Johnnie Vaughan, Admiralty Arch and the concrete nose

As starts to the day go, today’s was about as strange as they go.

I was in a cab going up the Mall in heavy traffic. As we passed very slowly under Admiralty Arch I saw Johnnie Vaughan, the breakfast DJ on Capital Radio’s breakfast show under one of the arches that divide the lanes of traffic.

As we stopped for the red lights Mr Vaughan leapt out into the traffic and began an animated conversation with the driver of the cab behind us. I thought for a moment that he was filming some sort of stunt for a TV show, but there was no camera crew there that I could see.

After a minute or so he sprang back from the road and started pointing at a spot a couple of metres off of the ground and shouting "It’s a nose! A nose! It’s a nose!".

And sure enough, there was indeed a life-size concrete nose protruding from the arch.

As the lights changed and we moved away the cab driver confirmed that the Admiralty Arch nose was well known among cabbies, and was often a question in the final exam for "the knowledge", the training in London’s labyrinthine street layout that all cab drivers go through to qualify.

He went on to share some rather ripe opinions about Mr Vaughan that were too libellous for me to recount here.

My guess is that someone called his breakfast show with this piece of cabbie trivia and he just had to investigate for himself once it had finished. But my, he was very, very excited about it…

: : If you are in Lonodon and want to see the nose, it is here: