Tim Moore - Do Not Pass Go: From the Old Kent Road to Mayfair

Tim Moores writing has appeared in the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the Sunday Times and Esquire. He lives in west London with his wife and their three children.

Thanks to Rachel Cugnoni, Suzanne Dean, Lara Soley Johannsdottir, John Bacon, Ian Hunter, Gudrun Agnarsdottir, Roger and Christina Bowdler, Simon and Catherine Moore, the Energy Saving Trust, Councillor Pat Haynes, the Audit Unit at Pentonville Prison, the staff at Lots Road power station, the Crossness Beam Engine Trust, Pall Matthiasson, Ron Beard, Susan Sandon, Mike Grabsky, and Birna, Kristjan, Lilja and Valdis.

And finally, a fitful round of derisive applause for Hasbro, who have ensured you wont be seeing a dog, boot, title deed or Monopoly board graphically represented within these pages. I am consequently delighted to confirm that this book is in no way endorsed by or associated with Hasbro, and indeed that the royalties they might otherwise have accrued are in every way endorsed by and associated with my wallet.

Also available in Vintage

One of the funniest books about sport ever written

Sunday Times

Bill Bryson on two wheels... A one-liner every other line... not so much witty travelogue as self-examination in a joke-heavy trial by fire

Independent

Self-confessed loafer Tim Moore, seduced by the speed and glamour of the biggest annual sporting event in the world, sets out to cycle the course of the Tour de France. All 3,630km of it. Racing old men on butchers bikes and being chased by cows, Moore soon resorts to standard race tactics cheating and drugs in a hilarious and moving tale of true adventure.

Moore is a talented and funny writer, who, through a combination of slapstick, absurd simile and a healthy suspicion of French civilisation, gives us something to laugh at on almost every page

Daily Telegraph

Moores floundering attempts to emulate the Herculean feats of his cycling heroes unfold with eye wetting hilarity

The Times

Welcome to London. A city where a house is yours for 50, banks make errorsin your favour and you can even park your car for free. In Do Not Pass Go,Tim Moore boldly tackles the Monopoly boards real streets, telling the storyof a game and the city that frames it. Moore stays in a hotel in Mayfair andone on the Old Kent Road, and solves all the mysteries youll have ponderedwhilst languishing in jail: how Pall Mall got its name, which three addresses youwont find in your A-Z and why the sorry cul-de-sac that is Vine Street has aspecial place in the heart of Britains most successful Monopoly champion.

Do Not Pass Go is a travelogue of one mans erratic journey around those 28streets, stations and utilities, and an epic history of Londons wayward progresssince the launch of the worlds most popular board game.

Frost on My Moustache:

The Arctic Exploits of a Lord and a Loafer

Continental Drifter:

Taking the Low Road with the First Grand Tourist

French Revolutions

Maybe its because Im a Londoner, that I love London so,

Maybe its because Im a Londoner, that I think of her, wherever I go,

I get a funny feeling inside of me, just walking up and down,

Maybe its because Im a Londoner, that I love London town.

IM SORRY, BUT what the parted buttocks is that all about? Hubert Gregg penned the capitals best-known anthem less than ten years after the launch of the London Monopoly board, but its lyrics hardly offer much in the way of insight. As an aid to establishing what it is about London were supposed to like, Huberts maddeningly circular argument proves stubbornly unhelpful. Im reminded of the scene in Oliver! where Bill Sikes roars his response to Nancys whimpered inquiry as to the extent of his affections: I lives with you, dont I? Then twenty minutes later he beats her to death. And what about this funny feeling? Contemporary cynics might mutter about atmospheric pollution; at Huberts time of writing it could just as easily have been shrapnel.

Where were the majestic landmarks? Whither the Beach Boyish paeans to the irresistibility of Londons womanhood? Couldnt Hube have fleshed things out with a chorus extolling its parks or pigeons or river? The most famous song about what at the time was certainly the worlds most renowned city, and theres no so good they named it twice, the scandal and the vice, no Rio by the sea-oh, no I like Paris in the springtime. Men of Harlech is a better song, and precisely twelve people live in Harlech.

In fairness, Huberts failure to pin down Londons elusive charms is preferable at least to the dire lamentations of urban decay that have dominated the capitals musical anthology since someone with an ear for a tune noticed the bridge kept falling down. The Streets of London described by Ralph McTell are unsteadily trodden by shambling, filthy loons, and the Clashs Londons Burning cruelly raised false hopes for the fate of my schools physics blocks with its confident assertion that even quite considerable structures might literally burst into flames by simple virtue of their capacity to generate tedium. Of course, youd hardly imagine Bucks Fizz to have majored on dead cats and tramps vomit in their 1983 hit London Town although for all I know they did exactly that: I couldnt bring myself to listen to it then and Im certainly not about to now.

Its not easy to find a Londoner ready to stand up for their home town: when the most recent Lonely Planet guide lambasted a city of filth, traffic and yobbos, the newspaper reporters despatched into the capitals streets to procure some outraged vox-pop ripostes came back with their tapes full of mumbled assent. Demand an explanation as to what a Londoner likes about his home town and the floundering consequences are hilarious to behold. Minor celebrities witter unconvincingly to the Evening Standard about restaurants and architecture. A City gent stopped in the street by Newsroom SouthEast talks it up stalwartly as a global transport hub. Mayor Ken Livingstones departmental website proudly asserts that London is special because three people a week try to kill themselves by jumping under a Tube train. Overall, I think Im happiest to align myself with an eight-year-olds paean exhibited on a corridor wall at my childrens school: It hardly ever gets flooded and its never too hot.

Im not sure how this reluctance to praise London came about. Perhaps its to do with embarrassment at the sheer dominance of the metropolis over its provincial brethren: London was once eleven times larger than its nearest rival, Liverpool, and today there are more Londoners aged over seventy-five than residents of Manchester. So what did I like about London? Though always aware of a slight swelling in the chest area when informing Continental acquaintances of my lifelong residence in what after all remains one of the worlds most famous cities, I still couldnt understand why so many of their footballers came here in apparent preference to Rome or Barcelona.

Only when you break the city down into manageable postcode-sized pieces does London begin to come into focus. The principal sporting teams of almost every other important capital proudly incorporate the citys name in their own the New York Mets, Paris St Germain, Real Madrid but Londons footballing giants flaunt their parochial origins. Tell a north Londoner that west is best as Ive often done and theyll suddenly remember theyve got a tongue in their head, as well as a sock full of snooker balls in their hand. The reluctance of cab drivers to venture south of the river is a London clich. And its certainly not difficult to think of warm lyrical tributes to constituent parts of the unwieldy whole A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, Waterloo Sunset, and of course Marvin Gayes Sexual Ealing.