Fictional London Addresses Trivia Quiz

Answer: 24 Oil Drum Lane, Shepherd's Bush

Albert and Harold are the father and son rag-and-bone men in the television show "Steptoe and Son", which was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson and ran for eight series on the BBC between 1962 and 1974. Wilfrid Brambell played Albert, the senior Steptoe, with Harry H. Corbett as his frustrated son Harold. Like so many great sitcoms, much of the humour came from the tensions between the two main characters, with the aspirational Harold continuously frustrated by his elderly father's miserly, uncouth ways. Fifty episodes were re-recorded for radio, and two feature films were released in 1972 and 1973.

Oil Drum Lane does not exist, although the name perfectly matches the run-down Steptoe business. Shepherd's Bush is a district in West London, which during the 1960s and '70s, when the show was running, was a rather run-down area. Harold and Albert wouldn't recognise it now, dominated as it is by the huge Westfield London Shopping Centre.

Answer: 52 Festive Road, Putney

Festive Road is fictional, although the name is based on Festing Road in Putney, where David McKee (author and illustrator of the original books) once lived. The Mr Benn books are intended for young children, and the first of them, "Mr Benn - Red Knight", was published in 1967. Three more books following, before the series was taken up and adapted for television by the BBC. The television shows took the format of an original 13 animated short films, each lasting 15 minutes, and first broadcast between February 1971 and March 1972. In 2001, McKee wrote a new story, "Mr Benn - Gladiator", which was made into a 14th animated episode in 2005.

The format of each episode follows an identical pattern. Mr Benn, a smartly dressed city gent in a bowler hat, travels from his house in Festive Road to a fancy-dress shop, where he tries on a particular costume. He then goes through a door at the back of the shop and emerges in a place suitable for his costume: a clown costume takes him to a circus, for example. He then has a short adventure, before returning to the shop with a souvenir which he takes home.

Answer: 23 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam

Cheam is a district of south-west London, once in Surrey but now just within Greater London. Resident at 23 Railways Cuttings, East Cheam, was Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, the semi-fictional alter-ego of comedian Tony Hancock, in the BBC radio series "Hancock's Half Hour". The show was written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson and ran on the radio from 1954-1961. It was one of the first radio comedy shows to consist of a single half-hour storyline, rather than the sketch-style format of such shows as "The Goon Show" and "ITMA". An overlapping television version ran from 1956-61.

In the 1950s Cheam was an unfashionable suburb in an obscure area of south London, with Hancock's "Railway Cuttings" address implying that he lives in the least attractive part of it. Being next to the railway line would have made it both noisy and smelly.

Answer: 7 Savile Row, Burlington Gardens

Jules Verne's 1873 novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" begins with the words "Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814." This would have placed him a gentle ten-minute stroll from the Pall Mall location of London's Reform Club, of which he was a member, and where he accepted the wager that gives the book its title. The novel describes his efforts to circumnavigate the globe in the designated period of time, in order to win £20,000.

As of 2023, the book has been twice adapted for film: in 1965, with David Niven as Fogg, and 2004, with Steve Coogan. The first of these won five Oscars, including Best Picture. The second was nominated for two Razzie Awards, including "Worst remake or sequel".

Incidentally, Verne appears not to have checked his facts very carefully, as the Irish-born playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan died in 1816 and lived at number 14.

Answer: 221b Baker Street

Perhaps one of the most famous fictional addresses of all time, 221b Baker Street was the address of Arthur Conan Doyle's "consulting detective", Sherlock Holmes, and (for at least some of the time) his friend and associate Dr Watson. Doyle deliberately picked a number that didn't exist, as the Victorian Baker Street only had houses numbered as far as 90. However, subsequent extensions to the street meant that from 1932 the fictional address became nominally part of a branch of the Abbey National Building Society, which occupied numbers 219-229. For many years the Abbey National employed a full-time member of staff to reply to all the letters written to the fictional character.

In 1990, a Sherlock Holmes Museum opened on Baker Street, which was confusingly given the number 221B, despite actually being situated between numbers 237 and 241.

Answer: 32 Windsor Gardens

Windsor Gardens as described by Michael Bond doesn't exist, although there is a small street of that name in the Maida Vale area of London. The fictional address is clearly somewhere in the trendy Notting Hill area, as it is described as being a short walk from the real Portobello Road, not too far from Paddington Station.

Bond wrote "A Bear Called Paddington", his first book about Paddington Bear, in 1958. This describes how the eponymous animal is discovered at Paddington Station by the Brown family, sitting on his suitcase with a label around his neck reading "Please look after this bear. Thank you." Instead of immediately calling London Zoo, the family take him into their home, and the rest (as they say) is history. As well as the original books, Paddington's adventures have been featured in both an animated television series and on film.

Answer: Flat 203, 56b Whitehaven Mansions

Fans of Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot may not be aware that he has a London address: Flat 203, 56b Whitehaven Mansions. This is first mentioned in the 1936 novel "The A.B.C. Murders", when Captain Hastings visits Poirot there.

The address is entirely fictional, although the television series made between 1989 and 2013, featuring David Suchet as Poirot, used the 1930s Florin Court in London's Smithfield as the location for filming purposes.

Answer: Nelson Mandela House, Peckham

Created by John Sullivan, the television sitcom "Only Fools and Horses" ran on the BBC from 1981 to 2003, a total of 64 episodes being made, including several Christmas and other special episodes. The show's two chief characters, Derek "Del Boy" Trotter and his younger brother Rodney, live in a flat on the 12th floor of a 1960s tower block in Peckham, south-east London. Del-boy is a typical London "wide boy", always trying to make money from some con or illegal trade, but naturally with a heart of gold. He and Rodney lived first with their grandfather, played by Leonard Pearce, then (following Pearce's death in 1984), by their Uncle Albert (Buster Merryfield).

The building's name, Nelson Mandela House, is a sly dig at the habit of 1980s left-wing councils in London of renaming streets and buildings after post-colonial activists from Africa and India, most of whom had no connection with the place in question. Nelson Mandela House is part of the Nyerere Estate, named after Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania from 1964-85.

Answer: 110a Piccadilly

The upper-class amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey was the creation of Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957) and made his first appearance in the 1923 novel "Whose Body?". He appeared in a total of eleven novels and a number of short stories, the last completed novel being "Busman's Honeymoon" in 1937. Several radio, television and stage adaptations of the books have also been made.

As a dilettante man-about-town, it is entirely appropriate for Lord Peter to have an apartment in the fashionable central London area of Mayfair, on the real street of Piccadilly, where he resides with his manservant, Bunter. The precise address of 110a Piccadilly doesn't exist, however. On the spot where it would be is the Sheraton Grand Hotel, a five-star hotel where one feels Lord Peter would feel quite at home. The hotel has a Lord Peter Wimsey Suite named in his honour.

Answer: 17 Cherry Tree Lane

17 Cherry Tree Lane is the residence of the Banks family in the "Mary Poppins" books by Pamela Lyndon Travers (1899-1996). The address is entirely fictional, but Travers had been living in the affluent and fashionable Bloomsbury area of central London when she moved to London in the 1920s, and it is clear that the Banks residence is in a similarly up-market area. They have several servants apart from Mary Poppins, and Mr Banks has a well-paid job in the City.

One house in the book which is said to have been inspired by a real one is that of Admiral Boom, which has a ship's deck on the roof. There is a similar house in Admiral's Walk, Hampstead, a few miles north of Bloomsbury.