Why does it always come back to Batman? He obviously had a much greater influence on my childhood than I first thought. What would Freud say? And would it be in German anyway?

But to summon Batman they used ‘the Bat Signal’. A beam of light in the shape of a bat which lit up the sky for all to see, glowing across the clouds. Massive. Couldn’t miss it. Unless Batman was in the bath. Or eating dinner inside the house. Or watching a movie. Or just ‘out somewhere’.

Today we’d use an app. A Bat-app. A Bapp. Whatever. Because its so much quicker and easier and, assuming Batman is never parted from his Bat-Smart-Phone, will get instant response. Even if he is in flagranti with Lois Lane at the time. (I know, that was Superman’s bird, not Batman’s, but everyone knows she played away). His phone would buzz, Lois would think it was vibrator time, and he’d be off like a… like a… like a man dressed as a funny bat. With Robin, who’d been sitting quietly in the corner of the bedroom, already in costume.

Because we like apps. Well, I don’t, I fucking hate them as some new form of techno-wizardry that hails directly from The Devil himself. But other people do. They love them. And in a world increasingly dominated by (tossers) people walking down the roads apping all the sodding time, Apps are how the world operates. And those who lack apps are destined to become the dinosaurs.

And the latest casualty is the Black Cabs. The Hackney Carriages of London Town. As iconic an image as you can get for our City. Now under massive threat by the advancing curse of the Uber. Which is set to be the Jurassic Extinction of regular taxis unless they wise up.

On Sunday we went out for dinner. Restaurant in Covent Garden at 8. But we had a drinks invitation first, in the West End. And we drank more than expected and it got late, so instead of the intended 15 minute walk (it was 5 to 8) I said ‘I’ll get a taxi’. But before I could raise in hand and whistle, Tory-Boy, the son-in-law, had flashed his app, summoned the god Uber and a Prius pulled up next to us before I could even say ‘what’s Uber?’ They send you a little map showing the precise position of your driver relative to you and stating ‘2 minutes away’. Its impressive.

Ahhh, but the Somalian driver hasn’t done ‘The Knowledge’ like the Jedi Taxi Drivers of old, he doesn’t have that encyclopaedic knowledge of every London street, passage, shop, brothel and alleyway, does he? Fuck no. He’s got a satnav, what more ‘knowledge’ does he need? Ok, he may be a jihadi rapist with a criminal record (‘save your kisses for me’), which no London Cabbie can, but he’s cheap. My mate Bobby took an Uber to a meeting in the City and it cost him 17 quid. Took a taxi home, exactly the same journey; £38.

So, as much as I love black cabs, and I do, they need to wise up a bit. Get an app or something. And they really need to become more competitive price-wise for longer journeys.

You can’t ‘ban Uber’ as a response to competition. You have to compete. Or become consigned to history. Sad but true.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx