Picture the scene: you’re waiting at the tube station, about to start a long day of work. You’re tired, you’re cold, you’re annoyed because it’s the first week of January and you’ve picked up the weekend shift. All you want to do is find a seat and listen to your podcast when the doors open and… what’s this? Why can I see that man’s underwear? Why can I see everyone’s underwear?
Don’t worry, your brain hasn’t been irreparably broken by the holiday season. It’s just London’s weirdest annual tradition: the No Trousers Tube Ride. No, I’m not joking.
Yeah? So? It’s just a bit of silliness. You wouldn’t catch me doing that in January. Why January anyway, it’s fucking cold? So, yes, a bit of silliness that people get up to. No harm is done by it.
I want to say that’s just a bit of harmless fun, and I’m sure for most people it is
You can just tell that there’s a ‘but‘ coming can’t you? After all, this is a prick who writes for the Indy, so there’s going to be a po-faced, purse-lipped, lemon-sucking, puritanical, Whitehouse-esque reason that this is just so terrible.
but it’s also wildly problematic.
There you go. Right on cue. No, it is not problematic. It’s a bit of a daft tradition and the whole point is to ignore it and behave normally. I repeat – no harm is done here.
I sort of understand the impulse to go out in public without trousers. When I was in university, me and my friends went through a phase of dropping trou’ every time we got drunk together, no matter where we were or whose company we were in (although maybe not in the dead of winter, like these guys). Talking to other people, I discovered this is actually a fairly common phenomenon for men in their late teens and early 20s. Apparently there’s some primal part of our brains that is hardwired to free our legs from their denim prisons at the slightest provocation. Attica! Attica!
(My friends and I – Ed. Call yourself a journalist? FFS). Yeah, so? None of this is relevant – being drunk and behaving like a boor as you did is isn’t what is happenign here. It’s a silly tradition. Ignore it and move on.
At its heart, it’s an issue of consent. When me and my friends thought we were being funny or spontaneous, we didn’t really think about how we were bringing other people into our game without asking them. The No Trousers Tube Ride is the same, only on a much larger scale.
Nope. Bollocks. No one is engaging in indecent exposure, no one is being a drunken oaf, as you were. During the summer months, plenty of men wear shorts. This is no different.
In short, Coogan is just another virtue-signalling, humourless tosser. One who is barely literate at that.
I’m sure this article will receive the usual cries of “you’re just being overly sensitive” or “you can’t do anything these days without somebody acting offended”, and I understand that too.
Well stop writing barely literate, whiny articles complaining about it, then.
But it doesn’t take much to consider the feelings of other people and adjust one’s actions accordingly – especially when it’s an event like this, where nothing is lost by no taking part. No orphanages will go unfunded, no cancers unresearched.
No harm was done. No one was injured. No case to answer. And, no, you don’t need to have some charity event to engage in silliness.
This year’s event is already well underway, and I wish those involved all the best. But maybe next year it would be a good idea for us all to stay buckled up.
How about next year you fuck off somewhere and spare us the whiny, boilerplate leftist virtue-signalling, claptrap? Looking below the line, he’s getting justly ratioed, so I’m not alone.
Ryan Coogan is a working class writer, academic and occasional poet. His work has appeared in national newspapers and magazines including The Independent, The i Paper, Metro UK, Times Higher Education Magazine, and The Moth. He has contributed to major academic publications, including a chapter for Palgrave Macmillan’s Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return. He is currently completing his PhD in English Literature.
Bwahahahahahaha!
There is a pretty old guy often seen on the poolside at the gym in tiny speedos. Part of me thinks, hell mate, don’t you think you might be a bit too old for speedos. The other part of me admires his ability to give zero fucks. In the end, he isn’t doing anyone any harm so who cares?
Talk about padding a CV!
Reminds me of a mother who fondly described her son as a food and beverages manager.
He was a barman that sold crisps and peanuts.
Next time someone, anyone, is stabbed, I won’t be too quick to judge. Perhaps the fucker was in his underwear.
Can men in kilts but no underwear join in?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crown-jewels/
I say “Good for him”. Where would we be if everybody liked the same things and disliked the same things. How would the Independent (and other newspapers) fill their opinion columns if everybody had the same opinion about everything.
I may disapprove of what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it. (Well, not death, obviously. Let’s just say I’ll argue about it online.)
There’s a difference between ‘I don’t like x’ and ‘you should stop doing x.’ This authoritarian fucknugget is doing the latter and rightly being taken to task for it. If he doesn’t like this particular activity, then no one is making him take part. He could also spare us his illiterate drivel in national newspapers, thereby doing everyone a favour. But, yeah, he is free to do so and we are free to rip him to shreds.
Oh,dear. Haven’t the kids grown bored of “problematic” yet? Anyway, the rule seems to be:
Blokes in dresses = stunningandbrave; blokes in their keks = PROOOOBLEEEEMAAAATTIIIC.
“Ryan Coogan is a working class writer”
The rest of the paragraph would suggest otherwise. Why are British people so scared to embrace the middle class? In America, it’s the other way round: even plumbers and dustmen are “middle class” over there.