Clathrin mediated endocytosis is the principle mechanism by which cells internalize cell surface receptors. It can be thought of as a molecular machine which concentrates receptors into patches at the plasma membrane and which bends the membrane into a vesicle that pinches off. Quite how the many structural, enzymatic and cytoskeletal components of the endocytic machine are spatially and temporally organised is not fully understood. In this talk I will describe our efforts to address this problem by analysing single endocytic events using total internal fluorescence microscopy (TIR‐FM).