Hey DILFs!

I’ve featured Brigit’s Bakery Afternoon Tea Bus Tours plenty of times before, but they’ve been getting more and more expensive – to the point where I stopped recommending them. As lovely as it is to ride around London on a double-decker while eating cake and taking part in themed activities, there comes a point where the price rather spoils the fun.

Well, for September only, I can recommend them again: they’re offering 25% off weekday experiences and 15% off weekend experiences across ALL tours until 30 September.

The discount codes are:

ONEOFF25 → 25% off weekdays
ONEOFF15 → 15% off weekends

To redeem your discount…

And if cake and buses aren’t a great combination for you, here are some other things to get up to this weekend…

Enjoy!

Jeff xx

PS Congrats to Mr Stewart for winning two tickets to Summit Ally Pally!

Ask the Nincompoops
Saturday 12 September, 11:30
King’s Place, 90 York Way, N1 9AG
Adults £18, children £14
Age guidance: 4–12

Every episode of the podcast Ask the Nincompoops begins its description in the same reassuring way: “Are you a very unintelligent child? OF COURSE you are. It’s well known by clever adults that kids know NOTHING.”

A Spotify user called “pokèmon fan loves dogs 🍄🍄‍🟫🌴🐕🐩💐🪻🌾🪷” recently took issue with this: “... it is very offensive to children because in the description of this episode, you said children are not smart. Some children are very smart, so it happens to be offensive.”

And user “Rishaan’s kids jokes” was even more upset: “NO! NOT AT ALL! I’M NOT GONNA SUPPORT SOME PODCAST THAT DISRESPECTS CHILDREN!!!”

For context, Ask the Nincompoops is a kids’ comedy podcast in which “two geniuses”, Andy Stanton and Carrie Quinlan, tackle questions from children who are “not bright, none of them geniuses”. The questions, it turns out, are perfectly reasonable and genuinely fun – like, “Who invented the door?”, “Why do adults drink horrible things like coffee?”, “Do superheroes take holidays?” and “Why does a clock tick?”

I’m going to hazard a guess that “pokèmon fan loves dogs 🍄🍄‍🟫🌴🐕🐩💐🪻🌾🪷” and “Rishaan’s kids jokes” didn't actually get as far as pressing play – because the answers are deliberately, spectacularly wrong. And they’re obviously ridiculous enough that kids won’t mistake them for facts: one answer about rhino horns is based on the idea that nobody knows what they’re for because rhinos refuse to tell us.

Anyway, after a stonking three-year hiatus, Ask the Nincompoops is finally returning for a brand-new season. And handily, you don’t even have to wait for the new episodes: Andy and Carrie are bringing Ask the Nincompoops to Kings Place this weekend as part of the London Podcast Festival. They’ll be answering questions from kids in the audience, while illustrator Chris Riddell attempts to draw whatever nonsense they come up with.

I can only assume “Rishaan’s kids jokes” will be picketing outside.

Find out more: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/podcast/ask-the-nincompoops-4

👍️ The Star of Kings pub was once called The Cross Kings, which we can all agree is a much cleverer name. It was a kooky, strange place back in pre-KX-gentrification days, with odd little club nights and a lentil-heavy menu long before “Plant Based” was the modal adjective at every London restaurant.

The Star of Kings isn’t quite as weird or wonderful as the original, but it has one massive redeeming feature: Patty & Bun on the menu. It’s next to King’s Place, and you should definitely go there if you fancy a burger: Rotunda restaurant inside King’s Place also does a burger, but it costs £21 and won’t be as good.

👍️ Samsung KX is basically a juiced-up Apple Store. In addition to loads of devices to try out, there’s a free Gaming Zone (which uses “the most advanced Samsung gaming technology”), a cafe, an area for coworking and a “Support Lounge” (essentially a modestly named Genius Bar). It’s a fab space that’s never too busy, but – even with all the gaming opportunities – it’s only really going to entertain everyone for about an hour or so.

