At Westminster Magistrates Court yesterday Dennis Dobbs, 62, was convicted of trying to trying to start a conversation with strangers at a London bus stop.
The judge said Dobbs had shown ‘flagrant disrespect for Londoners’ desire to minimise communication with people they don’t already know’, and fined him £3,000.
The court heard how Dobbs spread panic at a bus stop on Battersea Park Road in south London on the morning of November 20. According to one witness, at around 8.10am Dobbs ‘sauntered casually’ up to the bus stop and said ‘Bit chilly, isn’t it?’ to the people waiting there. The witness described Dobbs’ demeanour as ‘cheerful’, which increased the bystanders’ suspicions that he was mentally unstable. About thirty seconds later Dobbs made what appeared to be a second attempt to initiate conversation, this time saying ‘Looks like it might turn to snow’. At this point the bystanders divided into two groups – those who ‘pretended nothing was going on’ and stared intently into the middle distance, and those who ‘fought desperately to escape’ by boarding the number 345 bus that had just arrived.
Dobbs showed no remorse in court, claiming he was merely ‘trying to be friendly’ and saying he was unfamiliar with local manners as he lived in a small village in Yorkshire and had only come down to London to see his daughter. It emerged during the hearing, however, that Dobbs had two previous convictions from other visits to the capital.
In 2002 he was convicted of visual harassment after seeking eye contact with five different strangers on London underground trains. The case attracted widespread media attention at the time, with Dobbs labelled the ‘Goodge Street Glancer’ after the station where the incidents took place. He infamously claimed he thought the loudspeaker warning ‘Mind the Gap’ referred to ‘the gap between the carriage and the platform’ rather than the sacred personal space around each passenger – a defence that was predictably laughed out of court.
More recently, in September 2007, he was fined for repeatedly saying ‘Good morning!’ to joggers on the Thames towpath in Putney – behaviour so disconcerting that two of the joggers promptly fell in the river and almost drowned.
