“The Gorgo paintings, however, were everywhere. The only trouble was that the city was absolutely covered in graffiti, and so unless you were actively looking for Gorgos, they would be easy to miss. But I knew to look for them. I’d see them on public walls, phone boxes, bus shelters, the pavement… one time in Camden, I’d even caught a glimpse of a tiny Gorgo scrawled in marker pen on the back of some punk rocker’s denim jacket.

But the Monster Man was right; nobody else in the city noticed the Gorgo paintings or remembered the incident from 1961. If I ever mentioned the subject with my colleagues or neighbours, they would all give me the same look, that one that made me clam up and stop making people uncomfortable.

It wasn’t just the Londoners who were determined to forget Gorgo, the internet was equally obtuse. It was bizarre; each time I typed the word “Gorgo” into the search engine, it brought up zero results. Not a bunch of unrelated websites, literally a blank screen. I’d never seen that happen before.”

In 1961, a towering reptilian monster terrorised the streets of London but in 2024, nobody even remembers its name. Well, one person does.

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