Low life
Name it Mezzo
Jeffrey Bernard
There has been a little storm in my teacup these past two weeks — well, not really a storm but some choppy weather over Sir Terence Conran's use of my title for a book, Soho Night and Day, which I did in collaboration with Frank Norman in 1966. Ours was a picture book like Con- ran's, and Frank Norman wrote the text while I took some unintentionally softly- focused photographs. Frank and I were given a lot of hospitality by Soho restaura- teurs, shopkeepers and publicans during the making of the book and it was whisky all the way to the haze of the book launch party in the Colony Room Club.
I suppose it doesn't matter much that the title has been used again but it irritates me considerably that Conran and his associates have not had the good manners to acknowledge me. But then the ex-husband of the author of Lace has never been noted for his good taste. When I complained to Conran's PR about this, she quite rightly said that there was no copyright on the title of a book and she said that there were hun- dreds of books that had the same title. I said, 'You mean like War and Peace and Oliver Twist,' and she said, 'Well, that's dif- ferent.' I suppose it is, but at least our lousy book is out of print and a second- hand copy of it now fetches nearly £50.
All of this is trivial and what is far more important and disturbing is the fact that Conran's version of Soho Night and Day was published when he opened his new gigantic restaurant, Mezzo Mezzo, in War- dour Street a fortnight ago. A colleague on the Daily Express who was there told me that he had heard Conran say that he now wanted to be a part of Soho and a Soho character — dread phrase, that 'Soho char- acter'. To play that part requires a bit more than £1 million in your current account and it is something that he should have been rehearsing for about 30 years. I'm not say- ing that Soho is a particularly good sce- nario — it should have closed ten years ago — but it was a club of sorts which would have only given membership to the likes of Conran had he been something of a patron to artists, bums and layabouts. He is, how- ever, a businessman just like the advertis- ing men and the television commercial film makers who infest the Groucho Club bar.
But perhaps Conran has designed his own portable telephone. At any rate, my portable grapevine tells me that Conran's idea of paradise is eating nouveau cuisine in Wardour Street to the sound of a tin whis- tle fanfare. If these awful customers of the likes of Conran had to pay for their meals out of their own pockets and not out of expenses they would have to try and make a living selling hot buttered toast.
I wonder if other districts and villages in London have their share of characters? I know Islington has, with its full share of Guardian readers and bleeding hearts lib- erals, but how would you become, say, a Hammersmith character and what sort of outrageous, progressive and Bohemian behaviour would be needed to pigeon-hole a man or woman as being a Maida Vale character? Perhaps Conran has got his geography a little askew. Perhaps Cornwall or East Anglia might be the right places for his next restaurant. Both places are alive with the sound of typewriters printing trendy novels written by yuppie executives in their country habitats.
Meanwhile, my ears have suffered the inconvenience of having three electricians drilling holes all day into the walls of this flat re-wiring it. And at the same time I gather that alterations have been made in the Coach and Horses where Norman has had the chewing gum on the floor refur- bished with a new carpet whose pattern, I am told, looks like a pool of vomit. He gazes at it proudly all day long, like a fond parent beholding his firstborn. With his knowledge and experience of catering, I am surprised that Sir Terence Conran has not yet found him a place in his employ. He is, after all, a Soho character and therefore an obvious choice to be Manager of Mezzo, Mezzo and author of yet another Conran edition of Soho Night and Day.
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