Virtual Orchestra: Play Along
Saturday and Sunday, 12:00–19:30 (drop in)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
FREE – no ticket required
Age guidance: 7+

I suffer from worse stage fright than almost anyone I know: I can't even cope with reading the instructions aloud during a board game or giving a good friend a guided tour of my renovated kitchen. So I should make it clear from the outset that I will NOT be partaking in this particular event.

And that's because the grand finale of this otherwise extremely cool-sounding VR experience involves being transported onto the Royal Festival Hall stage, surrounded by the Philharmonia Orchestra, with a packed audience staring back at you. And then you have to perform.

And no: the fact that it's a virtual audience doesn't make things easier. I've previously done a VR rollercoaster that was considerably more terrifying than any real-life ride I've been on, so I have very little faith in my brain remembering that this particular nightmare isn't real either.

For everyone less ridiculous than me, here's how it actually works. You'll start by choosing your percussion instrument – cymbals, timpani or triangle – before actual Philharmonia musicians pop up in your headset to teach you the basics of playing it. There are challenges involving rhythm, technique and reading musical notation, and eventually you'll learn the bit of the William Tell Overture you'll be responsible for. All this, to be clear, is happening in the virtual universe strapped to your face.

Then comes my aforementioned personal hell. You're transported onto the Royal Festival Hall stage, surrounded by the Philharmonia, and have to play your part alongside them as they tear through the famous galloping finale.

The whole thing is completely free, you can drop in any time between 12:00 and 19:30 on Saturday or Sunday, and the experience itself lasts around half an hour.

Do let me know how you get on. I'll be nearby, feeling secondhand terror from a safe distance.

Find out more: https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/virtual-orchestra-play-along

👍️ If all that VR has left you wanting more, Playing with Fire (12+) is another headset-based classical music experience at the Royal Festival Hall – but this time, nobody expects you to perform. You put on a headset and enter a surreal virtual world where an avatar of superstar pianist Yuja Wang performs alongside an actual self-playing Steinway piano in the room with you.

You can wander around while the landscape changes with the music, getting as close to Wang's avatar and the piano as you like, or you can sit down and watch the whole weird thing unfold around you. It lasts about 45 minutes and normally costs from £26, but there’s a limited number of £13.50 tickets for performances up to 27 September – so this weekend is a particularly good time to give it a go.

CelebrASIA
Saturday and Sunday (no published start and end times on the website)
Battersea Power Station, Circus Road West, SW11 8DD
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

I’ve got a lot of time for smashing two words together to make an event name. Veganuary? Excellent. Movember? Inspired. Pestival? Almost no notes.

But CelebrASIA just isn’t working for me, because I feel like such a plonker saying it out loud. Try it – you’ll sound ridiculous. “Want to go to CelebrASIA for the day?” “I’m taking the kids to CelebrASIA.” “I’d like my ashes scattered at CelebrASIA.”

Still, plenty of things have survived a terrible name – just ask the Young Boys football club, which plays at Wankdorf Stadium in Switzerland. They’re doing just fine. As is CelebrASIA, which was a resounding success last year and has been expanded into something bigger and better for 2026.

The three-day festival is essentially a giant celebration of South East Asian culture, spread across Battersea Power Station. There's live music and dancing, street food, markets, workshops and various other things to prod, watch and eat. This year there’s a bigger main stage plus an additional performance space, with musicians, dancers, DJs and walkabout performers popping up throughout the weekend.

Food is a fairly major part of proceedings: there’ll be more than 35 stalls, covering Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia. So if you've been craving a real Hainanese chicken sando or some proper Thai som tam, this is the place to scratch that itch.

They’ve even bunged on a mini film festival, with five films from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Unusually helpfully, four of them are rated U or PG.

And if merely eating and watching things feels insufficiently productive, there are loads of workshops to book in advance. You can try batik painting, bamboo weaving or pewter bowl-making, or craft an extremely specific ube-and-pandan-latte scented candle you never knew your home was missing. Kids get their own programme, involving hibiscus sand art, wall weaving, painted fans and, inevitably, tiger slime.

