We walk out of the building onto Portland Place and there are people everywhere. Milling around every door of all the nearby offices are people chatting and smiling. A bus pulls up besides us and stops. The driver tells the people inside that they’re stopping for two minutes of silence. Around us the noise-level raises slightly and then almost instantaneously – without any warning – stops. Without any apparent signal everyone goes quiet and stands still. All around me are people standing quietly. No one makes eye contact. A motorcycle slows and stops. A couple of cars go past until they can find somewhere to pause for a moment. The noise of traffic disappears. The building work from around the corner gets quieter. Someone is whistling. Then they stop. London is full of mannequins. There’s no noise. There’s no movement. It’s eerie. And then just as suddenly, just as randomly – as if someone unpaused the city – everything’s back to normal. Which is exactly how it should be.
I was walking through the back of Paddington, by London’s Westway on my way home the other day and came across this strange orgy of traffic cones. This may explain why there are so many of the damn things all over London.
So I had this whole post written about Mr Biddulph leaving the BBC, but I threw it away because it was a bit too arch and tried to be a bit too clever. Basically, what I’d like to say instead is that I’ve worked with Matt for a couple of years on and off, that the stuff we worked on together is some of the work that I’m most proud of, and that the other stuff he’s made with the rest of his team has pretty regularly blown my head off. I’m urging anyone and everyone who seriously thinks about future applications around video, radio, interactive television or the internet to head straight in his direction and throw money and glory at him until he agrees to work with you. You won’t regret it.