Low life
Hell on earth
Jeffrey Bernard
The other day I read that some lunatic in the West Country is to open a pub that will not be selling alcoholic drinks. Up until now I have always thought that hell con- sists of a mile-long bar with the staff always at the other end of it wherever you stand. Rather like the Coach and Horses in fact. Years ago, John Minton used to say that hell was a railway-station waiting room without a fire. But this proposed nonsense in Devon has got to be it and to think that I've been hell-bent on getting to hell all these years. I think I am going to be sick. What makes it even worse is that this soft drinks dispensing unit is to contain a darts board, pool table and fruit machines. You can imagine the sort of custom it will attract, can't you? War and cruelty apart it is no longer a laughing matter to be a member of the human race. All that remains now is for Norman to become a Muslim and it may not be a coincidence that the betting shop in Greek Street is of the Mecca group. But how many people does one meet in a lifetime? 75,000? Something like that I imagine. And how many of that multitude is one thankful for having met? (I could get quite depressed in a minute.) What I'm getting at is how many pubs have you or I been into that haven't been revolting in one way or another? Not a lot. The big brewers in this country are lager-orientated polluters of life and 99 per cent of their customers have brains made of formica. It's enough to drive a man to Coca-Cola.
What I can't quite work out is whether it's the guvnor or the customers that make a pub. It's something of the egg and the chicken business. It is however something of a paradox that although dear Norman is awful in almost every way — he wears Hawaiian ties with striped shirts and is a metaphorical star-fucker — if something did happen to Norman, which Allah for- bid, then the pub would never be the same again. The wheels are already falling off
the French pub but when Gaston goes that will be the end of it and if Norman makes welcome some of his more ghastly custom- ers I shall go and live in Belfast or Beirut.
But I wander further afield than Soho although it may not sound so often in this column. I accidentally went to Hampstead last week and the pubs there are ruined by the customers. How extraordinary to be a Hampstead tweedy liberal in 1985. I got the uncomfortable feeling in one pub that I was surrounded by social workers. And take Mayfair. The Audley hasn't been pillaged by the brewers as yet and the decor is still good and intact but only an American tourist or pop group could afford a decent gargle there. Chelsea of course was killed when they turned the Kings Road into a place where silly young people could buy silly clothes. It is now so awful that I make a point of directing Scandinavian tourists there as being a place of interest. Islington has become quite simply an embarrassment. You never know who you could meet in a pub there and there is now a real danger of meeting one of those women who have formed a group who advise their members that the best protection against being raped is to evacuate their bowels. As a friend who frequents the place told me he lives in great fear and dread of asking an Islington woman the way to somewhere or other only to be mistaken for a would-be rapist and subsequently be witness to an appall- ing bowel movement. We wonder do these women walk about all day holding it in? If so, it must be very painful.
The East End is another area that is out of bounds. If there is one thing that makes me nervous it is to go into what we call a who the bleedin' hell do you think you're looking at?' pub. I will only venture into such pubs escorted by Dave Potton, the guvnor of the Spectator pub, the Duke of York. Sadly the English country pub is on the way out. The Crown in Kingsclere is the best one I know but that's a long way to go for a drink and a very good meal. All the ploughmen now drink in the City. I think maybe country pubs declined when the pitch fork became obsolete. Come to think of it, the 'dry' new pub in Devon isn't my idea of hell. It's this, all around us, that's hell.
Previous page
