Hello!

This is a project that Owen Powell and Alex Horne started on October 24th, 2006 (United Nations Day), and finished on October 24th, 2007. Our aim was to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.

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We managed to meet people from 189 countries. According to the UN, there are 192 countries in the world, so we've proved that at the very least, London contains over 98.4% of the nations of the world!

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We are still looking for people from three countries:

Marshall Islands; Palau; Tuvalu.

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The final encounters during our year appear below, but to follow our story from the start please click on the links under 'How we're doing' on the left-hand side.  The countries appear in the order in which we found their representative. (Any country with an asterisk * next to it has a brief account of the interview - longer versions will appear in the future!)

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To find out more about the project, including our self-imposed rules, then click here.

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Follow this link if you have the urge to see us looking awkward on Channel 4 news.  Or just below you can see us when we were half-way through the project being interviewed by George Alagiah on BBC World.

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Please email us on worldinonecity@hotmail.com if you want to get in touch, or if you know any shy Londoners who are also Tuvaluan, Palauan or Marshallese.

George Alagiah interviews us on the BBC

Tuesday 18 September 2007

No.144: Monaco


Full story to follow...

Alex Horne - 18th September 2007

When I asked Pierre whereabouts in Monaco he used to live I stupidly said, 'by the sea?'

'Of course', he replied patiently. 'Right by the heliport.'

I think he noticed my tiny gasp.

'It's not all luxury there though! People think it's all beautiful cars, beautiful people and casinos. But there are lots of normal people too - lots of industry and businesses.'

Pierre now works in almost-as-glamorous Mayfair in the Monaco tourist office but recently spent six months at the University of Hull. 'They do a very good business course', he told me diplomatically.

There are just 36,000 Monegasques in the world so Pierre was a cracking find. I spent most of our chat smiling broadly and telling him he was a cracking find. In return he furnished me with this tremendous flag fact: Monaco has the same flag as Indonesia - they're the only two countries who share insignia (Poland, of course, is the same but the other way round).

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