Even weirder is the 'entertainment' put on for tourists who come up to the Big Smoke these days. It used to be that when you got on an open-top bus you could expect to see where Queen Liz II heads the household, where Queen Liz I beheaded her household and where Princess 'Queen of all our Hearts' Diana bedded members of the Household Cavalry. (Actually, James Hewitt was in the Life Guards, but Tulkinghorn has permitted himself a little artistic licence.)
But now, as if London does not have enough to offer, buses carrying Japanese tourists are treated to a stop outside CC Towers, where a guide wows them with the offices of “the largest law firm in the world”. What a way to spend the afternoon.
Tulkinghorn sincerely hopes that the good folk of Clifford Chance do not decide to follow the example of the genteel folk of Bath. A few years ago, the residents, tormented by years of American tourists peering into their bedroom windows from open-top buses, rebelled and started pelting the onlookers with apples every time a bus passed.