I realised earlier that this is the fourth Skylines Christmas Special, which apart from being a marker of quite how long I've been doing this thing now, presumably explains why there are giant steampunk robots marching across Victorian London again. 

Anyway. On this week's show, we're not going to talk about the election result – partly because I'm too depressed, partly because we've now got about four and a half years to think about that, but mostly because this episode was recorded 10 hours before the exit poll came out so we had no idea what the result was even going to be. (If you've just joined us: the left lost.)

Instead, we're going to have a lovely conversation with Jay Foreman, distinguished host of such YouTube series as Unfinished London, Map Men and other things that frankly I wish I'd thought to do before he got there first. Jay tells me how he came to make a career making videos about London; how he and his co-host Mark Cooper-Jones had a blazing row about their favourite map projections; and why he's now six months into an online argument with a man who wrongly believes that Woking is in Greater London. 

It was, frankly, tremendous fun to record, so I can only hope it’s as fun to listen to. Not least because I realised afterwards I’d screwed up the recording and am nervous about how it sounds.

Anyway. Happy Christmas, everybody – we’ll see you in 2020.

Skylines is the podcast from the New Statesman’s cities site, CityMetric. It’s hosted by Jonn Elledge and produced by Nick Hilton.

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