DON'T CALL TIME ON THE CITY
but some bars deserve to be shut
YOU could say that I am a fairly deter- mined drinker in the City, in the sense that I have been at it pretty solidly for the past 15 years. So before I share my views about the present arrangements, I'd like, if that's all right, to put a paragraph or two in your ear about the past, the bygone joys sort of thing. I would venture to suggest, at the risk of contradiction and of being convicted as a trafficker in nostalgia, that pubs were far more colourful then than they are now, and nowhere more so than around the Stock Exchange and Lloyd's of London, where, as one might expect, a vast amount of drinking was done. Backwards travels my gaze to Birch's in Angel Court and Moore's in Copthall Court, both of which had a culture of very massive potations, and a faintly illicit feel to their methods. In the 1960s both places were equipped with a number of small closets where drinkers would occasionally take willing bar- maids or secretaries for sex (only the toffs paid for a room at the Great Eastern Hotel) while their companions continued drinking in the bar; and in those days, or so my sources inform me, there was such a thing as a willing barmaid. This made for the occasional outbreak of venereal disease, but there was an old gent in Copthall Court known as Doc Harris, who offered a peni- cillin injection in the buttocks for L2. George Westropp, now a partner at Touche Deloitte but a financial journalist in the 1960s, recalls that there was a stockbrokers' habit of 'testing the market' at 11 a.m. every day, which meant going out for a drink. After Wilson's election there was quite a bit of testing the market going on,' he recalls, 'and the market kept crashing. `There was a song at the time called "No Milk Today" and I vividly remember one afternoon seeing what seemed like half of the stock market spilling out onto the street from a bar called Slater's. They were singing their own version of the song, which went, "No gin today, the gin has gone away, we're drinking halves of beer, that's the truth, I fear."' A few doors away from Slater's was a drinking and gambling club called Contango (on a site now occu- pied by an Irish bar called the Arbi- trageur). Westropp recalls walking past Contango one afternoon with his father, then the City editor of the Sunday Express, and seeing 'grey-haired gentlemen in pin- stripe suits crawling down the pavement. I was warned by my father never to go in there as it was a den of iniquity.' Contango was only a few yards from the back door of the Stock Exchange. Among the other favourite places, now gone, were the Coal- hole, the Butler's Head, the Square Mile Club, Chez When and Amy's, where if the landlady did not recognise a customer she would warn him off in the most marked and Anglo-Saxon manner.
In their place — and now the enthusiast will have to forgive me if I sound curmud- geonly — there is, for instance, Brodie's, a horrid bar and restaurant with branches near Liverpool Street and at Blackfriars. The noise is deafening, the crush appalling and the floor swimming with lager. There are a number of similar venues in nearby Broadgate, too numerous to name, but almost as bad. Even the Corney & Barrow above Broadgate Circle is intolerable when busy. There is so much choice now, with such a profusion of bars, that the favourite old haunts which characterised particular markets no longer do so. Also, with most of the markets entirely screen-based, their members are spread far and wide. The financial futures market remains, for a short time anyway, in one place, and the epicentre of its traders' drinking culture is Walbrook, a semi-pedestrianised lane run- ning from the Bank of England down to Cannon Street. Two bars there, Deacon's and the Slug and Lettuce, are characterised by booming music, neon lights and crowds spilling onto the streets, and are to be avoided at all costs. These places, inciden- tally, are also favoured by the traders at the London Commodity Exchange.
Lloyd's insurance market also remains. The traditional money market pub, the Jamaica Wine House, off Cornhill, also known as the Jampot, has considerable character and attracts a few tourists, though they would do well to avoid the Pinot Grigio. But most insurance folk now opt for the Lamb and the Moon pubs in the redeveloped Leadenhall Market, where again the crush can be unpleasant. In the lunchtime lull between sessions at the local London Metal Exchange, metals traders chaff the insurers.
Of the few pleasant places remaining, one should include the Corney & Barrow behind the Royal Exchange, which was once known as the Greenhouse and serves decent champagne in civilised surround- ings. El Vino is a reliable chain, with branches in the Fleet Street, Blackfriars, London Wall and Cannon Street areas, and a wine-list of almost unequalled quality and value. None plays music, although the Can- non Street branch tends to attract an unruly crowd from time to time.
Perhaps the biggest change of all in City drinking, though, is that it now goes on in the evenings, and perhaps this is the moment, since I should like to leave you with an upbeat thought, to nail the misap- prehension that 'no one really does it any more — not like the old days'. Indeed , the claim that drinking has fallen away in the City is absurd. It is true that there are cer- tain types of corporate bankers and ambi- tious lawyers who no longer drink during the working day. But since 1986, the dawn of the Yuppie era, when the American dis- ease of abstinence was believed to be spreading like a virus, what have we seen? Not only have pubs remained open, they have multiplied. Thanks to the change in the licensing laws, I doubt if there is any bar in the Square Mile that shuts between the lunchtime and the evening sessions. The myth which has accreted of a sober and responsible City is, I suspect, pure pro- paganda put about to reassure increasingly critical governments that all is well among our financiers.
When I first started drinking in the Square Mile, virtually all pubs were closed by 8 p.m.. Now the City is a drinking desti- nation after work. The modern bars stay open and the music blares until 11 p.m. and beyond. Streets which were once empty are crowded with traffic and pedes- trians. The fast train home to Essex from Liverpool Street is known as the Vomit Comet. It is not a pretty sight, though it is, in a way, reassuring to the traditionalist.
Damien McCrystal is diarist of the Sunday Business and its restaurant critic. He is a respected authority on drinking in the City.
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