My list of jobs to complete before we went away didn't go to plan, but that's just the way my life goes. After a stressful and argumentative morning we set off and arrived in London at about one o'clock. Our hotel is right next to the tube station although we were a little mislead by the fact that we were told that it was in Camden, when they probably meant it fell under Camden council, either way it had a WC postcode which confused me even more. We ended up getting a tube to Camden town which turned into an ordeal because for some bizarre reason the tube station is exit only from Sunday teatime and that just created a crowd of people trying to leave combined with all the people hanging around the entrance being told they couldn't come in. I wanted to visit Bayham Street, number 16 in particular, as this house is believed to be the house that Charles Dickens based the Cratchett house on in A Christmas Carol (have I mentioned that I have an audio book of the classic story for free/pay what you like download?). Before we left Nottingham I found directions to the house on Google and didn't bother to write them down or print them because the information I needed was right at the top so I figured it would still be there when I needed it again. It wasn't, in the space of a few hours Google had seemingly removed all information regarding this from its pages. I'm pretty sure it was the curse guardian back to take the piss a bit more.

The curse guardian messed up though, because she made me accidentally make a discovery that interested me as a comedy lover. Opposite Mornington Crescent tube station was a pub that I had never noticed before, The Lyttleton Arms. Of course it might have been a coincidence and the name might have meant nothing but right opposite Mornington Crescent? We went in for a drink and I asked the barman for confirmation. The pub was indeed named as a tribute to Humphrey Lyttleton, jazz musician and original host of the Radio 4 comedy quiz I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. The barman seemed a bit young and gave the appearance of maybe being a bit too cool to know about a Radio 4 comedy starring men in their seventies but looks can be deceiving as he turned out to be a big fan and we had a nice chat about the show and exchanged a couple of gags about the lovely Samantha (if you know you know, if you don't then do your own research). What makes this equally interesting (to me at least) is that the pub faces what is now Koko but was once The Camden Palace where many of the great BBC radio comedies were recorded. We could have been sitting at the table that Spike Milligan and Eric Sykes sat at to make last minute changes to Goon Show scripts while Harry Secombe got a round in, or where Tony Hancock and Sid James popped across to get away from Kenneth Williams and have a lunchtime pint in peace. Looking on their website it doesn't appear that they are making too much of a big deal of their historic location but then again a theme pub based on a radio comedy show would be rather niche. On the other hand, ISIHAC is a pretty big deal so perhaps it would pull in a good trade. Now that the BBC no longer use Koko to record shows in, the pub could carry on the tradition by advertising for comedians and comedy groups to perform in the pub and make live podcasts so that the area maintains its reputation for producing comedy in spitting distance of Mornington Crescent. But that's none of my business.

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