's a statue of charles the first on a lonely island on the south side of the square and this must be it oh well this statue is the official center of the metropolis that's where all the distances in london are measured from when it says 15 miles in london they mean 15 miles to here but is it really the center of london because in fact there are many different centers to this town and one of the things i want to do is identify them as this 600 square mile living organism is about to wake up every day before 8 am enough bread is delivered across london to fill the festival hall to the roof twice over before the day is through about 2 000 tons of meat will have been consumed enough to carpet the albert hall more than 12 times most of that meat comes through smithfield market in the dead of night this labor is just coming to an end but for others the day is about to start martin davey is going to take me to work via a particularly ancient center morning aren't you cold yeah a little bit a little bit this way we're now just over a mile from where i started in trafalgar square but hidden in the wall of a disused shop on cannon street is a strange piece of stone with its own legends attached oh that's mysterious look at that well there we are the london stone it's supposed to be roman or something yeah that's right there's it's invented to be roman and it's uh the stone of brutus and as long as the stone of brutus is safe yeah london will flourish so the myth goes anyway they haven't really displayed it very effectively no it's a shame really the london stone is reputed to have stood right in the middle of the forum when the romans were here it survived the great fire and weathered the blitz now stuck in a cage and charring cross it sits sadly forgotten yeah welcome to our side martin works here and this is his perch he's going to take me up his crane 200 feet to watch the sunrise why do i always get these jobs all right okay all right there you go yeah i want to see how much its roman origin marked by that nearby stone has shaped the city today or do i it's a long way up and even further down straight on yep there you go it's fantastic incredible viewing it got tower bridge over there yeah oh those are the two towers canary wharf see coming through the mist london looks incredible from up here it's just incredible a fantastic city just gently engage the dead man make sure you're staying so there you go you're moving you're now a crane driver 2 000 years of history and this town just can't stop growing in the one square mile surrounding this crane there are currently 88 construction sites we're about as close as we can be to the center of the original city of london london essentially the entire structure of london is based upon that roman settlement because every time they added more roads they went out in a sort of concentric circle and london grew like the most enormous spider's way and we still follow that complicated pattern started by the romans it's a recipe for chaos sort of walking out over space what are we now we're about about half past seven it's just starting look they're all just still ready to go to work just about now everybody over there decides they want to be over there everybody over there decides they want to be over there and everybody over there wants to be over there and one of the biggest rush hours in the world commences 25 million separate journeys every day in the 15 minutes leading up to nine o'clock two hundred thousand people are crammed into london's underground eight thousand buses ferry people around london's two thousand miles of streets in fact just to earn a living the average commuter travels the equipment of two and a half times around the planet i've got to get to my next appointment luckily i know a shortcut that used to be crowned with traffic for which today is virtually empty it's called the thames welcome on board you ready one hand at all times please yep the port of london authority patrols 24 hours a day they're there to keep the tidal river safe wonderful and to give me a jolly you like the river don't you i love it i just think it's just the most fantastic way and we think it's it's because of the river that london's here at one time the thames would have been crammed with trading ships from all over the world the fortunes of this town and this country were founded here now it's a deserted avenue of water it's quite impossible actually to come into london now and to see that vision not feel like you know will not feel like admiral nelson you know making your way up the thames i feel like i should actually if there's an old sort of um an old film with jack hawkins in now there'd be a sort of dun dun dun dun dun dun dun playing just to give us a little bit of a sort of uh phillip just to lift us up so it's 9 30 and i find myself in another center of london thanks very much thank you about a thousand years ago someone picked westminster as the place from which to rule england and ultimately the british empire it's as familiar as a policeman's helmet and actually just as peculiar to help me in joe murphy joe works here as political editor for the evening standard feeding this town's appetite for gossip london still has an evening paper paris new york can't be bothered anymore this would have been much more interesting 400 years ago because you'd have seen oliver cromwell's head on a pike just above where we're standing now oh i'm sorry i missed that this is spectacular where are we now we're in westminster hall and the roof you're looking at is 600 years old so it looks victorian on the outside but in fact it's built around something which is genuinely old this has been here for 900 years and the roof when it was built would have been a miracle it did away with pillars people would have come in here and thought this was the most extraordinary building they'd seen in their lives and it's still pretty eye-popping the palace was built here because westminster was originally an island formed where the river