Our man in St John's Wood

Do not drive into London. If you would like to retain your sanity and/or the will to live, do not drive into London.

The congestion begins as the A3 dwindles abruptly from six lanes to two, next to the gates of Richmond Park, and you can kiss goodbye to third gear from then on. In a few miles, you'll find notching up into second brings a sense of elation, as sweet as it is brief.

The first hour-and-a-half of this congestion is free. Then, as you cross the Thames, they charge you for it.

The congestion charge works like this '“ people who are rich enough just pay it, because they don't care. People who drive company cars know their company will pay it, so they don't care. Then there are drug addicts who've stolen a car to get their next fix, so they don't care.

Finally, there are people who drive cars that are exempt because they run on batteries/ chip fat/a windmill on the roof and they do care and jolly well think you should, too.

So to surmise, the roads are clogged like a fat kid's arteries with 90 per cent self-serving arrogant gits and ten per cent bossy hippies. I took the train.

I considered, briefly, Michael Winner's preferred transport, the private plane to RAF Northolt, but the Observer's Lear jet was in the garage having its champagne tank refilled and anyway, Northolt is simply miles from St John's Wood.

The train service from Bognor to Victoria is very good these days, and from Chichester it's even better.

That's because the Chichester trains run non-stop from Barnham to Horsham, while those from Bognor call at the intermediate stations before joining onto the service from Chichester at Horsham.

Nevertheless, the hour-and-three-quarters the journey takes from Bognor is still twice as fast as driving and they don't sting you an extra seven quid as you cross the river. Then comes the Underground. As a country child, the Underground had an almost romantic allure. Just imagine; a railway that was all tunnel! Including the stations!

The reality, as one bundles down the stairs into Victoria tube station, is less 'magic molehill' and more 'mouth of hell'.

A word about escalator etiquette: only, ever, stand on the right. Do not, under any circumstances, stand two abreast, marvelling at the novelty of a moving staircase.

The natives like to hurry down the lefthand side, impatient to meet their fate, and tourists gawping at this mechanical wonder are, like doe-eyed deer on the motorway, imminent carrion.

The exit from the Tube at St John's Wood is calmer and more dignified. Built in the 1930s, it is one of the few underground stations to retain its original uplighters, standing on fluted bronze columns between the escalators to herald your arrival in this most exclusive of London villages.

You ascend into an art deco rotunda, to be met by the seemingly incongruous 'Beatles Coffee Shop'. St John's Wood boasts two internationally-famous places: one is Lord's cricket ground, the other is Abbey Road.

Forty years ago, John, Paul, George and Ringo crossed the street.

MORE NEXT PAGEEvery year thousands of people whose mothers weren't born when they did it come to pay homage at the sacred zebra crossing, and add their names to the list of supplicants who've graffitied their pilgrimage on the gateposts of the eponymous recording studio. You can see how religions get started.

Above the station rises a block of flats. Opposite the station is a block of flats, across the road is a block of flats, all around are flats, in blocks. The basic architectural style for these is the same as all the 'Peabody Buildings' social housing throughout London '“ red brick cliffs ornamented with balconies and drain pipes.

But these are posh flats! How do we know they are posh flats? Because posh flats have trees outside. They do not have stripped-out Ford Sierras, old washing machines or skateboarding children.

They have shrubberies, and the shrubberies do not have dens in them. A short look in a few estate agents' windows (there are many estate agents in St John's Wood) reveals some of these flats are for sale at between 750,000 and 1.5m. For that kind of money, you do not expect to walk out the front door on a Sunday morning and find one of your neighbours changing the clutch in his Mondeo on the front lawn.

Apart from estate agents, St John's Wood High Street has a plethora of places claiming to be cafes, but which, on closer inspection, seem mainly to sell fancy buns. Seeded, fruity, spicy or nutty, oozing with ginger or plaited bagels, if it's morning coffee or afternoon tea you're after, you're spoilt for choice.

If, on the other hand, what you actually want is 'breakfast' in the proper bacon and egg meaning of that glorious full English contribution to world gastronomy, you are out of luck.

In one of the side streets, I found a promising looking caf called The Gammon Rasher. The smell was appetising. Is it any good? I have no idea. I arrived just after midday, and it had shut. A caf that shuts at lunchtime! What is this nation of Drake and Raleigh come to?

At the recommendation of two local women working in one of the estate agents, I tried a couple of pubs. In the first, the Duke of York, I had Beer Battered Cod with Yorkies. (9.95). It was tasty enough, but I've won bigger fish at Sloe Fair, and 'Yorkies' turn out to be fried potato wedges, which always seem like someone couldn't be bothered to slice a spud into proper chips.

Meeting a friend, we moved on to The Ordanance, a pleasant pub with the cheapest beer I've seen anywhere for a while '“ 2.20 for a pint of Samuel Smiths. The food here was also cheap, but so it should be. The meat pie was a small round mass-produced thing, the chips, although they were chips, were almost certainly frozen. The peas were quite nice.

There is a fur coat shop just off the High Street. This is strangely anachronistic in 2008, a bit like walking into Currys and finding it full of manual typewriters and black and white tellys.

MORE NEXT PAGEWho wears fur coats these days? Perhaps it caters for ladies of a certain age, who like to relive their youth by putting on a mink and paying younger men to hold doors open for them.

If there is little market for dead hides these days, there is a roaring trade in treating live ones. Never have I seen such a concentration of beauty salons, nail parlours, tanning rooms and hairdressers.

Of course, they don't call themselves 'hairdressers'. One styles itself 'Hair Design'. Another, for men, opts for 'barbers'. But this is not the barbers I remember from my schooldays. This one offers 'manicures, with paraffin'. How does that work then? Does it mean spilling Esso Blue on your hand while you're filling up the stove?

They also offer 'pedicures, with paraffin' '“ presumably kicking the stove after you've filled it. But most curious of all is something called 'back cleansing'. I don't know what it involves, but I think I can hear Max Mosley wince. An 'A' board partly blocks the pavement outside another shop, inviting women to come in for 'botox wrinkle treatment and collagen lip plumping'.

Every chemists, half of which call themselves 'apothecaries', is ram-packed with little pots of pastel-coloured goo.

So are they happy, the citizens of this surgically enhanced, botulism smoothed, spray-tanned, clean-backed never-never land?

I didn't see one person smiling the entire time I was there. The default look of St John's Wood is tight-lipped disapproval. Of the weather, of the government, of mortgage rates, of the young, of the old, of outsiders, of each other.

Remember Les Dawson's housewife, harrumphing over the fence? Imagine her with nips and tucks, bullied into shape by a personal trainer.

The men looked just as miserable, though without the nips and tucks.

Back in dear old Bognor, dear old run-down, tatty, seen-better-days Bognor, I got off the train to find a motley bunch outside the pub, driven into the drizzle by the urge for nicotine.

They seemed to be having a good time, despite the weather. A couple of weeks ago, Bognor hosted a thumping great free festival, and thousands of people had a good time.

I find it hard to imagine such a thing ever being allowed to happen in the exclusive confines of NW8.

And I think they are the poorer for it.

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