Then there’s all the stuff I’m not entirely sure where to categorise: a free QR-code trail around the Power Station exploring South East Asian culture and heritage, a traditional massage zone, face painters and an AI photo booth that can stick you into a South East Asian-inspired scene.

So basically, there's more than enough going on to compensate for the cheesetastic name.

Find out more: https://batterseapowerstation.co.uk/celebrasia

Jacqueline Wilson at Chiswick Book Festival
Sunday 13 September, 14:00–15:00
St Michael & All Angels Church, Bath Road, W4 1LW
£6 per person

I hadn't thought about Jacqueline Wilson in decades. Then I saw her name on an event listing and was suddenly nine years old again.

I read The Suitcase Kid and The Story of Tracy Beaker at the same time as all my peers. Literally the same time: our school library had to order in more copies, and the waiting list to borrow them next was pages long.

More than 30 years later, Wilson is still writing children's books – and her latest, Esme Pepper, is about a girl whose life is turned upside down when she goes into foster care. Which is VERY Jacqueline Wilson: by my admittedly amateur calculations, almost half of her children's novels (32 out of 68\) involve a child being abandoned, fostered, adopted, sent into care, or dealing with divorce, absent parents and other forms of family breakdown.

And while you don't generally assume novelists have personally experienced the things they write about (I don't think Richard Adams spent much time living underground as a rabbit, for example), you do start to wonder where it comes from when they return to one subject again and again.

As it happens, Wilson herself was never fostered, adopted or in care. Her childhood wasn't exactly idyllic – her parents had a spectacularly unhappy marriage and argued constantly – but she never went through anything approaching what she later inflicted on Tracy Beaker, Hetty Feather and all the others. In fact, when she wrote The Story of Tracy Beaker – the book that would finally make her famous – she knew very little about the care system at all.

She learned quickly. Once the books took off, children started writing to her – hundreds of thousands of them over the years – and many used their letters to tell Wilson about their own difficult home lives. So while she didn't start out with first-hand experience of foster care, she ended up hearing directly from an awful lot of children who did.

In Esme Pepper, Esme ends up in foster care after her mum is caught trying to steal the expensive dolls' house her daughter desperately wants. With foster placements hard to come by, she ends up staying with an elderly couple who had actually retired from fostering – while also having to contend with a new school and a class bully.

If you want to hear more about the new book, the inspiration behind it and Wilson’s writing process and career in general, she’s at Chiswick Book Festival this weekend to discuss exactly that, before taking questions from the audience.

The festival runs for six days, with tons of other well-known authors on offer for book readings and discussions throughout. I have it on good authority that kids are still every bit as obsessed with Wilson as we were 30 years ago, so I'm hoping Nick Clegg, Kate Mosse, Mary Portas and all the other attendees are prepared for the humiliation.

Find out more: https://www.ticketsource.com/chiswickbookfestival/jacqueline-wilson-esme-pepper/e-bpyrep

Your offspring may not be delighted, but there are, of course, plenty of other Chiswick Book Festival events you can check out on Sunday:

Plus plenty more throughout the festival.

Open House Festival
Saturday and Sunday (and various other days up to 20 September)
Various locations around London
FREE (but some locations need to be booked)

YES! It’s the annual Open House Festival – in which we can snoop around other people’s homes without training to become a meter inspector first.

They’re not all homes-homes: there are libraries, museums and open spaces available to view too. But the most exciting buildings are the weird and wonderful ones that people actually live in.

The festival runs from 12 to 20 September, but houses are only “open” on certain days – so you’ll need to look at individual listings to find out which are available this weekend. Most are “drop in” (meaning you can go at any time on the day), some require that you book in advance (especially if there’s a tour involved) and a couple – like 10 Downing Street – are for ballot winners only. (Sorry: the ballot is now closed.)