tybun joined the thames the river may have gone underground but a lot of medieval customs still survive my job as a lobby correspondent just basically means i'm allowed to talk to mps as they come past i'm not allowed to run after them i'm not allowed to shout for them to come over to me i have to think ahead and plant myself where they might come across me so it's all got to be done on a sort of slight sly casual hello fancy seeing you here type sort of those are the rules which are designed to put journalists in their proper place which is as observers of parliamentarians and not as participants it's now 10 26 and 30 seconds and a precisely timed ritual is taking place it's common in london for lawyers soldiers aldermen and the staff of the house of commons to assert their authority by wearing clothes that went out of fashion over a hundred years ago what came past was absolutely totally like a cartoon at a punch more than any other city in the world london likes to keep one buckled foot in the past you paid good money for that wouldn't you but even the most familiar symbols of london have their hidden workings joe has access to all areas the chimes of big ben are transmitted live to 183 million listeners across the globe it's rather disconcerting to find that the mechanism is not much more technically advanced than a clockwork mouse it has to be wound by hand without fail three times a week i see when i arrived here that this was the center of london so what is the center that we see from here you think a collection of palaces banqueting houses turned into a seat of power even a house our prime minister lives in an ordinary terraced house but he is surrounded by all sorts of other he called him piglet accommodation wow in washington politics are hidden behind fences and manicured gardens in peaking they're stuck behind a wall here government is a spectator's sport ministers secretaries and all their underlings scuttle about this town just like the rest of us a few yards up the street i can move seamlessly into yet another center and this one is royal the kings and queens of britain have a long history of swanning about their capital city london today still owes a lot to that particularly in its green spaces this hole from james's park was once the private property of the king charles ii used to stroll about with his mistresses here and if it was hot they'd go for a quick dip in the canal i suppose by then they got rid of the crocodiles james the first like to keep two crocodiles here although we can still see the pelicans which were a gift from the russian ambassador in 1664. obviously not the same pelicans just their descendants and not the same royal family either just their descendants this entire area was once reserved for royal deer hunting it's these ex-private grounds that now form london's parks nearly 8 000 acres of open land they help earn london's official classification as a forest anyone can still take a horse into hyde park even if like me they can't actually ride the thing personally i'd feel happier with a handbrake and some indicators but i'm told it's a great form of exercise so you like riding i love riding it's just the most wonderful sport because one's outside and on a horse and they're so intelligent i always think you see the thing about rich people basically i mean not rich people posh people is that they like to do any form of exercise which they can do sitting down you see they'd like to do it if they're on a horse or possibly a little bit of yachting but it's a civilized exercise is it yes and riding here on rotten row is a perfect example of how the whims of royalty have shaped london here king william iii at the end of the 17th century this is the earliest lit street in the world yes let's go when william built the road it's the first lamp-lit road in the world and he employed a man to light them at night and put them out again in the morning now what we've got coming together traffic here is astounding who's royal carriage is that prince william that's the question the queens are allowed on here morning gentlemen good morning and there's another one on the other side of the park over there you'll sometimes have half a dozen out here really you've got them ah look at that how fantastic there are still about 300 horses in london nearly all of which are used for decoration in edwardian times there were 200 000 and they all worked residents then were concerned that the city would drown in the 480 000 gallons of urine and 2 000 tons of manure they produced daily though by then london was really defined by a horse of a different hue an iron one i'm looking for number 21 westminster road i think that must be it well that's all that remains is probably the most bizarre railway station in london because that was a railway station for the dead the necropolis railway was opened in 1847 after terrible cholera outbreak and it was used simply to ship coffins to surrey by railway and it lasted for nearly 100 years as a terminal in more senses than one the railway age saw a transformation of victorian london in 50 years it tripled in size we still make daily use of the marvels of that age especially the hidden ones perhaps the most spectacular achievements of those victorian engineers are not london's railway stations but something that we don't see every day something beneath our feet this is part of the victorian sewerage system there are over 42 000 miles of sewers underneath london what i find impressive is why the victorians designed them in the first place they built this incredible system of drains almost as soon as they knew that all the diseases which were killing their city were caused by water by foul water but the excavation of subterranean london didn't stop there okay how's that feel all right that's off that's not bad so let's see how it happens yeah in addition to the sewers there are some 300 miles of tunnel and that's just for the london transport system this is one of their ventilation shafts i'm coming down