And now it's in London. In 2008, worldwide curiosity shop Ripley's Believe It or Not! arrived in England's fair capital in a storm of media indifference and a snaking queue of tourists.

Born in 1890, Robert Ripley was a cartoonist, explorer and reporter who travelled all over the world seeking out the strange and the unusual. He was - by all accounts - a little nuts: he used to wander around in a pith helmet or Eskimo parka and he kept a 28-foot boa constrictor as a pet.

The whole concept started with a cartoon strip that Ripley used to do for the New York Globe and today there are Believe It or Not! 'Odditoriums' all over the world. You can understand how the concept is an interesting one, but why every country in the world should seem to need one is beyond us. The McDonald's of the museum world.