101 Dalmatians|Burlington Arcade — A Beadle's Worst Afternoon

The Burlington Arcade has had rules since 1819, and beadles in top hats and frock coats still enforce them: no running, no whistling, no singing, no hurrying. Which makes this the funniest thing the film does in London — it sends a dalmatian through the arcade at full speed with a man skidding along behind him, shoppers flattening themselves against the jewellers' windows as the pair go past.

Lord George Cavendish built the covered walk to stop passers-by lobbing oyster shells into his garden at Burlington House next door. It became the template every shopping arcade since has copied: a long glazed run of small shopfronts from Piccadilly through to Burlington Gardens, where Roger and Pongo burst back out into daylight and traffic. The Piccadilly frontage was rebuilt in the 1930s and the roof repaired after wartime damage, but the run of shops the camera used is the run that is there.

Walk it at the pace the beadles prefer. End to end it takes about three minutes, past watchmakers and cashmere and window displays lit like small stage sets. Pongo managed it in considerably less, and the beadle in the film has the expression of a man who has seen the rules broken in a way the 1819 bylaws did not anticipate.