through the london plane but some tunnels are secret and coming down now to about about the depth of hoban tube that's quite a deep underground railway but that is not the lowest thing under london it's something that the government decided they needed about 50 years ago 150 feet below the surface underneath the central tube line lies a huge tunnel complex it has been hidden for 50 years though they might have told me there was a lift mr bridges i presume hello greg pleased to meet you i wouldn't exactly have i landed myself in then well it's a secret tunnels complex that was built in the 1950s by a secret act of parliament so it's pretty secret it certainly is in total it's just under a mile in length i understand it's for sale is it it is yes i'm acting on behalf of bt on the sale of the complex wow okay can i review him you certainly can't okay the labyrinth was to be used as a telephone exchange in the event of a nuclear attack it housed a permanent staff of 150 workers who entered by a seemingly ordinary glass door on the high street above and the public didn't have a clue oh look out there's a map here now this might be quite useful because it shows so where where are we now mars we're in uh this third avenue and there's four avenues all of this size and scale and then there are two longer avenues which are 450 meters in total but this is only a little bit of it potentially what i mean why it's been rumored that people have heard noise on the other side at the end of the the eastern part of the tunnel so i think that it may lead to a further complex of tunnels of which we know nothing with no views no car parking no ensuites it's a difficult gaffe to sell beyond the obvious storage potential what would you do with it 65 000 square feet on the surface would have a price in the region of 52 million pounds but down here we're entering into unknown estate agent territory maybe i can make an offer knock through and have a very convenient shortcut to work it's lunchtime and unlike much of continental europe nobody intends to shut anything especially the london pub beer has run through the body of london for generations in medieval times fermented brews were seen as a safer alternative to drinking the water they also had supposed medicinal properties i've come to a pub called the old dr butler's head the original proprietor old dr butler back in 1666 came up with numerous liquid cures all involving alcohol today we're launching a special herbal purging ale now i've come to help you yep and i have the fiddly job of tapping the first cask and yourself comfortable and you give it one mighty quack okay not bad that's enough that's enough you've done it well done that wasn't so bad was it no it wasn't and now and this is rather typically london the new brew must be tested in the same way that it was in the 1300s by the city of london i think that's them now back then the ale connors carried huge prestige when beer was more regulated than water they earned the equivalent of six figure salaries sir we the el connors of the city of london have been summoned here today to test your ale for the purpose of judging whether it is of acceptable quality they're pouring beer onto the bench and you'll know when leather bridges is going to sit on that bead and if they stick it means there is unfermented sugar in the beer so the beer is not fully fermented if they don't stick it means the beer is fully fermented and fit to sail and good are you anticipating a problem there i'm not anticipating a problem anticipating your beer is going to tear the ass out of a pair of leather trousers i do not think so it's punching it will be make tomorrow morning it does not stick it does not stick we hereby declare that by the powers invested in us that this ale is fit and proper so we can we now we can now get flogging this beer god save the queen the beer may not have adhered to a nail collar's bottom if you want to try it's a new beer it's very delicious but london does like to stick to its old traditions it's now two o'clock and i'm on my way to yet another center of london st james's and now i'm going to share with you something i almost don't believe myself i've come here to meet with tommy how are you i'm very good i wanted to ask you simply one question i wonder if you could tell me what is the japanese for what you'll wear this one yeah called sebiro yes so definitely if i if if i was in japan and i went to the department store yes and asked to see what we call a suit yeah i would be shown a similar that's fine that the lady is going to guide you to the civil divisions yes okay that's what i wanted to know thank you very much thank you and the reason that 127 million japanese speakers talk about the sebaro is because in 1871 their ambassador came here to sabiro to buy himself what he thought was obviously a pretty neat outfit this is amazing this is the place where a man can still get kitted out as a gentleman in handmade suits and handmade shirts in a style not too far removed from that japanese ambassadors 137 years ago if paris is where you want to be a rich woman london is definitely the place to be a rich man here at the royal automobile club a gentleman can swim in a beautiful underground pool and no you don't get home start included the club's connections with the breakdown service broke down this is an area of padded comfort and luxury goods the name is bond bond street or at least just around the corner i'm joining one of the oldest and smallest private police forces in the country at the burlington arcade in the heart of st james's excellent okay well we'll we'll do the bottom up oh sorry let's arrange for the shoes to have a bit of a polish with our shoes shine led but apart from that fine i'll pass your pass your pass you'll be okay good there were sort of rules specific to the burlington arcade no whistling no plumbing no whistling was because the pickpockets used to whistle signals to one another coming in the singing is because you weren't supposed to show