Richard Tyrone Jones’s ‘MisGuided Tours’ are open air cultural / literary tours of the London suburbs normal tour guides won’t go to, peppered with poetry, comedy, facts, tall tales and guest appearances from local art luminaries, both living and dead.

Arts Council funded in 2009 and a financial and critical success, ‘The most fun I’ve ever had in Archway’ according to one tourer. Richard has developed these tours working with Social Spider, Crouch End’s @unlibrary and the Building Exploratory. They usually end in a pub with open mic and can include a host of colourful characters (played by actors), dependent on budget. They can last 1 1/2 to three hours (with breaks) and be devised from scratch for your area for £1000.
Get in touch to book. Prices start at £150 without actors or local artistes & £250 with. Richard also works as a Tour Director for EF (Education First) tours, taking North Americans around the UK & Europe. However, he doesn’t tell any tall tales on these tours AT ALL.
Tours available:

Archway
Secret history of Archway tower and Fathers 4 Justice, McDonald’s restaurant (which started in Archway), meet Dick Whittington, Suicide Bridge, a break for play, London’s best charity shop (closed Mondays), exercise break, and ending in Ernesto the naked poet’s front room (optional).

Brixton
History of the riots sorry, Uprisings, nail bombing, street murals, squats, the Tate & Lyle library, hidden rivers and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

Camden
Starting at Mornington Crescent, we explore how the corn laws affected pigeons, then fail to find Camden’s lost music hall. We meet Dylan Thomas, who lived here but hated it, visit Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath’s old houses, and pursue a dying Martian from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds up Primrose Hill for a magnificent view of London.

Crouch End
Starting outside the Town Hall Richard explains the competition to build it, gas and electric showrooms and Crouch End’s starring role in ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ He recounts the story of the Islington/Harringey guerrilla war of 1963, before taking us up the hill to the railway walk and tearing a hole through to another dimension (cf Stephen King’s short story ‘Crouch End’) where we enter an eldritch world of middle-class gremlins from the ether who have eaten their children and destroyed their adventure playground. Then after some graffiti-appreciation we pop to the library to explain the community-service glass etchings and end with the Harringey national anthem.

Hackney
History of Hackney & the Hackney carriage, St Augustine’s tower, the Beaufort family and the Beaufort Scale (raspberry blowing optional), Hackney’s Tudor mansion Sutton House and the dead squatter, Mass poetic tribute to Tesco (which started in Hackney!), Marie Lloyd & the Hackney Empire, Hackney Botanical Gardens, Town Hall corruption and arson, we may even meet ‘Martin Aimless’ on London Fields… (for adults or children).

Hoxton
(For children but adaptable) Raspberry blowing contest under the canal bridge, watching out for Herons, the architecture of Hoxton Street and square and the Geffrye Museum.

King’s Cross
The biggest chocolate sculpture in the world, John Betjeman and his campaign to save St Pancras, visit to the British Library, Platform 9 3/4 (if you insist), Somers Town & Shane Meadows, the public park renamed after the Director of ‘Somers Town’, an exercise break, then Mary Wollstonecraft snr and junior and the latter’s secret trysts with P.B. Shelley in St Pancras Old Churchyard. Thomas Hardy’s tree, then a visit to a hidden nature park and King’s Place.

New Cross & Deptford (WIP)
Explore Goldsmith’s college and its famous graduates, strange street murals, the facade of Deptford’s amazing town hall, C.18 cottages, restaurants in a bus and a train carriage, Deptford Art galleries, then meet Christopher Marlowe and try not to accidentally stab him in the eye (he was stabbed in the eye in Deptford).

Newington Green
More historical, with the history of Dissent, Joseph Priestley, inventor of soda water, Daniel Defoe and his civet cats which he kept on the green, and Henry VIII’s love-nest: birthplace of the Reformation.

Stoke Newington
Meet Edgar Allan Poe and his raven in Abney Park Cemetary, the only alphabetically-arranged cemetary in London, architecture of Church St conservation area, Wetherspoons & poems, meet Daniel Defoe on Defoe Road, churches, town hall and Clissold House history.