Gawping at the recent Tube map by property price sent me looking back at some of the other sneaky ways people have doctored the Underground design classic.


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One that unsurprisingly matches up pretty closely to the property price map is a version based on life expectancy.

Expensive areas like Knightsbridge (average house price around the station, £2.7 million) had high life expectancy (90 years), while people in cheaper station-zones such as King’s Cross (£466,000) only have 79 years to suffer property-price envy.

You’d think that being nearer the 2012 Games site, poor old King’s Cross might do better on the Olympic Legends map. Its designated legend is the incredible gymnast Nadia Comaneci, winner of five golds over two Olympics, but Knightsbridge gets Sir Steve Redgrave, who pips her with five over five Games and sixteen years.

If reality offers few comforts for King’s Cross, fantasy saves the day.

This film-based Tube map gives the station the lucrative Harry Potter franchise (platform nine and three-quarters etc.), while Knightsbridge is stuck with Eyes Wide Shut, undoubtedly one of the worst films ever made.

There are many more name-change and theme-based Tube maps – including one that shows nearby toilets, another that is upside down and an x-rated rude version – at this excellent site devoted to the genre and some others here.