Fun and Interesting London Memorial Benches - Lockdown Walk

[Music] pimp pimp tally ho with the zing and a zhang a hip and hop a stupid fresh thing a flippity flop jules guides here in which i wander around london and tell you fascinating facts and uh today we're going to talk about benches i know why well because everything's closed i know it sounds a bit boring but it's not trust me this is going to be okay stop laughing it's gonna be all right oh let's go benches all right come on memorial benches mostly you know quirky nice benji look for example this one is franklin d roosevelt and winston churchill this was installed in 1995. oh my god wait a minute i think you're supposed to sit on his near you dirty he's like you're supposed to have him like leaning on your shoulders he's like my friend i'm dwarfing him a little bit but this is this was like a anniversary for the 50th anniversary of the end of world war ii and it was actually designed by a fella called lawrence hollof cinna or something he was like a film director or a producer a player i did loads of stuff but when he did this one it became really popular so people wanted replicas of it so he didn't have any copies of it so he had to come here and stand right opposite it for about five days just re-sculpting little kind of which did you know about sculpting science you're a sculptor that's why i thought you might like this this sort of thing out wait let me get up excuse me roosevelt he did four terms in office from 933 to 1945. he had to deal with the great depression and world war ii pearl harbor the development of the atom bomb i mean you think that boris has got a bad gig at the moment imagine being him but eventually we bombed pearl harbor and managed to trick them into thinking that the japanese did it and so much to get them into the war i'm sure somebody thinks that somewhere now i don't think roosevelt would have approved of these little leg brace things on his legs here he was actually disabled but in most of the photos he insisted on not having his wheelchair in it churchill's sort of julieta cigar there you can go and see the cigars that he actually bought down at the shop there in my other video about um ancient shops you can see the they can sit in his chair and see the actual cigars that he smoked you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth usually when you see churchill he's depicted as this kind of quite old figure you know the way that we know him you know pretty unfit looking but actually he was a real dude in his youth in the boer war in 1899 he was sent there as a journalist and he got captured as a prisoner of war then he escaped and dodged his captors by jumping on a freight train and hiding in diamond mines eventually ending up in east africa returning to england as a hero it's called allies allies allies there they are the special relationship if you want an example of just how special the relationship was when he spent christmas at the white house once roosevelt entered the room and churchill was completely naked and he said the british prime minister has nothing to conceal from the president of the united states i just wanna try to whiz through these it's just a page it's just nice i just think it's a nice place to have your photo taken you know we're just heading up to soho now i'm going through um sample row but one of the annoying things about this blasted lockdown is that i can't visit my tailor i mean look at the state of this jacket that my sleeve is going shiny i've had this jacket it was like shocking it's like sleeve i'm developing sleeve must get sir henry poolenko soho square look now i wasn't really again this bench i'm coming to see over here isn't really uh that quirky but it's one that i missed out in my soho video soho square was laid out in like 17th century the duke of monmouth used to have a house here he's the reason that it's called soho apparently he used to cry it was his hunting cry or something so he was the yet another bastard son of king charles ii that's why probably king charles has got a statue over there but you know so look over there that's uh that's paul mccartney's music publishing thing you know all this if you've seen my video about soho and music mpl mccartney publishing limited let's just go through here let's some of the oldest buildings in in this square along there just next to that green one that's actually from the 17th century one of those buildings and then the house of saint barnabas there that's 18th century really beautifully preserved probably one of the best preserved ones that but let's just quickly zip over to here it's the kirsty mccall bench kirsty mccauley died in 2000. this is in reference to one of the lyrics in one of her songs one day i'll be waiting there no empty bench in soho square and people still come here on her birthday to remember her on the 10th of october she's a very well loved musician isn't she i don't know anybody that doesn't like it yeah yeah exactly she's really popular because she's the one who sang with the pokes on fairy tale of new york i could have been someone well so could anyone probably voted everybody's favorite christmas song which