Welcome to the Fact-Check for my Watchdogs Legion video. In that one, I did a tour of
London, sharing weird and wonderful facts about all the different places in the city.
But some of them were LIES! In this video, you’ll learn what is true, and what isn’t.
And count yourself lucky. I very nearly didn’t make this video, because I find it funny that
people would believe everything I said in that one. But then I realised I could get
more money by making another video so here we are.
First of all:
“Buckingham Palace. This is a place where the Queen sort of ‘is’ sometimes, and
where lots of things happen. It’s a well-known fact that, on his tenth birthday, every male
child in England takes a trip here to get a picture with the Queen after which she hands
him a £5 note that he is to keep in his wallet at all times for good luck. In 2018 this was
upped to £10 to account for inflation, and to update the tradition to the new polymer
notes.” I thought I’d open up with a clearly FALSE
bit of information as a warning that I wasn’t to be trusted, but apparently a lot of you
believed the meetings with the Queen to be the case. And it pains me to reveal that this
doesn’t actually happen. I’m sorry. I’m proud of my subscribers from England though,
who played along with it and shared their stories of what their encounter with the Queen
was like. For a moment I wondered if I should lie about this story in THIS video as well,
thus leading to another potential follow-up video and yet more money… but there is a
limit. You don’t meet the queen, you don’t get free money, but yes, the money in England
has been slowly updated to a new plastic-y finish in the last few years.
“It’s here that I got into a fist-fight with the Queen’s Guard. They’re the ones
with the silly hats. But although they look silly, they are also exceptionally highly
trained, fearsome warriors who will stop at nothing to protect the royal family.”
Yes, these soldiers with the silly hats ARE proper soldiers, selected from various divisions
from across the UK. Since they represent something important, and do their job well, they are
often a target for hilarious ‘PRANKS’ from idiots and rude tourists, but luckily
give as good as they get. Just search Youtube for ‘Queens Guard Attacks Tourist’ to
see them stomping, shouting and pushing people who cross the line.
“Big Ben. This is also a place where stuff happens sometimes. It’s undergone a face-lift
recently to feature a new coronavirus threat-level indicator.”
Big Ben did undergo a facelift a few years ago, but it wasn’t to install a Coronavirus
threat level indicator. It was to change the colours to an older, more traditional look,
as well as to repair and restore its inner workings and to make it more energy efficient.
While this was underway, it was stopped to keep those working on it safe and sane.
“Fun fact: 39 million tonnes of sewage enters this river every year. That’s more than
a ton EVERY SECOND!” This is more true than you might want it to
be. 39 million tonnes of raw sewage does overflow into the Thames every year, and that does
work out at more than a tonne every second. The sewage system in the city was designed
150 years ago, and although for its time it was incredibly advanced and future-proof,
it can’t keep up with modern requirements and so a SUPER NEW SEWER is being built to
improve things. Despite the river sounding dirty as hell, it’s improved a lot and is
now horrifyingly considered one of the cleanest rivers in the world passing through a major
city, having gone from being biologically dead to home to all sorts of fish and plant
life in just over half a century.
“Another fun fact: more than half of Londoners would happily swim in it.”
Well, I don’t know about HAPPILY -I don’t think we’re THAT patriotic- but a recent
survey claimed that 55% of Londoners believed that at least part of the Thames river was
clean enough to swim in. People DO swim in it, but have been known to get ill soon afterwards.
“Next I popped over the river to the London Eye. Built in 1999, this landmark is 20 metres
taller than the tallest tree in the world. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the
Queen’s Coronation, one of these pods was renamed the ‘Coronation Capsule’ and the
Queen herself was there to unveil its plaque. But what most people don’t know is she actually
turned out to be an imposter! Yup, all of this is true. But I perhaps worded
the bit about the imposter Queen a bit misleadingly. She was just a lookalike, but people were
probably aware. An upscaled version of this lookalike was used on my original video’s
thumbnail, next to a questionmark, which I think was rather appropriate given the circumstances.
“The Shard. Fun fact: in the name of national pride, at least one French climber has been
banned from going near this building.” Yes, The Shard is the 6th tallest building
in Europe, and the tallest in England, and the famous French building-climber, Alain
Robert, has been banned from going inside, or up it. If you don’t know about him already
then you need to Google him now- he’s climbed dozens of the world’s tallest buildings,
a lot of the time without safety gear of any sort. He was spotted eyeing up the Shard,
at which point the building’s owners were like ‘no we don’t want this health and
safety nightmare anywhere near this building’ and so filed an injunction against him. I
don’t know if this will stop him though, he’s regularly arrested during or after
such stunts. But despite all that I don’t think anybody in the world could hate him
because he is really cool. For a French person. Also: another fun fact, apparently a climber
DID climb the Shard last year. After George King-Thompson spent 12 weeks in prison for
performing the stunt, he was released and was met by the famous French climber whose
name I won’t butcher again.
