Lady P (a.k.a. Pauline Pearce)
Lady P spent her younger years as a jazz singer, but the 45-year-old East London grandma had the performance of her life when she gave rioters an earful on the streets of Hackney. Her excoriating speech, delivered in front of a graffiti-clad wall, has been viewed over a million times on YouTube and made the heroine of Hackney an Internet celebrity. Pauline Pearce, a community worker and Internet DJ who walks with a cane, says she was roused to oratory when a young white male ran to her, asking for help on Monday night. She and the boy were attacked and tossed against a burning car, which pushed Lady P over the edge. "Why are you turning this into a black-white thing?" she demanded before launching her tirade. "I'm ashamed to be a Hackney person because we're not all gathering together and fighting for a cause, we're running down Foot Locker and TV shops," she yelled.