London Underground Etiquette - A Humorous Guide to Tube Rules

(sorry! I was a poor student: expect me to get a cab?) I got on a packed tube. (Probably Bakerloo line). As I lurched on to the train I found one of my, err, extremities pushed up against the posterior of a young lady. So I tried to move away; I managed to move backwards an inch or so before my rucksack was jammed tight up against the side of the train. The young lady followed, so that my, err, extremity continued to be pushed up against her posterior, which is how things stayed until I got off at my stop. Which is when she turned round and smiled sweetly at me. So put that on your webpage!"

Thanks for that Dom.

There's an excellent book called "Ralph's Party" by Lisa Jewell (read the full reviews here) and one of the characters describes lots of people's feeling about proximity of others on the tube very well:

"He sweated on the Circle Line, feeling irritated by every other person in the carriage with him - they were too smelly, too noisy, too close, too tall, too fat, holding too much newspaper or just offensively unattractive. Smith had fantasies about embedding pickaxes into their skulls."

Lesson four - Look before you sit People leave all manner of nasty things on their seats - chewing gum, crisps, bits of old burgers and spilt drinks, so it worth giving your seat a cursory glance or brush down before you sit. However, you are not safe once you have sat down because the advertisers could be making you the object of someone else's interest. Look at the ad above you. It might be saying something about you to the person sitting opposite.

There's a funny tale about this in my page on Advertising on the Underground, have a look in the section called Look before you sit - because ads above your head can be dangerous!!!.

Lesson five - Let passengers off the train first before you get on Chris Tarrant, Capital FM Radio's highly paid breakfast DJ, recently said that the person who makes the above annnouncement may as well be saying "Every man, woman, child and dog for themselves", as people tend to barge onto to tube in an effect to get on the train itself and then make a mad rush for the train. However, it's really annoying to have people barge

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