Low life
Sober in Soho
Jeffrey Bernard
Iwas paid a visit yesterday by Vernon Scannell, a good man and an excellent writ- er, who called with a BBC producer who taped us talking about Fitzrovia in the 1940s and early 1950s. We soon decided that there never was such a place as Fitzrovia. There was the Fitzroy Tavern and Fitzroy Square, but to all of us it was always Soho although it lies just a few yards north of Oxford Street.
We reminisced about the people who used to haunt the Black Horse and the Wheatsheaf in what now seems another age. So many of them are now dead, which is not surprising considering its heyday was round about 1948. I was 16 then and pass- ing myself off to assorted publicans as being of an age to drink legally.
But it was a bad interview on my part and I shall very likely be cut from the pro- gramme. I had woken up as sick as a dog with gastritis and had been vomiting on and off for three hours before Vernon turned up, so I didn't dare have a drink and I need exactly three large ones to go on television or the radio. It isn't a question of nerves, it is just that I find it difficult to communicate without oiling my tongue, so to speak.
Anyway, we spent two hours talking about Soho and Fitzrovia and it left me feeling a little depressed. They're parts of the legend I would like to forget. For one thing, most of us were very broke for most of the time. The amount of drinking that went on is greatly exaggerated by writers today. We hardly ever had the money for the hard stuff. Dylan Thomas, for example, drank halves of bitter and so did John Minton. They broke out into whisky rashes later. Nina Hamnet (I had forgotten that she once lived with Modigliani) somehow always managed to have a gin in her hand although she was past work of any kind.
But I preferred the rougher Duke of York which was much more of a sawdust- on-the-floor type pub and not so packed with painters and writers. Quite a good number of Greek Cypriots used the pub and occasionally there would be some hor- rendous punch-ups. Another hang-out was Tony's Café at 92 Charlotte Street. The café was always changing ownership between Tony and his chef depending on how their games of gin rummy had gone the night before. I can't see that situation now except in Chinatown. Things have qui- etened down. I can't think of a single per- son today who could be described, even loosely, as being a Bohemian.
And now the only good baker's shop in Soho has just had to close down because they could no longer afford the rent. In a twinkling of the eye it became a dirty book and video shop. The butcher opposite is also finished. So am I.
Well, nearly. I haven't been out of this flat now for a month. There are very few places you can be pushed to in a wheelchair in this city. For example, the gents in the Groucho Club is in the base- ment two flights down and the staircase down to the Academy Club is like a precipice. When I did go out after I broke my hip and my legs gave up, I noticed steps everywhere and very few sloping kerb- stones. There are consolations, though, and one of them is Vera arriving like the Queen of Sheba every morning to present me with a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich. I have become addicted to them all.
Previous page
