"AND HERE'S THE DOOR THAT..."

THEY NOW HAVE TOURS OF PORTOBELLO ROAD, HONESTLY, (but without the fun bits).
The free 'Anzac' mags that can be taken from outside Tube stations are now carrying adverts for walking history tours of Portobello road. If you check you will see adverts along the lines of... 'THE' Tour of Notting Hill... 'taking in the homes of the people, places and landmarks that made it famous', (or something like that..) all for only £10 ( £10!? its no wonder they don't value the likes of a passing, market bound me joining in, and helpfully adding to the sum of their customers new Portobello based knowledge!).
It is I think, safe to say that the Cinematically awful, drippy, slab of warm rancid butter unfortunately called 'Notting Hill' is obviously one of the motives, if not the main driving force behind the creation of the tours, and probably had a subtle influence in the tours current forms.
For a fee, people can now go and have their pictures taken at the confusingly placed establishments that in reality sit on different sites from where Richard Curtis' cinematic dollop placed them, and pose at 'the door that isn't the same one as in the film' (some idiot had already bought that for an extreme fee not long before the banking bubble burst. He is either so rich it doesn't matter or, as he sits weeping, surrounded by bankrupt notices, wailing and gnashing his teeth, he is busy whittling 'The Door' down to sell as 'recently found slices' of the One True Cross, desperately hoping to get a few bankrupt quid back).
For some reason places like the surviving portion of alley where Reginald Christie did his nasty work at Rillington Place, the site of Fascist leader Oswald Mosley's Portobello Road office, or the spot where the 1957 racist riot broke out are all not included in the tour, indeed they are not even mentioned, even when the tour is at "The Door", its history as a squat venue for some well known and influential 'free party' sound systems and its later, long use as an infamous crack house is ignored by the so-called 'local historians'.
There is much more interesting stories that could be told, at least one from the pub across the road from "The Door", I would love to hear about how the unnamed but very, very drunk, and very well known 'personality' had uncaringly stepped over the unconscious body of the tramp that had fallen asleep outside the male entrance of the Warwick Castles toilets to go for a tinkle (don't ask me why he was not moved, witnessing him myself I can only assume he was left where he was because he didn't look like he was about to 'evacuate' himself where he slept in any hurry, what caring staff they were.).
Nor do they mention the shocking lack of differing skin tones and cultures in the film by Richard Curtis, it must make 'Notting Hill' tourists think that coloured people had newly 'invaded' since the film was made. Alone its a big crime, and a sin that the film was not properly if at all criticised for.
If 'They' are going to do a tour of Portobello road it should include everything, not just "The Door", George Orwell's old house and the Electric Cinema (beautiful building that it is), not just the areas 'pop' history but its social one too, one that's far more interesting than the front of Jude Laws home.
Just for fun the tours should even show the spot under the westway at Ladbroke Grove where two tramps famously copulated and happily performed their unrehearsed but lively Brew influenced interpretation of 'The joys of sex' in full view of the evening rush hour locals, the spot that is now the entrance to the bar that currently sits there.
There's so much...