It’s 16 years this week since alcohol was banned on the London Underground. This is an impressively pointless ban, that absolutely nobody obeys, but that’s not why the date is etched on my mind. Nor is it because of the great statesman who implemented it. It’s because it inadvertently killed off one of the last great ways to be absurd in British life: the flash mob.
It began when Boris Johnson – mostly known until then as a buffoonish Tory MP and much-chortled-at host of Have I Got News For You – unexpectedly won the election to become London’s mayor. Among his pledges was a slightly trivial ban on people drinking on the Tube. It angered the unions but, more fatefully, it angered cheeky students on Facebook, who soon organised groups such as “Last Round on the Underground”.
