Piccadilly Circus in popular culture

The following list is of artistic works and film where Piccadilly Circus is either the central theme or a principal theme.

Context in general culture

The phrase it's like Piccadilly Circus is commonly used in the UK to refer to a place or situation which is extremely busy with people. It has been said that a person who stays long enough at Piccadilly Circus will eventually bump into everyone they know. Probably because of this connection, during World War II, "Piccadilly Circus" was the code name given to the Allies' D-Day invasion fleet's assembly location in the English Channel.^[1]

Piccadilly Circus has inspired artists and musicians. Piccadilly Circus (1912) is the name and subject of a painting by British artist Charles Ginner, part of the Tate Britain collection. Sculptor Paul McCarthy also has a 320-page two-volume edition of video stills by the name of Piccadilly Circus.

List

Picadilly Circus, 1969; From Dieter Roth's portfolio Untitled (Five Overpainted Picadilly Prints).

• L. S. Lowry R.A painting 'Piccadilly Circus, London' (1960), part of Lord Charles Forte's collection for almost three decades,^[2] realised the figure of £5,641,250 when auctioned for the first time at Christie's 20th Century British & Irish Art sale on 16 November 2011.^[3]
• 96 Picadillies (1977) by Dieter Roth is one of his most famous works. Its starting point was Roth's encounter with the collection of postcards of Piccadilly Circus owned by Richard Hamilton and his wife Rita Donagh.^[4] Initially, six of these cards were printed as a large scale portfolio in 1970; eventually, in 1977, 96 of these altered Picadillies were collected in a book, including the unaltered backs, with cut marks to allow the buyer to re-use them as postcards.
• "Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London" 1966 is a work by Claes Oldenburg. In this postcard collage Oldenburg raised an everyday cosmetic item to a monumental scale. Made during his stay in London at the height of the ‘swinging sixties’, it embodies the popular, expendable, sexy imagery of Pop art. Oldenberg remarked: ‘For me, London inspired phallic imagery which went up and down with the tide - like mini-skirts and knees ... like the up-and-down motion of a lipstick’. To replace the Victorian statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus with lipsticks lifted from an advertisement was, therefore, to update one vision of sexuality with another.^[5]
• "Piccadilly Circus" is the name of Swedish singer Pernilla Wahlgren's 1985 Melodifestivalen song.
• Northern Irish punk band Stiff Little Fingers had a different song of the same name from their 1981 album Go for It, a true story about a friend of theirs migrating to London to escape The Troubles of Belfast only to be stabbed by strangers in Piccadilly Circus. A compilation album from the British pop/rock band Squeeze released in 1996 was titled Piccadilly Collection and showed a picture of Piccadilly Circus on its cover.
• The Dire Straits song "Wild West End" is about the area around Piccadilly.
• The Morrissey song "Piccadilly Palare" from the album Bona Drag recounts the life of male prostitutes by employing the use of "palare" (alternatively spelled 'polari'), argot used by this subculture and by gay men generally. A lost verse: "Around the centre of town/is where I belong/am I really doing wrong?"
• Piccadilly Circus was the final action scene in John Landis' 1981 werewolf classic, An American Werewolf in London. David Naughton's character, David Kessler the werewolf, makes his final transformation in an adult theatre in Piccadilly Circus, and, shortly after, chaos erupts when he escapes the theatre and sets off a chain reaction of car crashes.
• In the opening scene of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Dr. Evil is shown blasting off in a rocket disguised as the Big Boy from the top of the corner building
• In Wayne's World 2, Paramount flies Wayne and Garth (or their body doubles) to London and they visit Piccadilly Circus; Garth comments, "Wow, what a shitty circus," to which Wayne replies, "Good call. There's no animals or clowns! What a ripoff!"
• Piccadilly Circus was in the final Harry Potter movie
• Piccadilly Circus was in the episode The Great Game, an episode of the drama Sherlock and is also shown in the opening credits of all of the episodes.
• Used as an establishing shot of London during the morning rush hour in Rose, the inaugural episode of the revived Doctor Who TV show.^[6]
• Piccadilly Circus was featured in Fast & Furious 6.
• The cover of Björk's album Post features Björk photographed at Piccadilly Circus.^[7]

References

1. The Editors of American Heritage (1962). D-Day, The Invasion of Europe. New York, New York: American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc. p. 36. . . .the ten mile (16 km) circle in the Channel nicknamed Piccadilly Circus, where the troop convoys would meet . . .
2. The Guardian, Monday 3 October 2011
3. Christie's Sale 8044 Lot 7
4. Dieter Roth Foundation Online
5. Tate Collection | Lipsticks in Piccadilly Circus, London by Claes Oldenburg
6. Piccadilly Circus - The Locations Guide to Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures
7. Björk: The Stereogum Interview