Firetop

This week having read a review in the ever thinner ‘Free London Paper’ I bought and watched the League of Gentlemen’s latest release ‘The League of Gentlemen… Are Behind You’. I thought it was pretty funny, and certainly well put together, but not as funny as their Drury Lane DVD… worth buying (or borrowing from me) all the same though. The League’s depressing potholing character ‘Mick Macnamara‘ did remind me of something I hear from time to time in every day life when he said to the Hammersmith audience “If you hear an instruction on loud speaker please be calm, it might take the shape of a non alarming statement such as “Mr Flames is rushing through the building”. It made me think - once in a while at Victoria or King’s Cross stations I hear the announcement “Would Inspector Sands please come to the control room immediately”

Now either ‘Inspector Sands’ has an amazing talent to work in all London stations at the same time, or he’s ‘Mr Flames rushing through the building’. A quick scan of wikipedia suggests that this is indeed the case ‘The phrase is used in public address announcements at railway stations, theatres, sports arenas, etc., to alert authorities of a potential emergency without causing panic amongst travellers by explicitly mentioning the nature of the emergency.’ Last week it was on continuous loop at King’s Cross for about five minutes, I could still hear it when walking up platform one. Apparently it was also on loop during the July 7th bombings. We should have had something like this when I was in retail management - I always remember ‘Kara’ shouting across the length of the store “Matt! - The Gypsies are in again!”.

There is of course an alternative explanation, a ‘Chief Inspector Sands’ arrested and questioned a man thought to have been involved in an assassination attempt on King Edward VIII on July 16, 1936. Of course that was seventy years ago, and presumably Chief Inspector Sands was already into his forties by then, which would make him at least one hundred and ten years old? A little too doddery to manage the London Underground I suspect, but what if like Captain Jack in Torchwood, Inspector Sands really is immortal, he’s the basis for the Torchwood story and that’s why they call for him during an emergency to rush through flames ;-)

Technorati Tags: inspector sands, torchwood, security warning, public address, tanoy message

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