I was born here, went to school here, and have lived half my life here; then yesterday someone said they lived in Lower Clapton. London is always the great sea, a seething stew: formless, limitless, ever-changing, unknowable. Now it's very cosmopolitan; it's grown and changed and become much more fun, but it's also a place where you see a lot of street-drinking and many more damaged people than beforeYou can go up the Empire State Building, look down on the circumference of Manhattan, and say: "Yes, I could have this town in my hand." You may walk all round Paris in a day and feel: "Yes, this town could be mine." But such feelings can never arise in London, a city it is hardly possible to grasp, let alone possess. When I go to Portobello Road, I experience a 50-year leap: I lived there as a child when it was a Cockney London Irish ghetto.

There weren't many people homeless on the street, but Ian Dury was the one person I remember as representing the spirit of a hopeful London night person - like most Londoners, he's obdurate and carries on I think of Portobello Road. Rabbi Julia Neuberger, born and bred in Hampstead, currently lives in Clapham I love the view across the Thames from Vauxhall or Westminster Bridge, looking down towards the City and Canary Wharf. I like the contrast between St Paul's Cathedral - the old - and the bulk of Canary Wharf - the new; the sense that London is still growing but has kept its traditions John Bird, editor, `The Big Issue' When I was a kid, I slept rough, using London streets as a getaway both from my parents and the police. I just think that if you're going to dump your fundamentals, dump your ideology and disown your history, you're going off into the desert without a map." His brow twitched "Like Mark bloody Thatcher".

The Labour Party had an objective they still haven't achieved, and it's up to us to carry on doing the work they started."So he didn't believe in abolishing Clause Four? "I'd never agree with it It isn't a matter of adaptation and change. People who don't know their history, or worse deny it, are doomed to fail because you have to accomplish what your predecessors set out to accomplish. Recently, Banks wrote: "Any sport which inadequately reveres its history, and in particular its past greats, is graceless and insensitive." I wondered if he applied this to the Labour Party "Of course. I'm not being snide - I'd say the same about Tony Blair or Harold Wilson We're talking real heroes here, gods. Perhaps I'm being a pathetic old git, but they said `Thank you for remembering', and I said, Whatchoo mean, you're legends."There's more to this than sentimentality.

We took some pictures and put them in the Chelsea programme." How sweet "You don't understand. But he refused leave to appeal because he said the intention of the law was clear.The issue arose over investigations by BBC journalists for the media programme, The Spin, which was eventually broadcast in October 1995 and is now the subject of a complaint to the BCC by the Barclay twins. They had refused permission for a personal interview and for entry to the island, but the reporter, John Sweeney, went there by dinghy and wandered around before being shipped back to Sark.Mark Shaw, for the BCC, had told the judge: "No doubt there was an invasion. The judge said the argument over the right to privacy in English law and its lack of conformity with the European Convention on Human Rights "will doubtless not end here". If successful, their action could have had a devastating effect on television documentary-making. They lodged an immediate protest with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC) after the reporter's incursion but were told nothing could be done until after any programme was broadcast.The 61-year-old brothers applied to the High Court for a judicial review of the BCC's interpretation of the part of the Broadcasting Act that governs its powers.But Mr Justice Sedley ruled that the law "at present places no general constraints upon invasions of privacy as such".He said that the Act "unambiguously limits the power of the BCC to adjudication upon complaints of infringement of privacy against the BBC arising out of programmes which have been broadcast".Under the statute governing the BCC's powers, and generally in English law, "the individual is without an effective remedy before a national authority if the right to respect for his or her private and family life is violated". The brothers, said to be worth around pounds 600m, took the action after a BBC2 television reporter landed on the Channel island of Brecqhou, on which they had spent millions buying and building a Gothic castle there.