Filth and the city

By Will Smith

Before I became a father, I could regularly be found scurrying through Soho in the small hours, rushing between comedy gigs. Nowadays my evenings all have the same goal: to be in bed by 10pm. So it is with a mix of nostalgia and trepidation that I make my way to Veolia Environmental Services on Newport Place, to begin my night shift as a street cleaner. Nostalgia because it's my old stomping ground, trepidation because it's a good half-hour after my bedtime.

The depot turns out to be a tarmac yard tucked between Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. Carts and streetsweepers are parked up, as well as Madvacs, the powered sweepers that wheel along pavements between cursing pedestrians. Men in luminous overalls smoke and exchange genial insults. I'm approached by the only person in a suit: the night-shift manager, Lawrence. He leads me through a door in a wall to a windowless, white-tiled office reminiscent of an Eastern-bloc interrogation centre.