Northolt

And I see this thing on the news.

There's a siege going on in West London in a place called Northolt.

And it's on the top floor of one of these blocks of flats that's got a communal balcony that leads to stairs to go down.

And I saw what was going on.

Like apparently loads of people thought it was real.

in a type of you know Orson Welles war of the worlds kind of style even there was this kid who bloody committed suicide because of this film and it was a broadcast on Halloween night on the BBC and is hosted by Michael Parkinson and it was about the most haunted house in the UK and it was a house in Northolt and they had Sarah something from from Blue Peter and Went and spent the night at this house, and there was this family being terrorized by a poltergeist, and it all looked like it was going to be a hoax.

And then it just really...

At first, you're like, oh, the acting's really bad.

There are five Met Office climate stations in London.

Four of these are on the western side of London, Hampstead, Hampton, Hampstead, Hampton, Northolt, and Kew Gardens, which is the warmer side.

Look, it's 'cause, 'cause you're there.

Uh, London experiences something known as urban heat island, so it tends to be hotter than the rest of the UK.

Questions about whether their training and experience translated to British operational standards had to be resolved.

Three-O-Three was sent to Northolt in Middlesex and told to complete the operational training unit process before combat clearance would be granted.

The Polish pilots, who collectively had more actual combat experience against real enemies than most of their Royal Air Force counterparts, submitted to this process with varying degrees of patience.

On the nineteenth of August of forty, a pilot named Ludwik Paszkiewicz was flying a training exercise with his squadron when he spotted a formation of German bombers passing below the exercise area.

Well, Malcolm Ross did a fantastic job.

I mean, he was, I mean he, he also said to, to me that the moment that the, the plane touched down at Northolt and they were going to go into London and you, you, you know, you will know this better than me, you know, the two lines of traffic were sort of completely stationary with one line which they could drive up, and then on the other side of the road, three lines of traffic completely standstill, and he realized he had to rewrite the whole funeral procession and start it right away from Kensington Palace because people were going to need to be able to see it all.

He did a fantastic job, I think.

He, he did do, and, and talking about that drive into London, the traffic was stopped on the westbound side and people actually got out and stood on the central reservation and clapped as the, as, as the, the hearse went past.

Now, the existing proposal involves moving the M25, which is utterly crazy and, to my mind, is a non-starter.

My idea is to utilise Northolt, which is the airfield to the north of Heathrow, currently occupied by the RAF, and to use that as the third runway.

There's a tube line going from Hillingdon into central London, which could be upgraded to get passengers into London, and there could be about a three-mile tunnel built south to Heathrow to provide a high-speed rail link for connecting passengers into Heathrow.

So while the terminal's been built at Norfolk, the railway can be upgraded and the tunnel can be built.

And I think all this could happen a lot faster than the current proposal.

And I'd like to get it costed.

Well, I have heard of this kind of proposal before.

I think 10 years ago when we were talking about this, there was a suggestion that Northolt should be used for domestic flights.

And that actually, in many ways, you know, just psychologically, the fact that she then, in death, had to come the entire length of the country was, you know, was very, very powerful.

I mean, you were there at Northolt when the plane arrived with the coffin, weren't you?

Yeah, I was.

And I was amazed at the number of people because I worked out there's a little lane that I know the area.

And let's face it, if it isn't a highly accessible station, then all that investment in high-speed too is wasted.

And in my view, one should be rethinking the role of Old Oak see it perhaps a bit like Canary Wharf a good example in Holland would be to look at South Amsterdam where a whole lot of things have developed that would provide inspiration but you can see them in many parts of Europe so I would I've particularly argued so far nobody's really responded that we should be looking at Northolt Airfield.

Northolt is in a location where people with money would live, and it's near where there are a lot of businesses.

It's

on the Great West Road and so on.

But let me give you one name, Josef Frentisek, Czech-born.

He had escaped when the Germans absorbed Czechoslovakia, flew with the Polish Air Force in France, escaped again when France fell, and wound up in Britain flying with 303 Polish squadron out of Northolt.

He didn't always follow formation procedures.

He'd break off and go hunting on his own.