merriment in the arcade because it was one gentleman when this was built you had gin and oyster houses in london yes yeah and obviously if you drink too much gin you behave in a certain way especially if you're eating an ice cream you might come in here and well exactly all over the floral i shall go and patrol up a bit remember you're in control i'm in control yeah oh of course i'm a figure of authority it was loutish behavior in the taverns that led lord cavendish to build this arcade for his wife she had complained she had nowhere she could shop with her friends in peace and quiet and the world's very first shopping mall was opened 189 years ago i'm not quite sure it's like playing a role and i'm not sure how to play i don't know what to do i think people are aware that i'm a fraud i honestly think one of the real problems is that everybody in the burlington arcade is fantastically well behaved so far i've seen somebody picking their nose but i don't know whether i was supposed to do something about that still eventually i found my level a long two blocks two blocks and turn right but if the west end was traditionally the london center where a man spent his money it was a couple of miles east that a man traditionally made his money in the city of london this is where i started the day up ukraine and where the romans founded this city but it's also the place where most of our modern banking and financial systems were invented and developed one of the reasons for the gigantic success of the city of london is this combination of the very very old with the brand new quite literally here because this magnificent 18th century jewel box of a room is actually hidden away in one of the most exciting buildings in the entire city it's lloyd's of london more than a magnificent showpiece of architecture it's a money-making machine it may be undergoing a crisis of confidence at the moment but the square mile is still the london center that eclipses all the others like it or not the rest of london sits in its shade do you think the city is a sort of separate place from london separate culture separate world or is it part oh it's almost it's almost like the heart but i think it's the heart of london almost so is london still the top absolutely yeah fortunately we're stuck in the middle of the time zone when we come in early in the mornings we're catering markets from the uh asian side and likewise london stays open later when new york is sort of like busy and there's things going on london is the financial hub of the markets where the vibe is absolutely yeah where the vibe is and you'll feel that when you go into the office it's almost like a dog-eat-dog world it really is it's sort of like a very intimidating place right you know you can't there's no shrinking violence in the money market but how do they react to outsiders coming in then we'll have a look shall we suppose we shall all right i have to take up a temporary seat on the trading floor one and a half one somebody showed i was a telephone number 10 30 31.9 31.3 all right so 10 30 is 30.9 31.3 did he yeah what did that mean that means he buys about 30.9 he sells them at 31.3 they might give a 31.2 there you go all right 31.2 watts it would help with my new well yeah it's 31.2 basis points points yeah all right all right 108.9 it's not only in this building but all across the square map in fact 40 of the office space in greater london is grouped around here and every day about 640 billion pounds passes through the system now for that thank you all right stand up all right yes fifteenth drinkies nine two three fifteen swings nine two trading given fifteenth twenty number eight sixteens twenties nine two trading give on good yes well i don't want to do that again in a time of financial uncertainty london's trading floors are more stressful than ever it's a bit of a young man's game right now i'm in need of somewhere calmer and i find it just around the corner through this beautifully restored gate where lies the cathedral of london saint paul's this was where city merchants invested their money in the 17th century in god i'm meeting becky who knows everything about it becky hello nice to see you now i always think that it's about sort of seven times huger than i ever remember always yes massive though it is christopher wren's marvel of a building was not as big as the cathedral it was built to replace after the great fire of london in 1666. the gothic cathedral it was
bigger both longer and wider after the fire christopher wren had to blow the old one up sorry i'm just going to stop you there from a baby yeah he blew it up he blew it up yeah did he it's with gunpowder gun powder yeah yeah and once he cleared it away he created a building far more mysterious than its outer simplicity implies as becky can show me amazing what very good indeed this geometric staircase is one of only five on this scale in the world the public don't usually see it and they don't usually see this either up at the top in the attic only clergymen and visiting historians ever use this library some repository of wisdom it's a little casket hidden away from the roaring marketplace outside and there are other treasures beyond the famous sint pools tucked away in the surrounding streets because ren built a further 51 churches today amongst the modern office blocks and the symbols of financial muscle 24 still remain exquisite examples of how city merchants once expressed their faith in god and art i'm here to help summon the even song faithful to one of them what happened there you didn't let go i didn't let go no no you have to let go of the sunny otherwise don't take your hands up to the ceiling it did yeah and pull my back right out as well are you all right yes well i dropped a clanger but i don't think anyone noticed as the bells ring out 350 000 workers have already rushed home with just 7 000 permanent dwellers in the city of london it has one of the lowest nighttime urban densities in the world most of the city churches