Because of obscure laws, shops with a sign that overhangs a street can claim ownership of the land underneath after a period (or could do some 40+ years ago). So councils would charge 'peppercorn rents' off the legal owner of the sign just to assert in law that the council owned the land.


So one of my flatmates in Uni days had a vacation job to ring up CEOs of multi-million pound businesses and demand a few pence off them.