The five sexiest people you’ll ever see on public transport

I have a love-hate relationship with travelling on the Tube, London’s dog-breathed series of arteries which carries us all safely around the place, while we moan about how long it takes to get anywhere and how far away everyone lives.

Buses can go fuck themselves, frankly; dull as they are with their stench of fast food and myriad teenagers playing generic hip-hop through tinny speakers. Buses are unsociable and unsexy – everyone facing forward like they’re at the world’s worst cinema.

In the sexiness stakes, there’s no getting away from the Tube’s dominance. Everyone’s facing each other across those dirty aisles and pretending not to look. But you’re looking. We’re all looking. And here are the five sexiest people you’ll meet on the Tube.

The staring man
Staring man breaks the first rule of ‘no eye contact’ within seconds, appraising you like you’re a prize heifer at a country show. He drinks you in and in further and further, until you can taste him behind your eyes. He thinks the quickest way to make you fall in love with him is simply by keeping his peepers trained on you until you say: “OK, I give in. Take me back to yours and possess me for ever”. I guess it must work sometimes.

The man with dirty fingernails playing on his iPad
This man purposefully sits next to you with his handy screen of nothingness and dramatically swipes his filthy claws across it until you can’t help but look at what he’s doing. He will either be playing a shoot ’em up, trying to get the next level of a ridiculous game for pre-school infants or, worst of all, watching Top Gear and tapping his rank talons against the screen with pleasure every time Jeremy Clarkson tells a ‘joke’.

The arranger
This guy gets on the Tube in full conversational flow on his mobile phone. Decibels and social appropriateness mean nothing to him, so he’s bellowing down it confidently, satisfyingly smoothing down his Lacoste polo which hugs his bench-pressed chest like a toddler clinging to its mother’s leg on the first day at nursery. He is loud, probably has whichever accent you find the most distasteful and, to put the icing on your cherry cake of misery, is arranging a weekend which sounds like it’s going to be much more fun than yours. With people hotter than you.

The politeness refusenik
This beautiful beast won’t give up his seat for an elderly person, will pretend that he’s not sure whether that pregnant woman standing in front of him is “just fat” and will tut and moan if you so much as graze his adorable knee with your bag/suitcase/coat. Because the Tube is only for people who travel without any luggage and are going somewhere very important and need a sit down. If you want a guaranteed seat, get a cab, right? Ugh.

The drunk
They smell like pub. They talk like pub. They sway like pub. They annoy you like not being able to go to a pub. And they always sit next to you when you’re feeling at your most irritable and unforgiving (aka every single day).

So there you are, five of the best, hottest guys (or gals) you’re ever likely to meet. And yet somehow I manage to fall in and out of love with total strangers every day on the Tube. I suppose it’s best not to think too hard about what they’re thinking of you. I’m sure it’s all very complimentary. Right? Oh.