Usually the only ways to shut down a London tube station involve either speaking loudly about how the staff haven't been on strike for a while or being a vaguely Arabic-looking Brazilian running around in a big coat.
But good old Harry Potter has found a third way. Thanks to the filming of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, Westminster tube station was closed all day yesterday, leading many to believe that the new Harry Potter movie will contain a scene of Harry Potter slowly getting black nostrils as he stands crushed against a fat businessman's sweaty armpit while trying to read Metro over someone's shoulder and steadfastly avoiding catching anyone's eye in case they stab him or ask him for money.
In the middle of all the usual Harry Potter flap – wondering which characters are going to die, watching JK Rowling get angry about manuscripts in airports, trying hopelessly to sort Hermione out with a boyfriend – it's easy to forget that Harry Potter is a business, and that Harry Potter movies have to be made and not just magicked out of thin air. And they have to be made fast, too, before Daniel Radcliffe gets too old and obsessed with taking his clothes off and stabbing horses in the eyes to be interested in playing Harry Potter any more.
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix started filming in February for a release next year. Helena Bonham Carter has played her part and the shoot is almost over. However, the Harry Potter film crew needed to film the important scene where Harry Potter goes on a tube train. So what did the Harry Potter people do? Build a model of a train station? Use computer animation to create a lifelike substitute? Spend a whole day filming in a busy central London station and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to find alternative routes just so we can see Harry Potter and his ginger friend riding on a dirty underground train for three seconds? Yeah, that last one. BBC News reports:
Westminster station was "closed all day" for the filming, a Transport for London (TfL) spokeswoman said. Tourists and passengers had to find alternative routes and were not allowed to get a glimpse of the crew. It is likely the location was being used for the filming of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, the fifth film in the series. "Westminster Tube station will be closed all day today, with trains non-stopping, for a commercial filming project," the TfL spokeswoman said.
Now, we haven't read Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, but we saw the last Harry Potter film and we're worried. That film ended with Harry Potter having a spectacular magic laser-fight with an evil noseless monster, and now he's riding the tube? That's quite a drop in excitement, isn't it? If things carry on this way, we wouldn't be surprised if the last Harry Potter book ends with him discovering the identity of his father by listlessly fiddling about with a Rubik's Cube for an hour and then filling in 17 forms in triplicate.
Read more:
Harry Potter rides on London tube – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]