Soaps in Pole Position

East vs East TV showdown

Picture the scene…

It’s almost closing time at the Queen Wiktoria. After a hard day’s work shifting slabs of concrete around the square, Piotr and Grzegorz pop into the Wic for a swift slug of Wodka. Exchange pleasantries with Paulina, whilst simultaneously avoiding the swish of her huge slate earrings, they order a couple of bowls of borscht and settle down at the bar. Suddenly, in bursts Jozef Przedzienkowski with a suspicious bulge under his bomber jacket… [cue theme tune] “Do…do…do…do…do-do-do”.

Hooked? I thought you might be. Fear not, dear reader, for there’s more where that came from.

Follow the mass exodus back to Poland, settle yourself down in front of the telly, twiddle the aerial until you get to TVP1 (you may need some Blu Tack to hold it in place) , and get ready for the next gripping instalment of ‘Londynczycy’ (aka ‘Londoners’) – Eastern Europe’s alternative to Albert Square.

With a tagline of “Great Britain, Great Expectations”, this televisual feast has been filmed on location in the capital – its scenes in Wembley, Soho and Victoria (the coach station) will, no doubt, show the city off in its best light. The storylines too (based around “true stories” gleaned from various chats with a group of immigrants living in Finchley) promise much…

“There is one scene where there is a girl looking at adverts in a shop window, and a few other Poles come up and say they can help her find a good job in return for £100.”

Now, if that won’t get you reaching for the Series Link button on Sky+ I don’t know what will.

It was all looking really rather good (in a really bad kind of way), until I dug a little deeper. Apparently the baddies in ‘Londynczycy’ are all Poles – “Polish people [who are] screwing over other Poles”.

Now, while it’s nice to know that London has become the creative inspiration for TV producers around the globe (and that Victoria Coach Station is finally to get the cultural and dramatic recognition it deserves) I can’t help but feel that we’ve been short-changed. If there’s one thing (apart from fitting 17,000 sweaty commuters into a tube carriage the size of a Ford Fiesta) that we Londoners do well, it’s the baddie-thing. We’ve got loads of them. They’re everywhere. Londoners can screw each other over as competently as the next man (or “geezer”). Surely the creative types behind ‘Londynczycy’ are missing a trick if they don’t make room for at least one “shady East End gangsta” whose role it is to loom mysteriously in the background under a flickering lamp-post, grunting, nodding and rubbing his chin intermittently before stubbing his cigarette out on a passing pram. It seems a tad unfair to allow the Poles to take all the glory. Besides that, there are literally lorry-loads of out-of-work (sorry “resting”) London actors with bald heads, husky voices and over-developed pecs just desperate to work all hours for a pittance and a free lunch.

So, on behalf of all those thuggish thesps, I entreat you ‘Londynczycy’ - make space for a couple of brooding British bruisers. Go on, or we’ll set Phil and Grant on you.

Mr Bubbles cleans up Trafalgar Square

Trafalgar Square’s fountains played host to an impromptu foam party last week when ‘Mr Bubbles’ took bags of detergent, bubble bath and washing up liquid to the square. The prankster teenage art student is also known as Billzy on Bragster.com – a social networking which describes itself as ‘Jackass meets Facebook’. While the authorities moaned about potential damage blah blah most Londoners saw the lighter side. We say better light hearted bubbles than the usual hard hitting headlines about teenagers and knife crime.

Cadbury to sponsor Olympics

It may not sound like a match made in marketing heaven but the news is that chocolate makers Cadbury’s are putting down £20m-plus in sponsorship for the 2012 Olympics. The chocolates peddled by Cadbury’s don’t exactly have the same health credentials as your five-a-day but the two brands are keen to partner up. No doubt the millions from the Cadbury vaults helped to sweeten the deal.

London to have highest restaurant in Europe

At 288 metres tall London's Pinnacle skyscraper, nicknamed the ‘Helter Skelter’, is set to be the tallest building in the city, towering above the current leader Tower 42. Not only that, the new vertiginous office block set on Bishopsgate will also house what promises to be the highest restaurant in Europe. Those with vertigo will no doubt avoid the escalators to the eaterie which is set to give Rhodes 24 in Tower 42 a run for its money.

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