Low life
A bite of the Apple
Jeffrey Bernard
Ten days in New York City was revita- lising and exhilarating although I spent far too much time in Bradley Cunningham's bar. Bradley's is, I think, the twin pub in America of Norman's Coach and Horses. Either that or P. J. Clarke's where there is some fairly serious organised loafing and kibitzing. But what a funny lot they are, these Americans. They actually take jour- nalists seriously and have some respect for them whereas we know that journalists are simply shit-stirrers paid to drink on ex- penses. Ask Ian Botham. Anyway, it was rather odd to spend so much time with my boyhood hero Rocky Graziano, in and around Clarke's and with the oddball Jake La Motta. Both of them, made even more famous since their days in the ring by Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me and Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, still maintain their own peculiar identities. Rocky is simply charming. He is the only folk hero I have ever met. Everybody, but eLvebod, stops him in the o say nellory andy I have never seen a street mant more universally liked. He dragged himself up from the Lower East Side to become champion of the world, has made a million and still does the few television commer- cials which keep him in the public eye. Jake can't make commercials any more. H,, e seems slightly sour about the fact that Raging Bull exposed him as having been something of a psychopathic wife-beater in and around the time he won the title from Marcel Cerdan. He protests that he never really beat up his wife. 'If I'd really hit her', he says, 'I'd have killed her.' It is slightly naive. Although they are lifelong friends they should meet in the ring now. Even at 64 years of age they would fill the Yankee Stadium. They make the most awful face- tious jokes about each other and I suspect that the banter probably disguises a pretty genuine mutual dislike. Rocky says, 'I told Jake that his new wife was cheating on him with his best friend so he went home and shot his dog.' Jake responds by saying, 'Rocky is so mean he is writing a travel book called "New York On Nothing A Day".' But Rocky for me is on a par with Fred Winter, Lester, and Tony Hancock. He is tickled pink that I once had a failed short-spell career in the ring and he calls me 'champ'. The title seemed to puzzle several bartenders who heard him call me that, who then did double-takes at my skeletal frame and English accent.
The accent seemed to go down well with the ladies though. When I closed my eyes and thought about Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone and not England they curled up with their paws in the air like hypnotised pussy cats. One very nice lady took me up-state for a weekend in the country by the Hudson River. The scenery was stun- ning. My behaviour was awful. I was stunned by my old pal Smirnoff. Which reminds me. I don't much care for the way Americans are into health. There is far too much jogging and far too many raised eyebrows at the sight of you lighting a cigarette and knocking back a refreshing gargle. What an awful place to be broke in. It would be very difficult to get a handout in New York. We in London are pretty nice to tramps and winos and they on their part have a certain amount of style. Tom Baker told me the other day that he gave a tramp a fiver and the man had the cheek to hold it up to the light to see if it was genuine. What was extraordinary in New York and up the Hudson at Cold Spring was the freak weather. It was 79 degrees every day and last Wednesday, sitting outside a restaurant and having lunch on the side- walk, I asked a waiter to pull down the blind since the sun was burning my back. To come home back here was awful, but how on earth could you live abroad if you have friends like I've got? What a wonder- ful bunch they are. I never thought it would be possible to miss Norman and his steak pie, mashed potatoes served from an ice-cream scoop, and cabbage and the bill thrown into your face. It never dawned on me that I might also miss his mother wiping the bar in front of me with a dirty cloth and at the same time giving me the weather forecast for Golders Green. And how good to get back to the adrenalin-filled English racing scene. A nice man called Dick Johnsen took me to the races at Aqueduct and you can forget American racing. Same track, same shape, same pace. Hell for leather and no tactics. It seemed to excite some Hispanic hysterics but it left me cold. The amenities are good though. You can get served. I told the bartender that he had put ginger ale in my vodka instead of soda and he flatly denied it saying that I couldn't tell the difference. I was compelled to attach my hands to his lapels, pull him half over the bar and inform him that I had been drinking for a sufficient number of years to know the difference. They can be awfully rude you know. So much nicer to be back in the Coach and Horses being sworn at by Norman Balon.
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