The Seven Soho Noses

Yesterday afternoon I decided to get out of the office and take a walk in the lovely spring sunshine. I like walking around Soho, as it’s mainly tourist free (compared to nearby Oxford street) and is also (mainly) free of shops to lure me in. It even allows the opportunity to spot the odd British celebrity. (I have only run across Suggs and Bill Bailey, possibly not the best looking Brit celebrities, but certainly odd.)

On my walk, I passed an interesting cafe and stopped, debating on whether I wanted to add another shot of caffeine into my system. As I hesitated outside, two men walked hurriedly up behind me and pointed to the wall outside the cafe: “There, there it is!” exclaimed the man in nerdy-yet-trendy thick specs. Both the bloke sitting outside the cafe and I looked up at the wall where he was pointing. At first I didn’t see anything, but upon closer inspection I saw it. It was hard to see at first because it was painted the same muddy brown colour as the wall, but it was definitely there: it was a nose. Hanging just above eye level, on the outside wall of the cafe, was a life-sized nose.

The Nose Knows for the Guess Where London group on flickr

The bloke asked “what is it?” and the nerdy-yet-trendy guy replied: “it’s one of the seven noses of Soho.” His friend excitedly added, “Yeah, there’s another on Meard street, and one on D’Arblay street” (and one on another street whose name I have forgotten). The man went further to explain, “If you find all seven noses, you will attain infinite wealth.” Hm, sounds dubious to me. Still, I thought the nose was cool. The man asked the guy how he knew this information, to which he replied that he knew because he had done a documentary about it. (Big deal, I thought, feeling the doc thing had an air of Nathan Barely about it.) The man was equally not impressed, “yeah, he said, but how did you know about it before you made the documentary.” The trendy-nerdy guy was a bit deflated, replying that it was a rumour. He had no idea where it had come from.

This piqued my interest, not in the documentary, but in the origin of the story. So I asked the Internet, and like always, it delivered big time!

Flickr provided a few shots of various noses in and outside of Soho, like this one on Admiralty Arch, and also the answer. If the folks on Flickr can be trusted, the more mundane fact is that in 1996, a sculptor named Rick Buckley “decorated many London landmarks with casts of his nose.” Why, they don’t say, but I think in the name of art is enough (for me). There was nothing online about infinite wealth, nor only seven noses, nor the noses being restricted to just Soho. I suppose if you really wanted to check your facts, you could get a hold of Rick and compare his nose to the ones in the street!

I wonder how rumours like this get started. Maybe it spread because its a good tale, it has those fairy tale qualities: the lucky number seven, strange signs hidden in a maze (Soho), a fortune cookie “infinite wealth” promise. Surely this story was fabricated, perhaps by the artist? It’s a good one, I feel bad for possibly outing it, but maybe I got my facts wrong. The good folks on Flickr have been wrong about strange landmarks before, but the truth does seem to come out in the end. I love the Internet! Without it we would have to trust people like this to give us the facts.