“The X-Directory”

10 years of Telephone booth cards

The photograph above shows a scene of the internationally famous London red telephone booths. What you probably don’t know, unless you are from London, is that behind this scene of old world refinement lies a secret world of the extreme and the bizarre. Since 1984, Londons Telephone booths have been used by prostitutes to advertise their services. They hire ‘Card Men’ to plaster the inside of telephone booths with 3" x 4" ‘vice-cards’ directing you, the telephone user, to ‘Kneel before Madam’ and to ‘Get a Buzzzz at Madame Electriques’.

Over the 10 years of their existance, millions of cards were printed and destroyed; but there were some who saw them not as another urban litter problem, but as facinating works of Art. Tony Devlin is one such person, and he has studiously collected every example of these cultural artifacts, and put them into a book.

The publication of this book, ’THE X-DIRECTORY’ caused a storm of controversy in the UK, where the cards are seen only as a nuisance and an offence to the public morals. Click here to read an account of the book launch party. The sucess of theis method of advertising has caused the number of cards being posted to increase by %500 in the last year, and the big wigs at Westminster Council who control central London have decalred war on the card problem. They have set up special squads of ‘Beadles’ to clean up the phone booths, but this will prove innefective in stopping the cards from appearing. To read the study Westminster University made, which was commissioned by Westminster Council, click here.

The general public have a facination with the cards and they have become part of Londons folklore. Tourists use them as free post cards to send home!

Read the Preface

Look inside the Irdialani Gallery

Read the Press Release

Read an Account of Book Launch

View on line Gallery of vice cards