Farkinkenlivingstone … farkincyclists … bendybusses … congestioncharging … albanianshavetakenoversoho. And so on. And on.

You get into a taxi thinking you’ll catch up with your phone calls or newspaper reading. But somehow you invariably get inveigled into conversation. You know in advance what you’ll be talking about (OK, hearing about – taxi drivers get lonely driving round by themselves); race problems, crime problems, traffic problems.

Taxi drivers are street philosophers, or storytellers keeping the Homeric tradition alive, with ideas as pithy as anything imparted by the shock-jocks on their radios or the commentators in their folded tabloids. Sometimes funny. But as often a bit scary; very right, very white. And very unconvinced about almost every aspect of life in multi-lane, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual Ken-run new London.

No wonder you get those prickles down your spine as the glass window goes back and the throat in front clears. It’s like a gauntlet; are you going to swallow your liberal soppiness and agree with whatever comes forth?

Fred is a fierce old soul with a sniff and an attitude, who sometimes picks me up on his way into London. His big hate is German tourists. “They stand on the kerb and point straight down to get you to stop – as if they’re ordering their dog to sit,” he says with grim pleasure. “But I know what to do with them. I slow down, as if I’m going to stop. They carry on jabbing down at the pavement as if they’re killing something. And then, at the very last minute, I put my foot down. And I’m off, and they’re waving and hollering in my rear view mirror. It makes them really angry. But what I say is, who won the war?”

Fred used to be a gravedigger. He’s full of dodgy bits of racial burial “information” - according to him, West Indians wait till the grave is fully dug over (and stamp down the earth) to stop spirits getting out; and, he adds, Jews don’t like to dig down the full six feet required by law; you can possibly imagine the reason Fred gives.