London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Sunday, August 3rd, 2025.
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Let’s start with the word argot.
Some London Walks argot.
Great word, argot.
Webster’s Dictionary – the great American dictionary – defines it as a noun that refers to the specialised vocabulary and idioms used by a particular group.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as the jargon, slang or peculiar phraseology of a class, originally that of Paris rogues and thieves.
For purposes of disguise and concealment.
Drill down deeper you get “the company of beggars”, from a French word, argot, absolutely identical to our English word argot, a French word meaning a group of beggars.
Got us – London Walks guides – to a T. Rogues and thieves and beggars.
But seriously, London Walks guides, like every organisation, we make up what Webster’s Dictionary calls a particular group. Some would hasten to add, no just a particular group but also a peculiar group. But anyway, like every particular group we have our own specialised vocabulary and idioms, that are unique to London Walks. They only make sense to us. They’re our argot.
By way of example, the acronym JTS. One London Walks guide says to another, “what was your group like last night?” The answer might be – often is – JTSs, every last one of them. It makes perfect sense to every London Walks guide. Doesn’t make a bit of sense to anybody else.
It’s a Mary coinage. And, yes, it is an acronym. An abbreviated acronym. JTS means Just the Sort. Knowing that, you’re still none the wiser.
I said it’s an abbreviated acronym. The full phrase would be, “What was my group last night like, they were just the sort of Americans we like.”
It’s very high praise. And for some reason it’s become just applicable to American groups. To say of this or that group of Americans – they were JTSs – is very complimentary. It says, they were bright, fun, friendly, very switched on, good-natured, a joy to take round. Or words to that effect. It’s extremely high praise.
So I come home from a guiding job. Mary asks me, “what were they like?” I says “JTSs.” It’s all I need to say. It’s shorthand. She understands instantly that they were a really wonderful bunch of Americans, a joy to guide. Couldn’t ask for better.
It’s London Walks argot. A London Walks idiom. Our own private, specialised language.
And here’s another example.
We’ve got two brilliant new guides. They’re both women. They’re both doctors. I call them our Lady Doctors. Their names are Ann and Luisa.
And my god are they good. It’s like being a basketball team and adding those two to the line-up, it’s like adding two Michael Jacksons to your side.
Their walks are just drenched with rave reviews. Nothing but rave reviews. They come cascading in.
Take Luisa for example. She debuted a new walk yesterday. Wild and Wonderful Women of Westminster. Twenty-four hours later, five rave reviews. That’s Michael Jordan stuff. Most of us get occasionally one very good review from time to time. Luisa does a new walk and she gets five. As she’ll go on getting them at that rate. Which is exactly what happened and continues to happen with her first walk – Death, Debauchery and Doctors in Soho.
Anyway, I couldn’t help myself, I said to Luisa, “you know Luisa, before you know it, you’re going to be June Streeted.”
Now, needless to say, June Streeted is London Walks argot and Luisa’s only been with us a couple of months and it didn’t make any sense to her at all.
So I explained.
June Street – the late, much lamented June Street was a legendary London Walks guide. And she was a tremendous character.
Where to begin? Well, let’s begin with the end. June Street was cremated on a beach in Bali. Yes, cremated on a beach in Bali. That’s some style to go out in. It’s so June Street. Only June Street. She went right back to the early days of London Walks. She had been a stockbroker in the City of London. Became a guide. Became London Walks’ star guide. She was bold, bawdy, brassy. Because she was bawdy and because, like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, she was gap-toothed, we called her the London Walks wife of Bath. Her husband Tony was gentle, quiet and self-spoken, modest and unassuming. We – London Walks guides and Ian and Pat who owned London Walks in those days – had quarterly meetings at the Sun Tavern in Covent Garden. There were about eight or ten of us. We’d sit round a table and divvy up the walks for the next quarter. Anyway, one night, our meeting over, Tony turned up to pick June up, drive her home. He had a big bandage on his forehead. We asked June about it. “Is Tony all right? What happened?”Now remember, I said June was bawdy.
She said, “Oh I was having a bath, Tony came in, sat on the side of the tub, made a grab at my tit, fell in and banged his head on the other side of the tub.”
We fell about. And of course that was 45 years ago. And none of us have ever forgotten it. How could you.
Anyway, the point is, June Street was a larger-than-life character. She was the guide the New York Times discovered. And raved about. More than once. June Street guiding a London Walk and having the New York Times Bureau Chief along…well, you can imagine, it was fair sailing for London Walks for years just on the strength of her New York Times reviews.
And of course it wasn’t just the New York Times that discovered her. Walkers discovered her. Throngs of them. Hordes of them. People would go on a June Street London Walk and that was it, they were hooked. They’d follow her. They’d go on every walk she did that week.
And of course that phenomenon became London Walks argot. To be June Streeted was our way of saying a London Walks guide is so good he or she develops a following. Develops a fan club, really. People go on every walk said superstar guide gives during that JTS’s stay in London. There, that nicely marries our two bits of London Walks argot. Happily we’ve got a good few guides who’ve been June Streeted. Adam immediately springs to mind. Ditto Karen and the two Simons and our other Ann and for sure our two most distinguished guides, Lisa the former diplomat and Stewart the former ITN Editor and lawyers Ian and Tom and David and Ulrike and Charlie…and, well, this is awkward because guides who’ve June Streeted they’re like the knights of the round table and I really should mention all of them but limitations of space and all of that. And in any case, this is about Luisa.
And the fact of the matter is, Luisa’s on track to be June Streeted sometime in the next couple of months. As is Dr Ann, the other lady doctor. And that’s the story. That’s a bit of London Walks argot for you. But do me a favour, will you. If you go on a Luisa walk, why not say to her, “I’m a JTS, what about you, have you been June Streeted yet?”
I don’t know what she’ll say in response but it’s pretty much a lock that she’ll take it in her stride. Her comeback will be fun. You won’t be sorry you asked.
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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 £20 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 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 barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, 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 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.