An unusually serious post coming up but I think this needs to be said. Over at US Resistance they cover a story where Metrolink staff in Manchester covered the PSP ad “Take a running jump here” on one of their platforms because they deemed it inappropriate. US Resistance jokes:

Apparently, an ad urging subway passengers to jump onto the rails is a bit too persuading for the English. Whereas the people of most other nations might say, “Oh, another shitty video game ad,” London citizens think, “A good idea.”

Now, I’m not a fan of censorship but in this particular case I can understand why they did it. Don’t know about the US (or Manchester) but on some London Underground lines at least two or three times a year you would be greeted with the announcement “Sorry, this train will be terminating at the next station due to a person under a train at [insert station here].” Or even worse, “a body under a train at “. When I lived at Upton Park they closed the station down for a day due to a suicide and when it reopened there was an ominous pile of sand on one of the tracks that was obviously there to soak up a lot of reddish brown fluid…

It happens more often than you would expect. Extract from this morning’s free newspaper Metro (print version only):

“The mother of a former EastEnders star committed suicide by throwing herself under a Tube train, an inquest found yesterday. Bernadette Lordan, 62, jumped under a Victoria line train at Highbury and Islington station, North London on March 24, a week after taking a drugs overdose…”

How would her daughter feel if she saw an ad saying “Take a running jump here” at Highbury and Islington Station, even read in the context of an unrelated idiom? :(

See the other ads in this PSP advertising campaign here.

Edits: Added link to idiom for those unfamiliar. I would also like to make it clear that the offending ad was covered up in Manchester, not London, as some websites seem to be reporting. I haven’t seen this particular ad in any London Underground stations.