So what is there to recommend that actually has something to with London? There’s a new series of the actually very good Sarah Jane Adventures on CBBC, which is set in my old stomping ground of Ealing, but opening with a recommendation of kids stuff is likely to leave questions over mental aptitude.

There’s the continuous news channel coverage from outside the Bank of England and around Canary Wharf, watching Robert Peston hold forth about why we should feel bad for sacked bankers. But given that I’m probably unemployed from Christmas thanks to the credit crunch, I’m not feeling very sympathetic. Besides that, there’s naff all else on this week about the capital, what with the schedules being chockful of new-season US imports and nonsense about the US election. Damned revolting colonies.

So that leaves Never Mind The Buzzcocks, which returns to BBC2 tonight at 9pm. So, necessary tenuous London link: poppet Simon Amstell is on nodding terms with a friend of mine in their home environs of the Woodford-ish area. Celebrity high five!

The show’s return is something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Amstell can still be very funny when he has guests that can hold their own, so that the show doesn’t feel like a half-hour of c-list baiting that can be uncomfortable to watch. New guests have brought real fresh air to the show. And the writing team have either changed in the last few years or found some verve after the lean, late Lamarr years of Geri Halliwell jokes.

But in another way, things aren’t great. Bill Bailey’s going, and the replacements are not good. Jack Dee and Frank Skinner are each doing a week, but both threaten to undo the good work that was done on giving the show some youthful vigour with their middle aged grumbling. You can imagine it now: Jack Dee complaining about how he’s old enough to have fathered the Kooks, while Frank Skinner wonders why his under-30s co-panellists don’t get his UB40 joke. Hardly Amy Winehouse gobbing wine across the studio, is it?

Dermot O’Leary is doing a week too, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to a Donny Tourette-style comedy outrage moment. And tonight, Mark Ronson is on. While he may be great at making up panel numbers with his addled ramblings, the man is hardly a main stage attraction in his own right.

The revitalised Never Mind the Buzzcocks still remains the best panel show on TV, and, by extension, the best show on Dave. New episodes certainly won’t hurt. But even if the writers continue to pull their weight, the guest booking department could do with a swift kick up the backside.

ALSO SHOWING: Comedy’s big night out at the Albert Hall, the Secret Policeman’s Ball 2008, Sunday 9pm, Channel 4. It’s like the Secret Policeman’s Ball 2007, only with a significantly worse line-up. (Dear Amnesty: when you reliant on giving stage time to the poor man’s Peter Kay, Jason Mansford, it’s time to find a new way to raise money. Human rights aren’t that important.)

Think you know London? Think again. Until you’ve walked along, instead of traveling on, a tube line, some of London’s best bits will be passing you by, says Andrew Mickel.

(Illustration by David Plant)

London’s tube map has a lot to answer for. It may be an international symbol of the capital’s diverse communities, but it has also broken most people’s conception of how the city is laid out.

The frantic mess of ancient thoroughfares are hardly welcoming for pedestrians, and most road junctions feel like live action reenactments of Frogger. But walking ranks as the best way to get to know the place – so I’m going to spend my Sunday walking the Central Line.

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to use the train?” a friend earnestly asks over a fry-up in Ealing Broadway before I start.

The first stretch, through the three spread-out Actons (North, South and East), will certainly make you miss the tube. The grimy industrial parks of Park Royal and the Westway road are for cars, not people.

The dispiriting start soon gives way to one of the best things about walking: you get to see how the city is changing. I used to work in White City, but aside from the grey approach to the squat TV Centre, the place is barely recognisable. A massive shopping redevelopment stretches as far as you can see. It is certainly better than Shepherd’s Bush, an elaborate roundabout hemmed by kebab shops and Costcutters.

I head east, corner-shop pasty in hand, and tackle the nightmarish Holland Park Roundabout. This is Escher’s road system, and no-one bothered to put any signs up. Still, at least the walk is getting markedly leafier, thanks to Holland Park. I celebrate what is rapidly turning into a gastronomic walk with an Italian sandwich.

By the time I hit buzzy Notting Hill Gate fifteen minutes later, I’m bored of traffic. The Central Line passes directly beneath what is the same road through Zone 1 – under the Bayswater Road, Oxford Street and High Holborn, before picking its own way through the City. For the sake of my lungs I take the parallel path across Hyde Park to Marble Arch.

