We're not sure what we think of this...we'll let you be the judge!

A new service promises Londoners they'll never have to spend much time looking for the loo. Westminster City Council, which covers London's bustling Oxford Street, the West End, and the Houses of Parliament, has launched "SatLav" - a toilet-finding service for cellphone users.

Harried theatregoers, distressed shoppers and hard-pressed bar patrons in London's West End can now text the word "toilet" and and receive a text back giving the address of the nearest public facility. The system, which covers 40 public toilets, triangulates a user's position by measuring the strength of the cellphone signal. The texts cost 25p, while most of Westminster's toilets are free.

The council expressed hope that the service would help fight the scourge of street urination, which it said was responsible for dumping an estimated 45 000 litres of urine in Westminster's alleyways each year.

Similar offerings exist elsewhere, such as the mobile toilet search service offered by Vindigo in many United States cities, but SatLav is being touted as the first text-based toilet-finder in Britain.

"It's the first fully managed service that we're aware of," British Toilet Association director Richard Chisnell said, praising the council for its work in the field of public convenience.

"Thank heavens for Westminster's public toilets," he said.

Truth that life really is stranger than fiction!