The End of the London Paper

Now that the wind has carried the last solitary copy of thelondonpaper off the streets of the capital forever I can't help but wonder what will happen to distributors of the rival London Lite; with no one to talk to as they hand out papers in the wind and rain, will they grow despondent and eventually wither away and die? For whilst I had for a long time harboured a fantasy of one day seeing a fight between vendors of the rival papers, I eventually came to realise that they were more comrades than competitors, because although the papers themselves were rivals the overwhelming majority of commuters took copies of both. So this must have been a lonely week for distributors of London Lite as they returned to their pitches to ponder a solitary future as, after three years, the Freesheet Wars are over; London Lite has triumphed and thelondonpaper has closed.

Thelondonpaper will forever have a place in my heart as it was on their pages that I saw my name in print for the first time when they ran the now-classic 'Warning: Big Bum is Imminent' column (which you can read at the start of this very blog). Not having seen a copy of the paper that day, I didn't even know the column had appeared until almost ten at night, at which point I dashed to the nearest tube station but failed to find a copy until one came almost mythically floating down the staircase towards me, a copy so gnarled and twisted that I had to untangle it before tearing through it to find my piece.

And there it was: my name in print. I stood and gasped in disbelief. Thousands would have read my words. I was a printed author, and fame and fortune surely beckoned. Would I even make it home without being chased down the street, Beatlemania-style, by an adoring crowd? As it happened, I did. But that didn't stop me from being on a high for the next few days.

I sent a few more pieces in, and another one was printed, but then Time Out started to run things I'd written and so by then it was no longer my main focus. Still, I'll never forget where it began, and the excitement of seeing my name in print for the first time, knowing it was only a matter of time before the masses were inspired by my ideas to take to the streets and start a revolution (and whilst, strictly speaking, this hasn't happened yet, I imagine it will at some point in the very near future).

Thelondonpaper is dead.

Long live thelondonpaper.