An ugly encounter prompts an epistle of tolerance from Arthur Smith

In a restaurant in Leeds one afternoon before my gig that evening, a local lad heard me ordering a coffee and asked, “Where are you from?” “I’m from London,” I replied. “No, you’re not,” he said, “you’re a Cockney bastard twat. What are you?”

He was a big fellow and rather aggressive so I conceded that I was indeed a Cockney bastard twat.

He continued, “And what’s your job?”

I told him I was a comedian and he responded, “I’ll tell you the best joke in the world.”

“Please do.”

“What did the Yorkshireman say to the Londoner?”

“I don’t know. What did the Yorkshireman say to the Londoner?”

He laughed as he delivered the punchline, “Fuck off back to London, you Cockney bastard twat.”

I laughed and chose not to deliver the line that a Yorkshireman is like a Scotsman with all the generosity squeezed out of him.

Next day as I fucked off back to London, I decided to write a letter…

Dear London,

Thank you for being my home for nearly all of my life. I lived in Paris for a year and that was exciting but never as welcoming as you – and they don’t even know how to say London. Londres? What’s that?

When I grew up, as I’m sure you recall, you’d had a run-in with the Luftwaffe and a big, beautiful bombsite sat conveniently within the confines of the small block of flats in Bermondsey where I lived with my mum, dad and brothers. It was a patch of tussocky wasteland, grubby with rubbish, but I have never since found a more exciting place. Adults rarely ventured onto the bombsite – they called us in from open windows – so it belonged gloriously to us alone. Some days I would arrive there to find that the ever-changing detritus smeared across the encrusted mud contained half a rusty old pram or a sliver of shrapnel. At the centre of the bombsite stood a lonely, withered grey tree which it cost me two trips to the casualty department to finally climb.

Our flat overlooked what was then Surrey Docks, although it would be hard to imagine anywhere that looked less like Surrey. From our kitchen on the third floor we could see across to the tops of great ships being loaded and unloaded by towering cranes. It was the deep midwinter of the Cold War yet many of these boats flew the Hammer and Sickle and, at night, the streets of Bermondsey might reverberate with the singing of drunken Russian sailors.

On Saturday afternoons, a few Russians were among the burly dockers marching along the Lower Road to watch Millwall play at the Den. The River Thames brought these men here. Your river, its oily smell, its surging tides, its bed, lined with history, forms a part of the mental topography of every Londoner. Aged five, I was taken to Cherry Garden pier where I gazed up the river to Tower Bridge. What lay beyond there?

I did find out of course and over the years I spent many glorious days and nights in your theatres, museums, parks and quite a few dodgy late-night bars and clubs. A favourite pastime has always been to sit by the statue of Shakespeare in Leicester Square and wait until a pigeon lands on his head.

Oh, London, you are so kind and you welcome people from all over the world. I love all the languages I hear in your streets and all the joys you bring to your visitors. I’ve travelled all over the world in my lifetime but it’s always a delight to come home to you.

Sending all my love,

Arthur Smith (the Cockney bastard twat)

This article is from Idler #109.

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