By Bill Bowkett
Kirstie Allsopp has shared an image of an empty Tube carriage on a weekday morning as she warned it 鈥渃an’t be a good thing鈥 in an apparent attack on work-from-home culture.
The Location, Location, Location star, 53, posted a photograph on Tuesday from inside a Central Line train and captioned the post on X: 鈥淒on’t quite know what it says but it can’t be a good thing.鈥
Ms Allsopp鈥檚 tweet of the eastbound service after Mile End station in Tower Hamlets quickly went viral, generating more than six million views.
But some users highlighted that the 53-year-old had missed rush hour and most workers were likely to be in their offices by the time she tweeted at 9.22am.
One user remarked: “It’s 9:20 most people start work at 9am. Plus you’re going the opposite way to the majority going into work.”
Another wrote: “Not sure if you have ever had a normal job but most people are normally at work by then.”
A third quipped: “In order to be on this tube someone would have to live in the City, commute out to a job in East London and start work past 9.30am or so.”
Others suggested Londoners may have been working remotely on the warmest day of the year, as temperatures in the capital rose to 34.7C (94.4F).
BBC Radio 4 presenter and former Times columnist David Aaronovitch replied to Ms Allsopp, asking: 鈥淭oo hot?鈥
Despite some branding the mother-of-two “out of touch”, the Channel 4 presenter hit back with a follow-up message defending herself.
She argued: “And you don鈥檛 think tourists matter, or people who work weekends having a Tuesday off and going to Stratford? There are many reasons an empty tube is not an economical good sign.”
Ms Allsopp has been a vocal critic of working from home, particularly for those in office-based jobs, and previously said workers need to “prove their worth” to bosses.
The Underground is used by around 3 million people each day and sees more than 1 billion journeys every year.
However, weekday usage has been between 76 per cent to 87 per cent of pre-Covid levels, according to official figures.