In for a Penny, In for Five Pounds

The future of public lavatories touches down in Oxford Street

A good friend of mine once wet herself in the Oxford Circus branch of Topshop: completely true story. She’s a bright, healthy, mentally stable, twenty-nine-year-old theatre director, with no history of bladder problems. She was having a frantic day of Christmas shopping, there was no way she was going to use any public toilet in Soho or Oxford Street, and suddenly, right in front of the big screen on the second floor, it just… happened. She regards it as karma for the amount of time she spends obsessing over fashion.

She will be delighted to learn that London’s most expensive toilet has just opened on Oxford Street. It’s called WC1 (ho ho), and costs a fiver for the privilege, but what you get for the price of three Primark handbags is 19 luxury loos, with a bouncer-guarded marble-floored reception area, fresh flowers, scented candles and soothing music.

This is a only a couple of quid more expensive than the usual performance of going to Starbucks, buying a disgusting muffin, pretending to eat it for two minutes, and then joining the immense queue for their deeply unsatisfactory facilities (they must know that 90% of their customers are only there for one thing, so would it really hurt to give that thing a wipe and a squirt of bleach a few times a day?).

However, the arrival of the designer WC does offer a monstrous vision of the future. Just as the places you buy your food have become a defining fashion choice in the past few years, I fear we may find the same happening to the places you go after you’ve eaten it. I see The King’s Road dominated by monstrous £100-a-pop palaces of pooping where the Chelsea team’s WAGs can do their business on diamond-studded Dolce and Gabbana thrones. Jokey 80s-themed loos with ironic soundtracks and names like ‘Faecal Attraction’ will pop up all over Shoreditch. Perhaps the ethnophillic folk of north London will have authentic, organic, pay-what-you-can-afford Calcutta crappers dug into the heart of their high streets, while the bogs on Bond Street will have seats that are ergonomically designed to make you feel fat no matter how much you weigh - just like the shop assistants and clothes there.

Of course, the fashion minefield involved in picking your pissoir will make any use of Starbucks simply impossible, and we’ll see many more puddles on Topshop’s floor in years to come.

Sounds of the Underground

Commuter rage could be on the way out thanks to Napster’s list of 10 songs most likely to calm frenzied travellers. From ‘Tubular Bells’ to ‘Tabula Rasa’ the tranquil tunes identified by Dr Dai Griffiths, a lecturer in musicology at Oxford Brookes University, were selected from Napster’s online library. With its “unexpectedly drawn-out chord ¬sequences”, Svefn-G-Englar by Sigur Rós was singled out as the most relaxing track.

Seasonal Scents

Wise men (Scientists from the Royal Society of Chemistry) heading for The Star (a boozer in Belgravia) surprised regular punters with their gifts of frankincense and myrrh in a bid to test the drinkers’ ability to recognise the seasonal substances. Only one punter identified the gifts - widely used in perfumes and toothpaste - from the edible chunks handed to mark the 100th anniversary of the Royal Society's first scientific analysis.

Scott Free

A dispute over sound-proofing and a subsequent delay in the issuing of a licence has led to Mayfair fish restaurant, Scott’s, dishing up free food and drink to its diners since its opening. Rather than close down, the eatery has decided to honour its bookings, worth over £350,000.

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