My favourites for this weekend include:

Find out more about all Open House events: https://programme.openhouse.org.uk

👍️ If your kids are less enthusiastic about spending the day nosing around interesting buildings, Open House is also running a special family day across the City. Start at Guildhall Art Gallery, where kids can build Lego landmarks, make their own Fire Marks and construct things using real tools and wood, then pick up a map or join a “walking bus” to explore the other participating venues.

There are activities at St Paul’s Cathedral, the London Mithraeum and Dr Johnson’s House too, including an engineering challenge beneath St Paul’s enormous dome, sculpture-making among the Roman ruins and the chance to dress up in 18th-century clothes and write with a quill. Everything is free, although a few activities need to be booked in advance.

This section brings together both new events I don’t have room to expand on and selected older ones from past newsletters that are still running. If you see a “(see my write-up here)”, that’s your cue to click through and rediscover whatever Past Me felt strongly enough to write about.

Wembley Park Wellness Festival 2026
Sunday 13 September, 09:00–18:00
Samovar Space, Olympic Way, Wembley Park, HA9 0FR
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

The Pied Piper: A Rat's Tale
Until 7 November, various start times – see website
Little Angel Studios, Sebbon Street, N1 2EH
Adults £16, 1–17s £14 (all tickets are £8 this Saturday 12/Sunday 13 September)
Age guidance: 5+

SPLAT!
Sunday 13 September, 11:00 and 14:00
Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, 269a Archway Road, N6 5AA
£10–£20 per person
Age guidance: 3–7

The Hideout
Sunday 13 September, 11:30
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£13.75 per person
Age guidance: 4–8

Classic Boat Festival
Saturday and Sunday, 10:30–17:00
St Katharine Docks, 50 St Katharine's Way, E1W 1LA
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

As You Like It (see my write-up here)
Until 25 October, various start times – see website
Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, SE1 9DT
Standing tickets £10, seated £28–£88
Age guidance: suitable for all*

The Three Little Wolves
Various days until 4 October, various start times (see website)
Puppet Theatre Barge, Richmond, TW10 6UT
Adults £15, under-17s £12
Age guidance: 4–10

Childhood in War (see my write-up here)
Daily until 28 February 2027, 10:00–18:00
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, SE1 6HZ
FREE
Age guidance: suitable for all

Horrible Histories at Ramses and the Pharaohs' Gold: The Exhibition (see my write-up here)
Until 13 September, 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00
Battersea Power Station, 2 Circus Road East, SW11 8DQ
Adults £32.95, 5–15s £16.95, under-5s free
Age guidance: 5+

The Comedy About Spies
Until 26 September, 14:30 and/or 19:30
Adelphi Theatre, Strand, WC2R 0NS
£20–£145 (tickets for a family of 4 from £80)
Age guidance: 10+

Cats (see my write-up here)
Until 19 September, 14:00 and/or 19:45
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, The Regent's Park, Inner Circle, NW1 4NU
£15–£97.50 per person
Age guidance: 5+

The Timewalk Exhibition – An Immersive Journey Through Civilisations (see my write-up here)
Until 30 September, various timeslots throughout each day
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £31.50, 4–15s £25, under-4s free (no ticket needed)
Age guidance: suitable for all

Frida: The Making of an Icon (see my write-up here)
Until 3 January, 2027, 10:00–18:00 (until 21:00 on Fridays and Saturdays)
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
Adults £25, 12–18s £4.37, under-12s free

House of Dreamers (see my write-up here)
Daily until 30 September, timeslots throughout the day
Immerse LDN, Excel Waterfront, ExCel, E16 1XL
Adults £28.90, 3–12s £23.90, under-3s free
Age guidance: suitable for all

King’s Cross Pétanque (see my write-up here)
Until Wednesday 30 September, 09:00–21:00
Pancras Square, King's Cross, N1C 4AG
FREE – just turn up
Age guidance: suitable for all

1996: 30 years on (see my write-up here)
Mondays–Saturdays until 19 September, 09:30–various closing times depending on the day
Barbican Music Library, Barbican Library, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
FREE – no booking required
Age guidance: suitable for all