London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers.
Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, January 10th, 2026.
London Calling here with your daily London fix.
Cue the BBC. Radio London, its show London Uncovered. Yesterday London Uncovered was out and about with London Walks. With Adam on his David Bowie in 1960s London Walk. A walk Adam laid on for the Beeb by special request.
You go to the transcript of this podcast you’ll find the link to the show. It’s a good listen. By all means give it a go. It’ll definitely be a ten minute highlight of your day.
So that’s the warm-up. Here’s the podcast about our man, his walk and the BBC.
David Bowie in London.
Adam Scott.
A marriage made in heaven.
Before Ziggy Stardust.
Before the Thin White Duke.
Before Berlin.
He was plain old David Jones.
And London was where he learned how to become David Bowie.
Ok, now fast forward to January the 17th.
As I said Adam did the walk yesterday for the BBC. Thanks to the Beeb’s special request – its command performance – he’s decided to give his David Bowie in 1960s London Walk another outing this wintry season in London. This time for you, our walkers. It’ll go next Saturday, January 17th.
All of which tells you something straight away.
Adam uncovering London yesterday for the BBC show London Uncovered. His appearance not so long ago on the Robert Elms Show.
The BBC doesn’t ring by accident.
It comes calling.
Adam’s on the BBC’s books – in the BBC’s Rolodex file. He’s one of those London experts the BBC calls on. The only walking tour guide in London the BBC regularly turns to.
Which makes perfect sense, because what they were looking for – in this case uncovering David Bowie’s London – well, Adam’s the only guide who can come up with those goods, the only guide in London who’s got a David Bowie’s London Walk.
And equally to the point, it’s a walk – it’s a performance – that needs someone like Adam.
This isn’t the Bowie of stadiums and statues.
This is the Bowie of bedsits, basements and back rooms.
The Bowie who was trying things on.
Taking wrong turnings.
Hitting walls.
Then quietly walking round them.
1964 to 1971.
The long apprenticeship.
This is Bowie before the breakthrough.
Before the myth.
Before the moment when, by 1973, every paper suddenly wanted to know whose shirts he wore.
It’s a walk through his West End.
Through Soho, Mayfair, Covent Garden.
Through places that no longer exist, but absolutely mattered.
Bunjies Coffee House.
Regent Sound Studios.
La Giaconda.
Trident Studios.
Places where things almost happened.
Places where things very nearly didn’t.
We follow Bowie’s nomadic progress through the music business.
Decca.
Columbia.
Pye.
Single after single.
Miss after miss.
Davie Jones and the King Bees.
The Manish Boys.
Davy Jones and the Lower Third.
And finally, from 1966, David Bowie.
By the end of 1967 he’s released nine singles.
Nine.
And not one hit.
Would an artist be allowed that many misfires today?
Would a label stay the course that long?
That question hangs in the air as Adam takes you through the very streets where those decisions were taken.
There’s a moment Adam loves to linger on.
The summer of 1969.
Space Oddity rises.
Briefly.
A deceptive rainbow.
High in the charts.
Then gone.
Two more years until Hunky Dory.
Recorded in Soho.
Go on Adam’s walk you stand where that happened.
Two more years until Ziggy.
This was the period when Bowie belonged to London.
Before he belonged to the world.
London was his secret.
And his journey mirrors the city itself at that moment.
Restless.
Inventive.
Trying on identities like jackets.
You can hear the future forming.
In the songs.
In the voices he experiments with.
In the images he sheds almost as fast as he invents them.
At the turn of the 21st century, Bowie looked back at this period with the album Toy.
Shelved at the time.
Finally released as Toy:Box.
Which makes now the perfect moment to follow in his footsteps.
And then there’s Adam.
Adam Scott and David Bowie are a marriage made in heaven.
Castor and Pollux.
Twin stars.
Each bringing out the best in the other.
Adam knows this world inside out.
Nobody knows more about the popular music scene in London.
But knowledge alone isn’t enough.
What makes Adam special is that he’s hugely entertaining.
Information and entertainment, hand in glove.
That’s the gold standard.
That’s a 24-carat walk.
People ring us up and say, “Can you tell us which walks Adam is doing next week?”
He’s developed a following.
I’ve been known to describe him as the only human being I know who talks like a well-written magazine article.
And then there’s this.
He takes his guitar on his walks.
And plays.
A woman from Austin, Texas once nailed it.
She said, “It’s like having your own personal rock star for a tour guide.”
Charismatic.
Celtic.
Occasionally kilted.
A national journalist.
An author.
A cartoonist.
A guitar-strumming chansonnier.
And a man who thinks nothing of setting off on a thirty-mile walk across London for fun.
Lesley-Ann Jones, biographer of John Lennon and Freddie Mercury, puts it like this:
“Adam Scott is one of the rare few who respects history and truth. I’d never hesitate to recommend him as a tour guide.”
At the end of the walk there’s bonus material.
A virtual wander through Brixton and Bromley.
Maps.
Trivia.
You can keep exploring under your own steam.
And yes, there’s even a stop at Fopp Records for those who want to pick up the new box set.
But really, this walk is about something deeper.
It’s about the years when Bowie was still becoming Bowie.
When London held him close.
When failure was frequent.
And persistence was everything.
January the 17th.
David Bowie in London.
Before Ziggy.
Before the Duke.
Follow in his footsteps.
With the paragon of guides.
Good walking.
And good Londoning.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com.
Home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £25 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Jack the Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.