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We're off to Marylebone - using the neighborhood's dark origins as a launch pad for a story of spectacular reinvention.

Our walk begins at Marble Arch, where a barely-noticed pavement plaque marks the site of Tyburn Tree - London's primary gallows for nearly six hundred years and the execution ground for over 50,000 people.

From there, we traces how the area shed its grim "Tyburn" identity through a medieval rebranding around a church dedicated to St Mary, eventually becoming the elegant Georgian grid of Harley Street, Portland Place, and Baker Street laid out by the Portland and Portman estates in the 18th century.

Against that backdrop, Expat Andy guides listeners through a carefully chosen set of historic pubs - including the 1791 Barley Mow on Dorset Street, one of the last free houses in central London, with its rare surviving Victorian drinking booths - weaving in characters ranging from executed highwaymen and Catholic martyrs to Charles Babbage and the piano player Tony "Fingers" Pearson, who has been holding court at the Golden Eagle on Marylebone Lane since 1988.

Marylebone's pubs are the living memory of a neighborhood that reinvented itself so thoroughly it nearly erased its own history. Its pubs are the best place to find what was buried underneath.

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Trailer for Episode 8 - Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Marylebone Style

This is Marylebone. Its story - told through its pubs - is one of execution and resurrection, bodysnatching and high society, muddy fields and marble halls.

What?

You expected Sherlock Holmes, didn’t you? Well, your guidebook will cover the detective, we’re going to be detective, as today, we decode Marylebone, the Publicity way…

I’m Expat Andy, broadcasting from Miami in the Sunshine State. You’re listening to Publicity – The Travel Guidebook Gap.

Episode 8 drops March 9. Until then catch up on former episodes at publicitythepodcast.com

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In this episode, we rip the polished Instagram filter off Covent Garden and ask a far more interesting question than “Where’s the Apple Store?”

We ask what scene this place is playing.

Beneath the street performers and opera crowds lies a district that has shape-shifted more times than London itself. From monastic vegetable patch to aristocratic social experiment, from chaotic fruit-and-veg battlefield to theatreland playground of actors, rogues, and bare-knuckle brawlers.

Designed as a pristine piazza for “Gentlemen and men of ability,” it veered way off script, and filled with market traders, taverns, gossip, vice, and spectacle. When you build a stage, London sends in a cast.

Through pub lore, architectural ambition, market mayhem, and near-demolition drama, we trace how Covent Garden became a pressure valve between power and performance - a place that was never what it was supposed to be, and is far more compelling because of it.

By the end, you won’t just see Covent Garden - you’ll decode it.

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What if the secret to understanding a London neighborhood and its pubs… were the grocery stores?

In this episode of Publicity – The Guidebook Gap, Expat Andy takes us to the City of London - where historic pubs and modern finance meet. We reveal a travel planning superpower - The Publicity M&S Litmus Test. By learning to decode the type of Marks & Spencer nearby, we’ll know exactly what kind of neighborhood we're in - and what kind of pub experience to expect.

This isn’t about lists, or lectures. It’s about reading the city, and going beyond your guidebook.

We'll walk Fleet Street, duck into Leadenhall Market (pun intended), and sip stout in historic cellars. Most importantly, we’ll understand why certain pubs feel like neighborhood living rooms… and others... boardrooms with beer.

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Brutalist estates, haunted pubs, Roman temples, and a river you've never seen—Part 2 of our world exclusive Walbrook walk dives deep into the hidden heart of London.

Join Expat Andy as he traces the true, long-lost path of the Walbrook to its mouth on the Thames. Along the way: buried tributaries, literary ghosts, the city’s first coffee shop, and a riverside mystery that ends at a freight terminal. This isn’t just history—it’s a revelation beneath your feet.

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Beneath London’s bustling streets flows a river you’ve never seen—and until now, we’ve all been walking it wrong. In this world exclusive, Publicity uncovers the true path of the lost Walbrook River, hidden for over 600 years.

Join Expat Andy as he follows this buried waterway from Roman Londinium through plague pits, pubs, and surprising side streets. From Islington’s ghostly springs to Shakespeare’s stomping grounds, this is history with a pint in hand and a story around every corner.

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A guided walk through 275 years of urban failure, reinvention, and the long, slow gentrification of Notting Hill - told through the pubs that developers built first (usually before they went bankrupt).

From gravel pits and pig farms to punk gigs and overpriced pints, we trace how these buildings reveal the neighborhood’s real story.

Featuring forgotten racetracks, bad drainage, Joe Strummer, Tsarist Russia, and one wildly confident pub that stood alone on a muddy hillside.

Welcome to the pubs that built Notting Hill - and survive to tell the tale.

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Why did Bermondsey’s working-class pubs serve up pints to tanners reeking of dog poo. While Hampstead boasts literary haunts filled with poetry and spa visitors?

It’s not luck. It’s topography - for the answer is buried deep. From glacial gravel, to wandering water, to the winds of fortune, this episode takes you on a rollicking ride through the forces that shaped London’s pub map long before the first pint was pulled.

From gravel terraces and Victorian fogs to posh mews pubs and riverside alehouses, we’re mapping the city through sediment.

You’ll learn why there are more Tube lines north of the river (hint: mud), why Belgravia even exists (money and dirt - literally), and how pub names like The Flask or The Woolpack are basically geological signposts in disguise.

This isn’t trivia. This is the secret decoder ring for understanding where pubs are, what they meant, and why your pint tastes different in Hampstead than it does in Bermondsey.

Listen before you plan your next trip - because the ground beneath your feet might just tell you more than your guide book.