On the 16th of November 2001 (for those who haven't already recognised that date, it's Children in Need), the Asylum Times editorial staff
THE JOURNEY TO WOGAN INTERNATIONAL
This is the story of three nutters who, for reasons best known to themselves, decided to try and visit every station on the London Underground in one day, for the purpose of raising money for Children in Need. This is something that I can recommend anyone not to do unless they have a diamond resolve to go on till the very end. You also don’t need to be out of your mind, but believe me, it helps a lot (and don’t underestimate the powers of Red Bull). Also, be prepared for delays and potential cock-ups, because they WILL happen and if they do, then you will not be able to break the record (yes, there is a world record for doing this, and no, we didn’t break it).
The people who ventured on this insane journey are Lloyd Evans, John Collins and Owen Cross.
Ninety minutes later we were passing through Rickmansworth. Out came the flashing Pudsey heads, which we waved at anyone we could see. We got some very funny looks, but the best reaction was from the station supervisor, who flashed back. Why did I mention Rickmansworth? Well, anyone who has read the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy will know, (imagine yourself sitting in a coffee shop, thinking about life, the universe and everything) but if you haven’t read it, then read it.
Many stations passed us by while we slowly woke up and realised the scale of the task we had set ourselves. We also got very annoyed with the Piccadilly line, because it caused us delays and was smelly and so we renamed it the “Piccasilly” line. But by 11.20 we were on the Central line heading for Ruislip, where we all decided (by means of a song) that we were all going to walk backwards across the Irish sea for Christmas.
By five in the afternoon we were almost an hour behind schedule, so we gave up trying to break the official record, and started making up signatures in the log book. Many random people, some real, some not, ended up signing our log book. These included the Queen, Death, Slartibartfast, Keith Chegwin (at Chigwell, of course), Roger Muncaster, Boris Hargreaves and, of course, Terry Wogan.
We also met some very drunk people, some of whom tried to point out our existence to all the other people on the train. As if they didn’t already know! The most interesting meeting we had was with an old Irish man on his way home. He told us he had a pony in his flat, that he had a guinea pig which he thought was a rabbit, and he took a great deal of interest (too much, in our opinion) in the flashing Pudsey heads.
At half one in the morning we terminated our journey at Wogan International, having been on various dark trains and bright red London buses for over twenty hours.
We set off at 5 am on the morning of November 16th, from South Ealing.
“I’ve just realised there are no toilets at South Ealing.” says John.
We were cold, barely awake, and foolishly hadn’t got enough sleep the night before, such was our excitement. We got our first witness to sign our log book, and promptly set off for Heathrow. On arrival at Heathrow, we made our first mistake, and no, it wasn’t that we had dropped Pudsey (our bright yellow teddy bear mascot). We missed our first bus.
Fifteen minutes later we were on a bus heading for Uxbridge, making a seemingly pointless detour through Stockley Park industrial estate. Many drivers were put off tailgating the bus by the flashing Pudsey heads (yes, you did hear me right, these are yellow heads on sticks which light up and flash), which waved at them out of the back window of the bus. Many a traffic light turned green at our say so, or rather at Pudsey’s say so.
I have to point out here that the people on the buses at Ruislip were most unhelpful, because all of them refused to sign our log book. The log book was still necessary at this point, because we hadn’t given up trying to break the record. So we got out the flashing Pudsey heads and gave them a curse. But we did manage to get the bus driver to sign it (grudgingly).
By ten in the evening we were on our way into central London again, and we met some interesting people on the train. We had been filmed at the beginning of our journey, so we met some people who had just seen us on the early evening London Regional news, and they were shocked to find out just how long we had been travelling for (17 hours at that point). They wished us luck, and took their leave of us.
I won’t mention what we renamed the District line and the Hammersmith and City line to; because that would be pushing the limits of taste and decency. But when we finally got on our last train (a District line train terminating at Upminster), we went a bit mad, and started doing silly things. I often say that whenever my mind becomes an unpleasant place to be I get out of it, and we were all completely out of our minds at this point. We were the only people on the train, and so we decided that it was actually a washing machine which we were trapped inside, and we flung ourselves around it as if this were so. John had brought his dictaphone along, so we interviewed random objects on the train, none of which had anything to say. We managed to get some amusing twanging noises from the seats and handrails, but the best sound effect was made by hanging the dictaphone out of the window.