Why crowds are so pleasing

London, writes Dr Watson in the first Sherlock Holmes story, is ‘that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained’. The quote sums up the thrill of a crowd, the excitement of being with lots of other people, of not knowing who or what you’ll see or hear. It’s a thrill that feels a very long way away at the moment.

The problem with arguing in favour of crowds right now is that the reasons for being in one — watching men kick a pig’s bladder around, dancing to recordings characterised by loud and repetitive drum beats, drinking alcohol in close proximity to lots of strangers in the hope that your proximity to one of those strangers will get even closer come the end of the evening — seem rather trivial when compared with the D word: death. But we all die in the end.