sadly didn't get to number one there was a big yeah there was this big race to reach number one you know who got there was the pet shop boys you were always on my mind it was that yeah that's a very good song as well very good cover actually yeah i know but the pokes and kirstie mccoll it was really sad because she was with her kids down in mexico swimming and then these nutters in a speedboat came past and they drove straight over her and killed her and injured one of her kids and she died in this horrific boating accident it turned out that the people in the boat were the multi-billionaire owners of this massive supermarket chain and they ended up blaming it on their boat hand or their helper or whatever and he got something like two year sentence for culpable homicide um which in mexico apparently you can just pay a fine instead and so he got off they didn't really see justice for it's really sad she actually did a song i really liked that tracy old did a cover of the song she wrote they don't know about us since we're coming this way i spotted one of the noses the other day look here's another one of these rick buckley noses of soho this is on the side of the milk bar in bateman street just in case you're into the noses of soho i've talked about them in other videos i'm not going to talk about it now this is about benches let's go easily my favorite bench this is spike milligan's bench amazing he was born in 1918 and he's widely regarded as the godfather of alternative comedy i suppose he became most famous for the goon show but during the 50s 60s i think which they say inspired monty python but um so he was actually he's irish but born in india they've got all these lovely details all over the bench the classic thing was when he finally got awarded a lifetime achievement award jonathan ross was doing the presentation he said oh also spike we've got a very special guest who's written to you and it turned out that prince charles was a big fan of the goon show and he started reading out this letter saying spike i've been a massive fan of yours ever since growing up and i've always loved the goon show and particularly of spike milligan oh the little groveling bastard in front of everybody on live tv spike when again goes their little groveling bastard it's on youtube you can see it it's really classic moment he also wrote i think it was voted the favorite children's poem on the ning nang nong where the cows go bong and the monkeys all say boo there's a long nang ling where the trees go ping and the teapot jibba jabba jew in the nong ding nang all the mice go clang and you just can't catch them if they do so it's ning nang nong cows go bong nong nang ning trees go ping noong ning nang mice go clang what a noisy place to belong is on his gravestone he wanted them to write i told you i was ill it really feels like a magical magical bench i mean i think some of the characters on here are from the goons which one's harry cecum he famously said when harry second died of cancer he said well i'm glad he died first so he couldn't sing at my funeral what's your favorite spike milligan poem smile because it's very appropriate for yes at times smiling is infectious you catch it like the flu when someone smiled at me today i started smiling too i passed around the corner and someone saw my grin when he smiled i realized i'd passed it on to him i thought about that smile then i realized it's worth a single smile just like mine could travel around the earth so if you feel a smile begin don't leave it undetected let's start an epidemic quick and get the world infected [Music] i love that building the kind of batman style gotham city it's a freemasons lodge people keep asking me to make a film about these freemason lodges around london but um it's not that easy just to stroll in and say hi i'm making a film about these places so it can be a bit tricky look at this whilst we're talking about about about benches you know what just it's not really a memorial bench or anything just shows how nice camden are they've deliberately created these so that homeless people can't sleep on them it's like it's a bit mean isn't it really so all that's happened is that they've ended up sleeping in that doorway instead well you could join them when you look apart mate with that jacket do you need to make a phone call or something no but i needed a piss we'll just keep walking it's not open unfortunately so you're usually behind the church there st paul's in covent garden one of my heroes john thor from the sweeney has his bench in the garden here i love the sweeney you know john four smoked since he was 12. it kind of shows doesn't it you can see it in the sweeney he looks like he's like 50. eventually died of cancer of the esophagus brilliant actor a lot of these benches are memorial benches here but anyway yeah john thor the sweeney he's got one of these and of course it's called the actors church there's loads of memorials for actors inside vivian lee noel coward charlie chaplin of course charlie chaplin you remember we went there with charlie chapman's grandchildren in our video in like everything it's closed nice nice little spot to have your sandwiches