By Bond Street, my hungry scowling is clearing a path through the tourists and casual shoppers. It’s time for another food break. I may be saving a tube fare (£2), but I’m slightly outspending this saving on food (£18 and counting).

At least I’m clearing the tube map faster now I am in Zone 1; you can get between the well-to-do Queensway and Lancaster Gate in under ten minutes. By contrast, the Sunday afternoon crowds between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road are expectedly slow. This is not a place to be in a misanthropic mood. If the humid mass of gawping shoppers doesn’t leave you feeling a little sociopathic, then the anonymous chain stores should do the trick.

Passing Holborn and entering the abandoned City brings welcome breathing space. Only a few tourists are around Chancery Lane and Bank, pondering why an international financial centre is shut on a Sunday.

The City can be hard to navigate, but it is a beautiful place to get lost. Every corner gives way to another monument – St Paul’s, the Bank of England, hundreds of hulking financial institutions. It feels cleaner (or more sanitized) than the rest of town.

An eerily abandoned Liverpool Street, thanks to engineering works, marks the end of the City before the heave of Banglatown.

This is my home turf, but after such an epic walk I’m seeing it through fresh eyes. The bustling restaurants of Bethnal Green (and, on this particular walk, the bagel shop) pose a welcome return to a human scale after the City.

The one thing we can do on a grand scale is the road junction just past Mile End, the eastern counterpart to the Holland Park Roundabout. This is where inner London ends: the tube stops are getting less frequent. The walk to Stratford stretches for miles through an unerringly grey sprawl of roads and low-level industry.

By the time I reach Stratford six hours after setting off, it’s quite clear that Woodford is going to remain a dream. My legs, though slightly achy, are now moving on auto-pilot – remembering to stop at roads requires an intervention by my brain – but I have places to be, and my waistline frankly can’t take the strain of feeding my feet.

First, though, I slump in a greasy spoon and order a large all-day breakfast. With extra chips.

Info:

Use TfL’s Journey Planner (click) with all the transport options deselected to find walking routes. In Zone 1, try this guide to find easy journeys on foot (click). Or just spend a fiver and pick up a trusty A to Z.

These latter messes have been enough to make people look to continental Europe for a decent fest, like Serbia’s Exit and Spain’s Benicassim. Barcelona’s Primavera was one of the first this season; yet despite a line-up boasting Devo, the Sonics, Public Enemy, and stars under the pensionable age like London’s Lightspeed Champion and Harvard’s jangliest graduates Vampire Weekend, it was strangely empty. Barcelonans evidently don’t know how good they’ve got it.

Still, London will be seeing one of the festival’s highlights Health at the Old Blue Last this Thursday. The noise rockers flood out their lyrics – and pretty much else – by the pounded-out drumming of the enormous Benjamin Miller. He may be terrifying to watch thumping the heck out of Glitter Pills, but it’s incredible to behold.

While Health got the coveted sundown spot on the Vice Magazine stage overlooking the Mediterranean, Vampire Weekend were, bizarrely, the stage’s closing act on day one. Indeed, after a night when Portishead created a noise riot with Machine Gun, VW were left wide open to their oft-accused crime of being a bit Ivy League, a bit knowing.

They’re playing Primavera, and the audience are looking for something with more bite, but the band seem eager to finish up and take their private plane somewhere with fewer oiks. As if to underline the point, only their singles get any traction with the audience. Despite the unhinged scheduling, they could have done more with the slot.

The same can’t be said of middle-aged flowerpot men Devo who bring the energy, but are rather creaky, running around stage looking in need of a nice sit-down. The tight choreography and music seemed to become something of a chore, as they propped the whole shebang up with increasingly forced visuals. By the end, it was getting uncomfortable to watch (see also: the Sonics).

Ageing but not tiring, Public Enemy toured their way through (nearly) the whole of “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”. Given his reality TV rebirth you would half-expect Flavor Flav to be getting lazy, but he’s got easily as much thrust as Chuck D. He’s nothing if not the consummate entertainer.

On a quieter note, Cardiff’s reformed Young Marble Giants took the auditorium by twinkly fairy dust, led by little puffling Alison Stratton through their thirty-year-old material, which sure as heck held up better than Public Enemy’s charade.

As, indeed, did the festival bill in general. We could do with a festival cull here in London – and it’d be worth it for one as decent as this.