Danny Wallace Does London

As part of a plan for a collective day out, I and a group of friends bumped into Danny Wallace and his Karma Army marching along Oxford Street. Carrying funny placards, bearing messages such as ‘this is fun’ and ‘don’t mug me, hug me’, the merry crowd waved at bemused tourists. My paparazzi instinct kicked in and so I hunted down the leader himself, Danny Wallace, moderately famous wacko flatmate of wacky Dave Gorman, and started taking loads of him with my grainy mobile-phone-camera. Danny was busy organising when to blow his whistle (the cue to give away presents), and how to fit his larger-than-expected crowd into the pub booked. There were also a TV crew there, filming for Richard and Judy, who Danny was careful to address. One particular moment saw someone give away a present to a pretty girl walking by, under the gaze of the camera. The apprehensive girl was about to turn away when someone from the crew shouted ‘open it’, which she did, revealing a nice-looking box of chocs.

Collective editor Rowan pointed out that Danny Wallace is actually in the full-time employ of the BBC, as a comedy-development-somebody, and is probably actually quite normal. It’s easy to be cynical about his motives for these wacky events, especially when he holds up a copy of his book up to the camera. However, I’d prefer to think of him as a clever and likeable kind of guy, who is simply prepared to have a laugh and do something nice. He understands and embraces the idea of online communities, and made an effort to talk to a lot of his followers, recognising quite a lot of faces.

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