Geoffrey Marshall is a video producer, performer, and author from London who runs a YouTube channel which is predominantly transport-themed. Born in London, he spent a short period living in the United States between 2006 and 2009, and now resides in South London.
Marshall has twice held the world record for the Tube Challenge: travelling to all London Underground stations in the fastest time possible. Marshall's first record time to visit the then 275 stations was achieved with Neil Blake in 18 hours 35 minutes and 43 seconds in May 2004, on his fourth attempt. This beat the previous world record of 19 hours, 18 minutes and 45 seconds that was achieved by Jack Welsby in April 2002. His second record time of 16 hours, 20 minutes and 27 seconds, was set in August 2013. A previous attempt which came close was covered by BBC News as part of London Underground's 150 year celebrations. Marshall subsequently wrote the stage show TubeSpotting about his multiple attempts which he performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2014 and several times since at the London Transport Museum.
TV and radio appearances
The TubeEpisode 2 of Season 1 "24 hours" - This episode shows his failed attempt to beat Jack Welsby's Tube Challenge world record, followed by Metroland: Race Around The Underground a few months later – an attempt from 2003 where he would have broken the record had the Richmond Branch of the District Line not suffered a signal failure. On Sky 1's The Fanatics, his answers about the London Underground almost got him to the final level. He also occasionally gives interviews on London TV and radio, concerning transport stories. Marshall and his wife Vicki Pipe appeared in an episode of More4's The Worlds Most Beautiful Railway in September 2019 in sections showing the Caledonian Sleeper and Corrour railway station in the Scottish highlands.
Londonist Ltd
Marshall is an occasional contributor for Londonist Ltd, an online London themed and based media outlet. Starting in 2004, it quickly joined the Gothamist network, but in 2010, was moved to the London-based LDN Creative. One of the more popular video series on the site is Secrets of the Underground - a web series, with over eleven million combined views, presented by Marshall that talks about little-known facts of the London Underground. The 17 episode series originally featured just the 11 London Underground lines, but later episodes were produced for the DLR, Overground, and Tramlink networks – as well as bonus episodes.
All the Stations
All the Stations was a project organised by Marshall and Vicki Pipe, to visit all 2,563 UK railway stationsin the summer of 2017. The pair filmed much of the journey with daily updates posted on YouTube. They also posted updates to Periscope, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram during the journey. A feature-length documentary about the journey was produced in 2018. Funded through Kickstarter, the journey started on 7 May in Penzance and finished 105 days later on 19 August in Wick. 59 main videos were produced along with 12 bonus videos. They visited every station in Great Britain including those that are served by only a small number of trains, including Shippea Hill station on 3 June where 19 people joined them, meaning more passengers used the station in a single day than had in the whole of the previous year. In 2019, Marshall and Pipe crowdfunded All The Stations Ireland, where they spent three weeks visiting all 198 railway stations in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland during March and April 2019. Subsequently, they spent three days in July 2019 visiting the Isle of Man to travel to every station on the island there too.
Underground: USA
Underground: USA was a 12-week documentary road trip which Marshall undertook between June and September 2009 in the US. He travelled to all 48 mainland states of the United States and in each one visited a town or a place that shared a name with a station on the London Underground map, for example, Epping, Maine where the journey started. He had his filming equipment stolen during the trip but subsequently turned the story into a one-hour YouTube documentary as well as publishing an accompanying book Underground: USA.
Charity events
Marshall first organised a tube-based charity event in 2005 with Tube Relief, in response to the 7 July 2005 London bombings. Using the slogan 'Not Afraid' around 50 people took part, raising over £11,000 for London Bombings Relief Charitable Fund. Subsequently Marshall organised a series of Walk The Tube events to raise money for charities, by getting a group of people to visit every tube station but not as a record attempt. These events took place in 2014, 2015 and 2016.