“Here’s Tower Bridge. For some reason this one brings out the dare-devil in everyone.
People have flown planes through it. Flocks of sheep have been herded over it. People
have climbed it (But no, fortunately, no French people that I’m aware of). And a few decades
ago, as the draw bridge was going up, president Bill Clinton’s vehicle performed a daring
jump to clear the gap in the middle.” Uhhhh… most of that’s true. Planes have
flown through it, and somebody did herd a few sheep over it recently to exercise an
ancient right to do so and also to protest how older citizens have been having their
rights eroded. In fact it seems like a more common occurrence than I thought it would
be. Even Stephen Fry’s been seen walking over bridges in London with a sheep. A Dad
dressed as Spiderman climbed it to protest the fewer rights that Fathers have to see
their children than Mothers do. And the bit about Bill Clinton is sort of
half true. The bridge opened and divided the American convoy in two. And while I like to
think that those left behind leapt the gap, they just stopped and waited for the bridge
to close (and open!) again. Apparently, this all happened due to a break-down of communication
where the American Embassy failed to pick up the phone.
“It gets its name from winning the Jubilee bridge-building competition, which was hosted
to commemorate the queen’s 50th year in power, narrowly beating out this bridge in
Manchester, which got silver prize.” The Golden Jubilee Bridge is named that because
it commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s accession, and the Silver Jubilee
Bridge was renamed that, not because it came second-place, but to commemorate the 25th
anniversary. And if you must know it’s somewhere between Manchester and Liverpool.
“I drove past the Tower of London just here, which was built almost 1,000 years ago! It’s
now where the Crown Jewels are kept, among them, the 800 year old Coronation Spoon.”
Yes, the bit about the spoon is true. Look, here’s a picture of it! When researching
the first video, I did worry that my search history might have indicated that I wanted
to terrorise London by stealing this spoon, especially after the first video triggered
a google search trend for it. But rest assured, any detective stalking me
who’s stumbled upon this video, I don’t want the spoon. Well, I do but not that much.
“This one here is known as the Cheese Grater. Fun fact: The Rock holds the record for the
fastest descent of this building, dropping 40 floors in just 64 seconds.”
This building is known as the Cheese Grater, and I’m proud of this little fun fact, even
if it isn’t strictly true. It comes from an action sequence in Fast and Furious where
the Rock dives off one of the top floors of the building in the most impractical way imaginable,
and does take 64 seconds to land on a parked car at the bottom. I timed it myself. As for
why I was watching Hobbs and Shaw… I dunno… I kind of like it.
“And this here is the Gherkin.” Yes, it’s known as the Gherkin.
“And this is the Walkie-Talkie building. Its curved edge led to the sun’s rays being
concentrated into a beam that would fry parked cars a few roads away with temperatures greater
than 100 degrees. Celsius. Where water boils at 100 of them. For the Americans among you:
it got up to 243 degrees Fahrenheit! When the architect was asked why he had constructed
a death-ray (AGAIN!)… he blamed global warming.” ALL true. The architect was behind this building
in Vegas which suffered from the same thing. When asked about why the Walkie Talkie building
had a death ray, he said “When I first came to London years ago, it wasn't like this ... Now
you have all these sunny days.”, suggesting that global warming was to blame. As well
as the deathray, this building also transformed the streets around it into a wind tunnel.
And it won the Carbuncle prize for being the worst new building in the UK, where I quote:
"It is a challenge finding anyone who has something positive to say about this building".
Still, it helped with a great 2kliksphilip video, so there’s that.
“Here’s St Paul’s Cathedral. I wish I could say it’s the biggest, or tallest
in the world in some way but it isn’t either. Not even in England! But it did survive the
Blitz in World War 2 and here’s a cool picture of it. And here’s how it compares to real-life,
in-game.” Yes, all this is true as well. And so is the
bit about Number 10 Downing Street. But as far as I’m aware, trying to escape the city
doesn’t result in you blacking out and returning from whence you came.
I hope this has cleared up some of the misinformation, and I’m sorry to all my English followers
for revealing the truth about the meeting with the Queen in my first video. Hopefully
this video will make foreigners doubt the tradition’s existence again.