London Urban Legends (30 page)

It was a thought that was more exciting than it was unlikely, and I shared the first wolf film I saw across Facebook and Twitter. A wise friend quickly let me know that all of the footage showing wolves marauding across London was part of a series of YouTube films to promote a brand of vodka.

This seemed like rather a convoluted way of selling alcohol. The spoof footage was seeded across the internet, people commented and then there was a reveal letting the viewer know that the films and the story attached were created to promote Eristoff Vodka. Travelling Russian show-people Davok (an anagram even I can work out) presented a ‘Circus Freakout’ in Victoria Park from 1–3 December 2011 with an act called ‘Wolves of Vale’. A Davok van crawled through East London with banging beasts within it. Then the shows suffered a set back: ‘Wolves of Vale’ was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Next, videos appeared on YouTube of Londoners encountering wolves or the carnage left behind by wolves. The story being told is clear: Russian wolves were loose in London. The idea presumably must have been to make the wolves a talking point and then reveal the story in a way that would encourage interested parties to toast the cleverly done spoof with a cup of the vodka they were selling. The main wolf theatre, circus vans with howls, posters and listings would only really have interested anyone in the Hackney area. The Urswick Road video, as of 18 June 2013, has had 28,741 views, about 4,106 views a month, which is better than some ‘actual’ cryptozoological videos such as ‘Wild Black Panther Cat Caught On Video In UK’ (which averaged 962 views a month). How effective the wolves were for Eristoff sales is hard to gauge, but the vodka did drop 11 places in the May 2013 edition of ‘The Power 100’ list of spirits.

I emailed Us Ltd, the creative communications agency behind the campaign, to ask them what they were thinking, and whether they had been inspired by cryptozoolology in an attempt to create a buzz.

Jo Tanner of Us Ltd first responded by saying: ‘Great. Love to help! Do we get paid? Royalties?’

I explained how writing local history books works to Jo and suggested the creative team would enjoy talking about their creative process. He responded: ‘The idea was put together by a team of people and obviously developed as we went along.’

The thinking behind the wolves campaign was aimed at young people who are often beyond the reach of conventional advertising. ‘“Traditional-advertising-averse” young target audience,’ as Jo put it. The wolves were there to suggest drinking Eristoff vodka to the ‘young’ people who are interested in ‘Twilight-type stuff’. The brand values of Eristoff vodka were described as ‘dark and mysterious’, and their logo is a wolf. I had already suggested that out-of-place animals and vodka are not an intuitive connection, to which Jo pointed out, ‘Well they are when you realise that there’s a wolf in the brand’s logo based on its roots being Georgian.’

The Thames Angel

While on her way to meet a friend along the South Bank in May 2006, Jemima Waterhouse, a 16-year-old student from Sheen, saw an angel. ‘I felt a sense of calm spreading over me. It was comforting and familiar – a kind of peace that lasted for a while after. It is really hard to put into words, but I guess you could describe it as peace of mind.’

She took a photograph which appeared in the
South London Press
on 15 September 2006, who described the angel as having some sort of celebrity and gathering a fanbase:

Eerily so far this year four people claim to have seen the angel near the London Eye and an internet cult is growing … These sightings have prompted much online chat about the so-called Angel of the Thames. Already angel walks are being offered along the waterside and Angel T-shirts are available. One angel obsessive – who meets up with other people who have spotted the ghostly figure to share their experiences – thinks it must date back to the fire.

That’s the Great Fire of London, which was apparently one of the angel’s earliest recorded sightings. Three websites devoted to the Thames Angel appeared in the wake of the article. The Angel of the Thames: Have You Seen the Angel website repeated Jemima’s story and wanted to collect more. The Friends of the Thames Angel blog styled itself as the official Thames Angel fan club, complete with parties and a pug dog dressed up as an angel. Thames Angel: A History of the Angel of Promise is all swirly fonts, walking guides in period costume and historical events with a Thames Angel link to them. All three sites pass on the same information in the same way: that the River Thames has a resident angel that appears in times of great strife, or to please or beguile tourists.

Photographs showing a wispy, white-winged figure amongst or behind a group of tourists are placed alongside augmented etchings of a more traditional angel to illustrate a timeline that begins in 1667. There are a lot of images, and in the photographs the angel looks almost the same in all of them.

London’s history, from the Great Plague to the Blitz, is alluded to, and the angel is said to have made an appearance during the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. The most convincing piece of ‘evidence’ was footage of singer and television presenter David Grant filming on the Thames being distracted by the angel. ‘Did you see that?’ he asks. ‘Did you see it ‘cos I thought it looked like ... this is ridiculous, but I think it looked like an angel.’ In another piece of footage a reporter from Slovakian Television hassled David Grant to find out what he knew but, the website suggests, he has been ‘got to’ and did not wish to talk. There is now a conspiracy to prevent people talking about the Thames Angel.

