I’m really getting fed up with all this drinking in the street. Someone dropped a bottle in the middle of Charing Cross Road, a cab drove over it and shrapnel cannoned across the road into everyone standing on the pavement. Luckily no one was hurt.

Once I got a T4 Heathrow. Dropping off bewildered arrivals asks if I’m available, I explain that I cannot pick up without joining the rank. Minicab gets the job. I’m penalised by TfL if I accept, he’s not. That’s transport regulation for you.

This little anecdote starts at the Hilton Metropole. A family come out and demand Westfield, I take them to Wood Lane, “No this is not the entrance”. Then it’s off to the second entrance in Wood Lane, “No take us to the cab rank”, next it’s on to Shepherds Bush Station cab rank, “No this not this entrance we want – take us back to the hotel”. If they though with £16 on the meter I was going to retrace my steps they were sorely disappointed. I ask them to get out, suspecting it was a ruse used before leaving them – without paying – having to waddle all of 150 yards into the shopping emporium. Driving on to the Hilton Kensington a Swedish woman gets in “Please take me to Hilton Olympia” (there are a lot of Hiltons in London). She has apparently been taken to the wrong Hilton by the private hire driver. “You cabbies are marvellous”, she intones. I drop here off and receive a generous tip. One hundred yards later a hand goes out and two ladies ask for Gibson Square, it’s the first ‘run’ of The Knowledge. You could say it was: The Ugly, The Bad and The Good!