in there [Music] when sharon cross that is one of the crosses erected by king edward the first yes well i mean that's actually a replica of it it was originally over there but you know the the cross of the 13 was it 13 crosses he erected them between lincoln and london along the funeral cortege of his dead wife gallery yeah national gallery over there trafalgar square and over here we've got well i can't admit i'm not that fond of it i live oscar wilde oscar wilde's great but i've never liked this it's actually supposed to look like a sarcophagus the idea is a conversation with oscar wilde and he's he's supposed to be emerging from his sarcophagus to invite you so come and have a conversation with him he's smoking as well is it lady windermere's fan we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars yeah people keep trying to nick bits off him i think they nicked the cigarette it looks like they've returned it now strictly speaking this should be a pure gold tipped cigarette from from james fox you know the cigar shop that we went to in my other video about ancient shops so i suppose one of the reasons why he smoked gold tipped cigarettes was because he said he could do without the necessities in life it was the superfluous that he couldn't do without there's a history of people nicking bits off him well not this one but his actual grave over in per laches over france is where he's buried there's an angel or something on the grave and apparently had huge testicles well huge genitals anyway and so i think people nicked them and now they're used as paper weights in the office of the of the cemetery so they've had to put a big fence up around his grave stop people nicking bits i don't think you can nick this cigarette that that actually looks like his portrait of dorian gray after it's been affected by all the uh the sin but a bench is it supposed to be a bench yes it's supposed to inc encourage you to come and sit here except there's usually quite a lot of urine around here yeah there's one of those toilets that pops up it just doesn't feel like the sort of place you're going to sit and enjoy a chat i must say well i quite agree oscar yes well of course one cannot live until one has died oh i wish i had said that you will oscar you will in winter it's glowing you have 10 seconds to comply i like these it's gonna blow i like these uh these things um the the new countdown on the uh in america they've got walk and don't walk then i have a fight in one of the superman films yeah yeah all the computers run wild and then the uh the don't walk red man climbs up right into the green walkman yeah punches under death yeah yeah superman yeah whilst we're on our way down here to the embankment might as well just remind everybody please to subscribe to the jules guys channel by hitting the subscribe button and the bell next to it if you want to be if you want to be notified when a new video gets uploaded you hit the bell and that should do it because if i go to the bbc for example and i say hey listen i want to be on strictly um they'll say oh yeah well how many subscribers do you have that's how they won't say how many views have you got there so how many subscribers have you got so that's why it's important to hit the subscribe button so i can get on strictly i'm not sure i want to and and also if you could follow me on my instagram which is at jewels guides official i was just thinking of like benches where famous people have sat on beatles you know you know musicians we did go to that one which the beatles sat on in their mad day out i mean remember my beatles video it's in some pancreas gardens yeah we're here on the embankment look you see all these beautiful fishes fish fishes what do you prefer fish or fishes anyway are they fishes this i think they're sturgeons when they narrowed the river and reclaimed all this land they wanted to make everything look wonderful and so they they they called this architect like he was in charge of designing all this stuff his name was george v army and he made all the lampposts splendid with the sort of water theme then he drew inspiration from egypt with these sphinxes on the benches he actually did these before he preempted this cleopatra's needle arriving because these were put here in like 1877 and the needle arrived the next year in 1878 because we're now entering the old city of london with the city of london that's what he represents that means that further along here they become camel benches up here i mean it's hard to tell whether they're camels or drama dreams you can't see in my london lockdown video where i walk along the river i talk about cleopatra's needle and how it was brought over from egypt and then that's what these are all supposed to blend in with it's kind of key in keeping with the egyptian theme and i foolishly mention camel benches being something to do with the first world war and the african core but it wasn't that was a mistake by me i do make mistakes sometimes just to test you of course anyway they're all just to blend in with the cleopatra's needle there i believe don't write in i don't know yeah i just i just pointing them out this is tough it's not