are actually closed on a sunday i have to head west to find out how the city spends its money today every night over 35 000 people pay a lot of money to see a london show but i'm going somewhere where the punters are far more extravagant than that your idea of a good night out is spending maybe you know 100 these guys their idea of a good night out tonight is going to be somewhere in the region about two and a half at 7 30 there's an auction at sotheby's it's 7 15 the backstage technicians are still moving the stars of the show into place and i'm going to help them i think that's probably caused by using a model to press her tits and stomach against a board correct there we go you see now i know a little bit about art is this an exhibit or i'm not being silly it's a very good question i'm glad you said that you passed your test as an apprentice because we do sell all sorts of mediums and you never underestimate artwork um this isn't an exhibit but well it's a good job i'm not here to bid but henry windham sotheby's chairman is unlikely to worry about that there are plenty who will what's your star lot hit the star lot tonight well there's several but there's a wonderful picture by fontana which is the picture over there on your left and the gold ones with the holes i think the one as you say so nicely with the holes in here contemporary art has sort of gone through the roof 2006 we sold 650 million excuse me for being vulgar with figures okay i like you to be vulgar this is what i have come okay this is we want the nitty gritty 650 million dollars worth of contemporary art in 2006 and this last year in 2007 we sold 1.35 billion in other words i think you're to be perfectly accurate we went up 107 percent in terms of and that really says it all that says that there is a huge demand for contemporary art at the moment it's 7 30 in london's west end and a feast of contemporary art is about to go under the hammer do any of these people arriving here want to buy a golden egg with a reserve price of three million pounds quite fun trying to spot who might be you know with that sort of taste and that sort of money a pair of slightly crazy glasses here or a rather expensive pair of shoes there i'm not convinced by fur but i'm quite convinced by um by black people who come in all in black i reckon i'm gonna be buying good evening immediately breathtaking paintings are being sold for eye-watering suns i realize i'm wearing all black myself but luckily the auctioneer ignores me the fontana comes up for sale this is the star log pounds in seconds for an egg with holes in it yet another record the night's total sales were 95 million pounds rather more than expected and not bad for two and a half hours work in the midst of a credit crunch in fact london is still wide awake although it's nearly 10 p.m some places are only just about to open for business i've come here now to the magnificently restored palace theatre because i'm told at about this time of night small miracle occurs the theater being where it is at trucking out time gentlemen tended to use the corner of the theater over there and so this was installed instead apparently it comes up at 10 o'clock and goes back in again at six o'clock in the morning i quite like to use it myself actually but i've ended up in the wrong position over in east london theatre of a different kind is underway 250 years ago this would have been a bare knuckle fight until after killing one of his opponents jack broughton developed the london prize ring rules in this city they introduced the very british notion of fair play into what seems to me a violent and utterly mad way of relaxing if you hadn't noticed that's dave in the red my guide to the money market well they call it white collar fighting dave is down as swiss desk talent pre-bomb there's somebody from jp morgan we've got david the armed and dangerous mongoose sappor who's a systems analyst from ash host and like the trading floor where nothing is entirely predictable dave's luck hits a downturn it's the london spirit that combined with a sense of humor knows no defeat the last round i walked onto one of it i think he caught me with a really lucky one and he caught him with another lucky one remember your investments can go down as well as up and so can bankers dave is a brave man it's now midnight and i find myself in a part of london with which the world is very familiar the dark alleys the fog shrouded streets these have been the settings for the stories of charles dickens for sherlock holmes for dr jekyll and mr hyde and of course the legend of jack the river as far as the rest of the world is concerned london is the absolute capital of crime but never mind mad axe murderers today it's the cops who have the chopper the metropolitan police air support unit is on standby 24 hours a day which is why my courtesy flight suddenly turned into a hot pursuit we've had information that a vehicle has been stolen with someone armed with an axe it was an attempted robbery but now the suspect was made off i could see the police cars now yeah that's right yep you're a billion miles away from a bobby on the beat but essentially you're doing the same job it is doing policing it is still policing um just in a different way as you fly over here you must feel like a sort of god don't you looking down on these petty troubles they all seem so sort of small and neat and tidy yeah it makes me feel pretty good i think you're a god bruce i know i think so too below us most of the seven and a half million inhabitants of this city are asleep again london sets itself up for another 24 hours the capital may be clinging to its traditions but from on high it looks organized purposeful and somehow supremely confident about its future sometimes when you're down there during the day london can seem so dirty and noisy and chaotic but up here on tower 42 looking down on it at night it just seems perfection the most exciting place in the world you
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