Just thinking about this 'Cockney London' tour idea, where would you take tourists if you had to sell them a bus tour? It's just struck me that East London has changed so much from the 'Pearly Kings' etc that it would probably be quite hard to provide a good tour, retro Cockney or otherwise.... So really the idea was on a bit of a hiding to nothing. As far as I could make out, all they could think of was a pearly kings and jellied eels! Then Stella just appeared to get lost around Commercial Road.

I think I would have driven to Bow (the Bow bells), perhaps talk about the work of the suffragettes in East London, take them to the pub where Jack 'the Hat' McVitie was shot by the Krays, take them to Whitechapel and gore it up with the locations of the Ripper murders, organise for a platter of Indian food to be served on the bus when they are around Brick Lane, yes, probably take them to Tubby Isaacs! and Limehouse to talk about the opium dens and the literary scene, and perhaps talk about Canary Wharf and the Docklands regeneration, although it's fairly uninteresting really.

I'm just not too sure that the 'real London' they wanted to 'sell' existed.

Hi lucky, staying with your Real London theme, would be easy enough to do once it was researched properly re what life was like, say 200 years ago. Then get your tourists to dress up in style of those times, which would add the right atmosphere.

Thats about it I should think. The Luftwaffe, slum clearance and redevelopment of docklands accounted for most of the rest?

Don't most original cockneys live in Dagenham now?

Oh yeah, you'd have the site of the first flying bomb to hit London in Bow, as well.

Exactly, I think the 'modern Cockney' is in Essex now.

I'd be a bit reluctant to make tourists dress up, but I suppose it would be one way to get them into the spirit (unlike Stella's 'Knees up Mother Brown'!)

Hi lucky, if you posted your placard saying your tour was London Past, which included a costume shop where clothes of those times could be got, then I'm sure the tourists would be keen to take part. Then you pile the tourists onto a charabanc or two, and off you go. Thing is this sort of Tour would be something new to them, which they would tell all their friends and family when they got home to wherever, and your name is made.

Well LS said Bond street.
He was right on the mark. They should have taken them to where they know best.

It sounds like an nice idea but I'm not sure the tourists would want to pay out more to hire clothes. If you reached a deal with the shop it would eat into your profits.

I think I would have done London Crime instead of Cockney London.

As well as "The Kray's Manor" you also have The Clink near London Bridge, which is an museum and recreation of the underground debtors prison. The London Dungeon, The Old Bailey, The Tower of London, Westminster Bridge (I think people were hung from that).

This was actually one of the easiest tasks. As any tour guide knows, you have the freedom to bullshit in your job. As long as it sounds plausable and you look like you know what you are talking about you can get away with saying pretty much anything.

The set of EastEnders? Corrie does tours. Does EE?

I'd do a Dickensian tour. Inns of Court. St Paul's. Mudbanks of the Thames. But that's probably just me. Though it gives great scope for dressing up!

Bow Bells are in St Mary Le Bow - in the city.

But apart from that you're right, most of what you referred to was actually all on, or just near, the Mile End Road. So perhaps a trip down the Mile End Road to Stratford to see the Olympic site may have been a good idea.

I wouldn't have bothered with the Cockneys, I would have done Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge and surrounding areas.