People began to look into these websites and films, and the blog Transpontine, which takes an interest in south London matters, summarised the gaps in the angel story. The Slovakian Television logo was incorrect and the image used as a station ident was a picture of St Basil’s in Moscow – the most direct piece of evidence was faked. All the websites were created in 2006 and ceased later that year, and there is no previous mention of the angel before that time. Samuel Pepys did not write about the Thames Angel. This was an etching on the Angel of Promise site of the construction of the Embankment with the angel hovering over it with a suspicious white outline around it. Transpontine found a sharper version of the image on Wikipedia, without the angel – another fake. As early as November 2006, contributors on a James Randi webpage – Randi being the nemesis of those making paranormal claims – looked into the source code of the websites and found in the biggest site, Angel of Promise, the phrase ‘Global angels’. The Global Angels Foundation is a charity that aids impoverished and exploited children across the world, founded by Molly Bedingfield in 2004. Molly is the mother of pop stars Natasha and Daniel Bedingfield, and the charity finances its many good works in a number of ways, including sponsoring celebrities in strange challenges. The most chilling I have seen was one in which Bear Grylls was to row 22 miles down the Thames in a bath tub. David Grant, who supposedly saw the angel on film, was a sponsor of Global Angels and hosted their launch at Coutts Banks. All of the contemporary photographs of the angel look like a fuzzy white version of the Global Angels logo.

I have attempted to contact them to discuss the Thames Angel website and their possible connection to it, but so far they have been too busy to respond to my emails and telephone messages.

The Brentford Griffin

Further west along the Thames is Brentford, famed for its football club, Fuller’s Brewery and the ‘Brentford Triangle’ novels by Robert Rankin. Brentford’s other claim to fame is another mythical winged creature, the griffin. Griffins are mythical beasts of a higher order: they have the body of a lion but the head and wings of an eagle-like raptor. On the scale of London’s mystery animals, the origin of its parakeets is a diversion and the panthers, pumas and bears are an absurd but romantic idea. The Brentford Griffin, however, is such a strange and ridiculous idea it is a surprise that people even consider it.

Like the Thames Angel, the Griffin has a history. In a letter to the
Fortean Times
, Issue 110, in May 1998, Martin Collins claimed to have heard stories of the griffin while at school in the 1950s. A family of griffins survived on Brentford Eyot (or Ait), after the first griffin was brought to Brentford by Nell Gwynn who had housed it in The Butts, Brentford. She had been given the griffin as a gift from Charles II. Somehow the griffin fell into the River Brent and was washed away to Brentford Eyot where it lived incognito after being presumed dead. Sir John Banks, a botanist who travelled with Captain Cook, brought another griffin to Brentford, where it was kept in a pagoda in Kew Gardens. After eventually escaping and mating with the first griffin living in the eyot, the griffin dynasty of Brentford was established until at least the 1980s. In the magazine
Magonia
, dated 19 May 1985, an article on Robert Rankin’s ‘Great Mysteries of Brentford No. 23: the Gryphon’ stated that:

Reports of gryphons [
sic
] crop up with startling regularity throughout the pages of history. Dr Johnson records one he saw at Brentford’s bull Fair: ‘… it was somewhat smaller than I had expected, but the proprietor assured me it was ‘yet young’ — it had the body of a lion cub and the neck, head and forelegs of a eagle … curiously formed wings issued from its shoulders.

Johnson was in no doubt that the beast lived ‘and was not the product of the gypsies’ craft’. No further mention of the gryphon is made in his writings and one wonders what became of it. Possibly it was the same live specimen that my [RR] father saw at Olympia before the war. He was informed it was several hundred years old and was shown old showman’s posters as proof.’

The griffin made its first contemporary appearance in March 1983. The Ealing
Guardian
14 March 1983 had the front-page headline ‘
GRIFFIN AT LARGE
– Mystery Flying Beast Sighted in Brentford’ after one Kevin Chippendale saw the creature.

Mr Chippendale, of Brook Road South, claims to have seen the animal twice, both times in the gasworks:

The first time was last summer when I saw something flying low across the ground in the gasworks. At first I thought it might be a plane, but it was too low and made no noise. I was intrigued to know what it was and as I walked past the Griffin pub realised it looked like the animal on the sign. I saw it again a couple of weeks later in exactly the same place.