I spoke to street performers at Southbank Centre and Covent Garden to find out what goes through their minds, and how they got into the profession in the first place.

Matthew Tucker / BuzzFeed

Matthew Tucker / BuzzFeed

West told us that during the summer months he performs on the streets full-time, but in the winter months – when the weather's worse and things are quieter – he also works part-time at Tower Bridge.

"I tried street performing last year for about three months, to see whether it would work," West said. "I had a completely different character last time – I was a stilt-walking police man – but in the end I had to give that up because it was taking too much strain on my knees. So I decided to come up with this costume, the Queen's Guard, and the tourists absolutely love it… Because you get a lot of different nationalities down here on the South Bank, for those of them that don't understand or speak English it's much better to be a statue – with visual stuff – so that they can relate to the comedy aspect of it."

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