One commentator staunchly stated, "This is an affront to everything I love about London. Fight this, by God, fight it!"
A couple of Kiwi friends and I felt much the same as Dunne when we first starting commuting by tube in the seventies. But we had our own way of dealing with it and we didn't have to incur the cost of badges.
At the ends of each carriage were bench seats facing inwards. Sit in those and you were often forced into the awkward position of staring at someone directly opposite you.
Our little ice-breaker required that we occupied three adjacent sideways seats.
We sat like forward-staring robots making sure we did not converse. At a pre-arranged signal (it might be a very discreet fake cough or clearing of the throat audible only to the other two) we would all mechanically cross our legs, right over left.
This clearly unnerved a few of the passengers on the other side of the carriage who really had nowhere else to look. Just when we felt they had recovered from their awkwardness we performed our follow-up; on the signal, we all uncrossed our legs in perfect unison.
As you can imagine, it was hard to keep a straight face but we did. Straight faces were key to achieving maximum impact.
At our stop we rose in unison and, still straight-faced, exited the carriage feeling that our Kiwi ingenuity had brought a little life into the commute of some travellers. Tube theatre some might call it. Stupid others might call it.
The big difference between us and Dunne is that we didn't really ask people to change. We just did our thing then left. Dunne, on the other hand, so angered people that some commuters were prompted to create a rival badge which bore the words "Don't even think about talking to me!"
You can't mess with tradition, you see. Brits want to be transported like robots to work and no badge-bearing American is going to change that.
Of course it's not the first time reaction to robotic behaviour has occurred. One a couple of years ago involved a professionally printed sign stuck up in a carriage by a prankster: "No eye contact. Penalty £200."
At least Dunne was successful in one regard - he got the Brits talking, though not necessarily on the tube.
But, as a proud Kiwi, I feel his badge campaign wasn't a patch on synchronised leg crossing.
Footnote:
A language irritation that should have made it into last week's column was somehow omitted. A car race over the weekend, however, has hammered the reminder home. Why do people (including media sports commentators) not look at the name of Bathurst and see that the "h" has already been used up in the first syllable? The second syllable, therefore, is -urst. How can it be Bath hurst? This probably calls for some serious leg crossing.
