Today is the Piccadilly Line’s one hundredth birthday. I saw this fact from a scribbled comment on the Piccadilly Circus service board as I went home. I’d have photographed it, but that would mean I’m still carrying my camera about with me: for whatever reason, I’m not doing that at the moment. Must do that again. Anyway, it said ‘Happy Birthday Piccadilly Line - 100 years young!’

One thing I like about the Underground is it manages to have a tightly controlled image (Johnstone everywhere, carefully co-ordinated colours and signage), but there are plenty of places for the line’s staff to add their own personality. From the penned message today, to the rather perplexing written instruction I saw a year ago about using the then new Oyster cards in a manner that is ‘plinky-plonky not swipey-swipey’, there seems to be enough creative space for tube employees to be themselves. Examples extend to humorous train announcements (I was once told over the tannoy that the reason the train was terminating early was because “the line controller has an identification problem between their elbow and their posterior”), and at Manor House for a while we were entertained by the bloke on the platform trying to always exactly time his schpeel to end exactly as the train left (’Mind the……… Closing……… Doors’). We’ve had everything from philosophers penning a thought for the day on the whiteboard at Oval station, to apparently a driver stopping mid-tunnel on Halloween, turning all the lights off, and going ‘Wooooo’ through the tannoy. (Rumour has it that the driver who did that was overhead by an advertising agency chap and got a lucrative voiceover contract).

Allowing creativity in your work place is supposed to be good for employees: and adds a bit of personalisation in what must be, sometimes, a highly dull job. It’s great that it’s apparently encouraged.

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