The auction ends with a ritual of coin tossing – the butcher tosses a coin for heads or tails while the punters bet him for the meat. The rules of this game are simple: if you guess heads or tails correctly you take home the said piece of meat for free, if you guess incorrectly, you must pay the butcher his asking price. The crowed cheers for each correct guess and booes for each wrong one. One elderly lady is unlucky in her guess but in true christmas spirit Lawrence decides to give her the turkey anyway. The crowd approves.
The bidding soon gets under way starting with turkeys and geese followed by loins of lamb, ribs of beef, pork bellies, racks of lamb, steaks and gammon. The crowd push and thrust their pound notes high up in the air. When an owner for any haunch of meat is established, fistfulls of notes are passed forward and the butchers throw the meat into the hands of its winner. London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP.
