I think I was expecting something a bit grander, but this was the latest attempt at the world’s longest washing line, in Trafalgar Square this afternoon.

I think they were cheating, really. I wanted to see a long line of pants strung out from the Texas Embassy all the way to Covent Garden and on for the next 20 miles, which is what they’d need to do to beat the record, set in 2004 in Turkey. Instead, they’d snaked it around and around and around like the queue for an amusement ride and hung strips of material rather than clothes on the 24,600 pegs they’d clipped on.

Unimpressive though it may have looked, this was apparently (supposedly) 21 miles long and held 4,920 pieces of washing, although I could have pointed to only a dozen or so, so felt a bit cheated when I arrived.

Bizarrely, they actually had to get in experts to plan how they’d lay this out: it wasn’t just a random back and forth in a tiny fenced-off space.

It was for a good cause - raising environmental awareness - but it does seem rather… pointless. ‘I think it will bring great pride to the nation to know that we have aired more dirty laundry than anyone else,’ the pegman said in Metro.

Hmmm.

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