It’s a damp, grey morning in Soho, London, and Cameron Roh is standing a metre or so behind a woman who is speaking loudly into her phone outside Caffè Nero. She is breaking his “laws” of “pavement etiquette” and he holds up his phone and presses record. Lost in conversation, the woman doesn’t see him, but still, watching him from a distance, it’s fist-in-mouth awkward. What if she turns around? Is this allowed? Is this even OK?
Suddenly, the woman hangs up and dashes across the road, oblivious to what has just happened. Evidence duly captured, Roh returns to where I am hiding and delivers his verdict, which is marks out of 10 – with 10 being perfect pavement etiquette. “That’s a two,” he says. Her crimes? “On her phone, sudden stop, pretty much in the centre of the pavement, meaning people have to walk around her to get past. No, no, no.” She didn’t see us, but that somehow feels worse; I feel as if we’ve just pickpocketed her. Roh giggles, unfazed. As a self-appointed pavement vigilante, this is what he does.
