# Dames and performing seals



## RedRider (28 Apr 2011)

The kerfuffle is particularly intense to the left of the road ahead so riding past we stand on our pedals and crane our necks. Surrounded by a thicket of arms holding cam phones aloft is a ring of TV cameras. At its centre, with sun glinting off her nylon hair is the almost inevitable Dame Edna Everage.

The traffic is moving so with the palace at our backs we push away along The Mall. Union Jacks and Port-a-loos line the route and every hundred yards a new green turret with a big TV camera atop. 

Beware cyclists! There are taxis and loads of them dropping off and picking up without indication another load of tourists without inclination or the know how to make the walk themselves from Leicester Square. They are coining it.

Along Horse Guards Parade we latch onto the back of three cycling police and grin as they stop traffic with their palms then cut down beside the QE2 centre towards Westminster Abbey with us in tow.

We stop at the Abbey and look back at a Portacabin terrace of TV studios going live around the globe. No Everage but plenty of helmet-haired interviewers looking for willing victims.

And there they are! Camped on the pavement in pop-up tents are the It-should’ve-been-me slogan-ed, Union Jack-hatted people. Caged between crash barriers and microphones they look of course like new zoo exhibits. In two days they will carry out their performing seal routine.

We peel away through the backstreets of Westminster and on over Lambeth Bridge.


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