Mini Cabs From HellWe've all taken a dodgy cab in our time. One guy asked me to give him a back-rub in exchange for letting me off the fare. I was like, "here's the cash mate." Another chappy claimed to be Paddy Patel - a child actor from UK TV series Tuckers Luck - he drove like a speed freak and regaled me with stories that "playing a black Irish boy. England wasn't ready for it." So go on - tell us your worst and we'll tell the world.
[edit: for those confused by the term mini-cab, London has two sorts of taxis: highly regulated, licensed and salt-of-the-earth black cabs that you see in films and a whole bunch of unlicensed, uninsured, random cars driven by nutters who aren't supposed to pick up from the street (you have to phone for them). They are universally rubbish]
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rob, Wed 26 May 2004, 21:44)
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Mad psycho cabbieWhile at uni my mates and I got into a local mini cab driven by a very pleasant Indian gentleman. You know the sort, beaded seat cover on all the seats in the car, a CD with a horrible rainbow pattern hanging down from the rearview mirror which can only serve to blind anyone looking roughly in the direction of the mirror. Fag burned seats and carpets, I'm sure you know the drill.
Well, he was supposed to be taking us into town from our university halls but for some reason decided to take a completely different route to that which normal cabs take. It soon dawned on us we were going nowhere near town at all. When we questioned him, he told us that he was taking us back to his house to meet his wife because she didn't believe he drove a cab so he wanted to show her some customers. We all started to suggest that this was, perhaps, not the best of things to try and that we were sure his wife would be fine after a little sleep and some valium. Our driver, however seemed to be strangely immune to our calls and when we were about to open the door of a moving car and leap from it, the police pulled him up for speeding.
He went on to tell the police that he was taking us to see his wife, that the speedo on his car was broken and he didn't know how fast he was travelling, that he was not a licensed cabbie and that he was unnisured because he couldn't afford the sky high premiums. Obviously the policemen were slightly taken aback by this outburst of truth. In fact they thought he was being sarcastic at first, and we all know that there is nothing the police like less than sarcasm. Not even crime.
They took him away in a police car and told us they would send someone to pick us up as we were by now in the middle of nowhere. When we were finally dropped off at the student union from the back of a meat wagon everyone thought we had been nicked ourselves. To this day I still have nightmares about our favourite cabbie.
(, Thu 27 May 2004, 11:10, Reply)
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