Thomas Heatherwick – the UK’s greatest showman and designer?

There are not many great idiosyncratic designers around at the moment: the fierce competition of the global economy and the homogenisation of culture enforced by the dictators of Silicon Valley has put paid to the individualism on which showmanship feeds.

But one man has bucked the trend: Thomas Heatherwick stands head and shoulders above the architects and product designers of London; ergo, the rest of the world.

His garden bridge is set to become the most exciting piece of human-level design in our beautiful capital – a construction on which you will want to linger, to rest your gaze, of which to be proud, that other cities will envy and copy. I’m really looking forward to seeing it, and using it.

And who cannot thrill to the sight of one of his new Routemaster buses? They take my breath away every time I see them!

And his beautiful, multi-petalled caldron that gently rose to conjoin in one symbolic flame completely stole the show at Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012.

Thomas Heatherwick: I salute you, and wish I had half your courage, style and grit!