I've worked in and around the City for years, which means I've had the privelege of sharing cabs with London Cabbies many times. Without exception I can say that London Cab Drivers are a great community.

Trained in the legendary "knowledge" to remember every back street and building in England's capital, medical research once revealed that London taxi drivers are so well trained that a specific part of their brains has physically grown larger to accomodate the additional work load.

These professionals have a unique window into what goes on in our world. High flying business men and financiers discuss their secrets in the back of cabs as they wing between deals, oblivious to the anonymous driver who is ensuring their safe arrival. Stars of stage and screen share intimacies on their way from stage door to hotel.

The 16,000 London cabbies, more discreet than your doctor or bank manager, hear and remember it all.

To ride in a London cab and not to consult with your temproary host is a wasted opportunity to share in that pool of knowledge.

Yesterday, as I was ferried between the National Theatre on London's South Bank, and the Royal Academy, closer to the city centre, Michael my London Cabbie for the journey shared some of his thoughts with me.

Michael's father had been a naval gunner on a ship during the second world war, and appeared for about 3 seconds in a film from the time. I asked him if he had the DVD. He had the video tape, he replied, but he'd heard the film was being remastered and reissued, and he'd be buying that as soon as it came on sale.

As a child growing up after the war, Michael remembered a time of optimism and national pride, when patriotism was a national strength people took for granted, and when kids weren't outside playing they would be reading comics and comic books featuring Battle of Britain pilots in daring dog fights, or soldiers on exciting missions behind enemy lines.

How things have changed, he said, as he picked his way expertly around the congested roads and across the Thames.

Michael had wanted to put a small English flag on the back of his cab. A patriot, he also saw himself as English rather than British, and wanted to express that through a small St Georges cross. Two years it had taken, as his application was repeatedly turned down for fear it might "give offence".

"Can you imagine," he asked me, "a cab driver in America being refused the right to display the stars and stripes?" And he reminded me that American schools have the flag in their classrooms.

"And what's all this apologising for slavery that happened years ago? Wasn't the guy who stopped it all, William Wilberforce, a Brit?"

The journey seemed to be over almost before it began, and I left the cab reminded that there's a silent majority, a bedrock of true Britishness that refuses to be stifled.

So Michael, and your fellow London Cabbies, you are an amazing community who deserve your place in The Hall of Fame………….

http://theerrorlog.blogspot.com/2008/06/hall-of-fame-4-london-cab-drivers.html