New York Stories: Part II...

I'm an adopted Londoner and I love the place so whenever I go to any other city I always compare it to London to see how it measures up – and, to be quite honest, London looks a bit shabby in comparison to New York.

For a start pretty much everyone in any service industry who we came across on our six-day stay was polite and pleasant, whether it was shops, museums, restaurants or delis. Compare that to the often surly, snarling and slightly superior service you get at many places in London and you wonder how the grumpy fuckers actually keep their jobs. But the reality is that good service is the exception in London while in New York it seems to be considered the norm.

Secondly the value of money is another factor. The pound may be strong thanks to our falsely inflated and booming economy but, even bearing that in mind, what you can get for your money in the USA is ridiculous compared to what the same money will buy you in the UK. Everything from a Starbucks coffee to a pair of jeans to a pair of trainers is relatively cheaper. So either New York is very cheap or London is stupidly expensive. I'm opting for the latter – especially after getting several yellow cabs in NY for very little then getting a black cab when we landed back in London for a very lot.

The streets were also really clean and everyone on the street was also unerringly polite and generally pretty chilled and good-natured. For example we went to a basketball game at Madison Square Garden to see the Nicks and it was great fun and pretty packed and I just couldn't imagine such a good-natured gathering at a football game in London. If basketball is representative of sport in New York it's very much a family thing while in London I still know people who won't take their kids to football games because of the aggressive atmosphere.

Finally I felt massively safe in New York. I wandered pretty everywhere in Manhattan and never once felt in danger – and that's not something I can in Central London. A lot of that is obviously the legacy of former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani who cleaned up the place and got tough on crime and you wonder how many teenage deaths it will take before the London Mayor takes similar decisive action.

New York was a really pleasant surprise. The Metroplitan Museum was fabulous, the Museum of Modern Art was stunning and the people we met were great. I expected it to be much more aggressive and its people rude but that's because I expected it to be a bigger version of London. But it wasn't and I've now seen what a major world city and its people can be like and, sadly with its crime and violence and rip-off prices for everything, London is not it. At the moment anyway.

But it could be...