if you're within range of a handbag or a right hander, your'e fair game. I got three pedestrians with clips around the lug hole / gropes of the arse (depending on sex) when riding in one day last week at 7-30 or so, in semi-darkness. All off the pavement with back to traffic and not a bloody glance - in the wind and rain as well. Brightened my start to the day no end. Fair game. What goes around comes around.
...and yet if a car were to drive that close to Count Basie with someone leaning out the window to clip him round the ear then, well, they'd probably get a round of applause :o)
As my alter ego, Nhatt The Perveyer Of Truth And Justice, I had an excelent moment the other morning. At the cross between shaftsbury and H. Holborn a cyclist ahead of me ran the light, and this middle age pedestrian, who was a good distance from said cyclist, ran back out into the road to yell at him. This put the pudgy ped directly in my path (the light had changed) with his back to me. I snuck up on him, leaned in as close as I could and yelled in his ear "get out of the road you fucking muppet" at the top of my voice. He jumped a good couple of feet, and looked well confused before nearly getting hit by the car behind me.