Escorts in Piccadilly Circus, W1J and W1D: who is close, and how soon
What is there at Piccadilly Circus once you look past the screens and the crowd? More than its reputation suggests: a Victorian theatre whose auditorium lies under the pavement, the first run of playhouses on Shaftesbury Avenue, the Royal Academy of Arts along Piccadilly to the west, and a Wren church that still fills with music. Nobody on the board lives at the Circus itself; the closest are three names in Soho, just to the north, so for Piccadilly Circus escorts the office quotes its ordinary central figure, about an hour after it confirms and slower when the curtains come down into the rush, confirming her exact time by message as she sets off, with the lengths on the rates. The evening itself is yours to shape, and around here a theatre suits the booking as well as a table does.
On the ground
Piccadilly Circus in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameW1B 4DY, W1D 7DT, SW1Y 4AN, SW1Y 6JF, WC2H 7DX.
Nearest stations
Walking timePiccadilly Circus, 1 minute. Leicester Square, 3 minutes. Green Park, 7 minutes.
Getting there
W1J, W1DTravel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Piccadilly Circus
Who works here
On the board in Piccadilly Circus
The eight prints above are a first shortlist for Piccadilly Circus tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
A theatre under the pavement, and an archer on the fountain
The Criterion Theatre opened on the south side of the Circus in 1874, and almost all of it is underground. The audience goes down tiled stairs from a small street level foyer into an auditorium below the traffic, which makes it one of the stranger survivals of Victorian theatre building and one of the most intimate houses in the West End. It is worth seeing for the building as much as for whatever is playing.
Above it, the fountain at the centre of the Circus is the Shaftesbury Memorial by Alfred Gilbert, unveiled in 1893 in honour of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the Victorian philanthropist. Its winged archer, cast in aluminium, is popularly called Eros, but Gilbert meant Anteros, the god of selfless love, as a fitting emblem for a man remembered for his charity. Across the Circus, the London Pavilion began as a music hall and still carries its Victorian front with figures along the roofline, a reminder that this junction was built for entertainment long before the screens went up.
Note 03
Shaftesbury Avenue and the first curtains
Shaftesbury Avenue was cut through crowded streets in the 1880s and named after the same Earl, and within twenty years theatres lined its first stretch north east of the Circus. The Lyric opened in 1888 and is the oldest on the avenue. The Apollo followed in 1901, then the Gielgud in 1906 and the Sondheim in 1907, both built as a matching pair and both since renamed: the first opened as the Hicks, the second as the Queen's. Round the corner, the Prince of Wales Theatre stands on Coventry Street, the road on to Leicester Square, and the Piccadilly Theatre on Denman Street.
Productions change and this page will not pretend to know what is on; the programme boards on the avenue do that better. What does not change is the rhythm. Evening performances begin in the early evening, the pavements fill as the doors open and again as they empty, and the restaurants of the surrounding streets are built around those two tides. Book the table for before the curtain or after it, never across it, and tell the office which you have chosen so the hours are set to fit.
Note 04
Burlington House, the Academy and the learned societies
A short way west along Piccadilly stands Burlington House, home since 1867 of the Royal Academy of Arts, which was founded in 1768 and is still run by artists. The courtyard off Piccadilly holds a statue of Joshua Reynolds, the Academy's first President, and the Academy's galleries lie beyond it. Its exhibitions change through the year; the building and the courtyard are the constant. Behind the galleries the Royal Academy Schools, founded in 1769 and the oldest art school in Britain, still train painters and sculptors, so the building is a working place for artists as well as a showroom.
Less well known are the wings on either side of that courtyard, occupied by learned societies. One of them is the Linnean Society, and it was at a meeting there in 1858 that the papers of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on natural selection were first read in public. Beside Burlington House runs the Burlington Arcade, opened in 1819 for Lord George Cavendish, a covered walk of small shopfronts that has kept its Regency proportions. Together they make the most concentrated few hundred yards of cultural history anywhere near the Circus.
Note 05
Music without a musical
Not every evening here needs a stage. St James's Church, the Wren church on Piccadilly at the northern edge of St James's, between the Circus and the Academy, holds concerts in its galleried nave, and its programme is worth checking on the day. For jazz, Ronnie Scott's has been on Frith Street in Soho since 1965 and is the best known club of its kind in London, a few streets north of the Circus.
Either makes a good shape for a booking: music first, then a late table, then the walk back to your hotel. She dresses for the evening you describe, and a concert in a church asks for something different from a jazz club at midnight, so tell the office which it is. Escorts in Piccadilly Circus are booked exactly as anywhere else on the board; what changes here is how much there is to do with the hours.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Piccadilly Circus
Asked most often
Piccadilly Circus, asked and answered
Is the Criterion's auditorium really underground?
Is the statue on the fountain actually Eros?
Which theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue is the oldest?
Where were Darwin's and Wallace's papers on evolution first read?
Is there live music nearby that is not a musical?
One zone either way
Next along from Piccadilly Circus
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.