Jack Chesher

Well, I mostly have kind of Londoners and British people on my public tours. I have a bit of a mixture on private tours, but I also get, you know… I generally get people who know the city to some degree on the tour. So, it’s more, a little bit more, off the beaten track. So, we’re not generally in very, very busy areas, I wouldn’t have said. I mean, this tour, actually, the Westminster tour that we’ve just done, you know, it starts very busy and then suddenly you get into the quieter areas around the back. So, I’m always looking for those slightly more off the beaten track routes. Obviously, stuff comes into it where you have to be careful with not blocking pavements and the sort of challenges and the logistics around that, and I have to be careful with my voice as well, generally. I mean, I think I’m pretty good with my voice and not straining it, but, you know, if I’ve got a group of 20 people, which I do sometimes, you have to be… you have to project your voice in the right way, so you don’t damage it, I suppose. But yeah, it’s good fun.

Obviously, weather comes into it as well. We’ve had a beautiful sunny day today, but sometimes it’ll be pouring rain, and you have to find undercover spots to stand under occasionally or sometimes change your route. I always try with the public tours to walk my route backwards first. So, I’ll get off, you know, the Tube or whatever, however I’ve got there, walk the route backwards to check that nothing’s changed or, you know, not changed, but the roads are sometimes blocked off for roadworks or there’s building works going on or there’s an event like a run or marathon or something going on in London. So yeah, there’s various different things you have to consider, I think. And then with putting together the tours, that’s obviously challenging because I generally do area-specific tours, you know: Westminster tour, Strands tour, Covent Garden tour. But then tying together a theme and tying together the stories and digging out those stories and then plotting it and making a route can be challenging as well but, you know, it’s an enjoyable process and I like the… I find it also interesting, so the research is fun as well.