easy doing all this [Music] we're on blackfriars bridge this is the one under which they found that guy roberto calvey hanging with bricks tied around his ankles and money in his pockets anyway it's just got quite nice uh benches here this sounds feels so weird talking about benches but but these are based on the pulpits um in churches or in monasteries i mean back in the days when there used to be a monastery around here the black friars monastery it's supposed to be the pulpits that's what they're referring to here yeah this is a bench of sorts isn't it look it's a bench and um in fact there was that other one that we went to um which i think i shall cut to now down near guys hospital [Music] now this alcove which has got john keats sitting in it look this used to have um this used to be on the old london bridge the old medieval london bridge which stood there for like six seven hundred years and when they demolished london bridge in 1831 they saved some of these little alcoves now they're only four of them remain and down there actually just in new common streets there's another part of the old london bridge just a kind of like a badge it's above the king's arms pub we're not going to go down there but it's just around the corner just down there a little bit was keita hobbit why do they make it so small like a hobbit what's going on helpers are that could be a fun now there was a naughty boy and a naughty boy was he he ran away to scotland the people fought to see there he found that the ground was as hard the yard was as long but the song was as merry the cherry was red the lead was weighty the fourth school was 80 the door was as wooden as in england so he wondered he stood in his shoes and he wondered really nice around here i mean much nicer than it used to be in victorian times where um this is where bill sykes falls to his death at the end of oliver twist but it's not where fagin lives as i stupidly said in my video about brotherhood last time we're heading up to rotherhithe fagin lived up in uh saffron hill but i only said it because there's a bloody plaque from the local council here stating that fagin lived around here he totally didn't they're very annoying they've got a black there but it is where bill sykes died anyway we're heading to rather height come on now we're just approaching rather high the rather height comes from uh road de gea or something which means landing place for cattle in anglo-saxon and just over here is alfred salter who was a much-loved mp back in the 1920s this whole ensemble here of statues and this fell on the bench is known as salter's dream now alfred salter was a doctor originally who lived near here and he entered politics in order to help improve living conditions for the poor and of course being a doctor he saw the effect that living in slums had on people's health and he set up mutual health insurance schemes started treating people for free and together with his wife they worked on improving conditions in the birmingham slums by building houses like those that we saw in wilson grove around the corner there used to be a another version of him but someone stole him because the other one he looked a lot more comfortable he was sort of reclined on a nice bench his wife over there aida she is one of the only 20 statues of women in london she's carrying a spade because she campaigned to get some of the public spaces turned into playgrounds for children aida's concern for working women led to her election in 1909 as the first woman councillor in burmancy and the first labour woman counsellor in london this must be the daughter who died of scarlet fever some say that her death could have been avoided if they had taken her out of the school here and sent her to a posh place elsewhere but they decided to stay living in amongst the the slums here in birmingham but unfortunately it didn't do her any good and she ended up dying as for the cats i think that's just her cats now of course i haven't been able to cover all the benches i wanted to because there's like covered on and everything's locked down it's difficult to get around but if you do find a bench that you really like don't forget to take a photo and tag me on instagram jules guides official and there was only one bench really where it felt appropriate that i could finish and that's on the one for my dad and my brother cheers everybody uh social media cheers simon and don't forget to hit the subscribe button and if you like the music for this video you can buy it on little lost loot.com see you next time you

Channel: Joolz Guides - London History Walks - Travel Films

Views: 123,491

Keywords: London, tourism, travel guides, julian mcdonnell, joolz guides, historical london, hidden London, london history, london walk during lockdown, lodon lockdown, london benches, memorial benches london, oscar wilde bench, oscar wilde memorial, spike milligan bench, spike milligan memorial bench, spike milligan grovelling bastard, churchill and roosevelt, churchill and FDR bench, churchill and roosevelt bench, kirsty maccoll bench, Alfred salter

Id: WIpiGjI-_iw

Length: 22min 28sec (1348 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021