Suggs and the City: Journeys Through Disappearing London (4 page)

The reason the French has lost none of its
je ne sais quoi
is down to the fact that Lesley and Noel have kept the place pretty much how it was in Gaston’s time, and even maintained the arcane practice of serving beer in half-pint glasses only. I’ve always believed this to be a Gallic custom that had some special significance but I recently discovered how off-kilter my theory has been all these years: beer is served in halves at the French because Gaston didn’t have room for pint glasses behind the bar. One good thing about having a rule is that you can break it. So every year, on 1 April, the shelving is extended and they break with tradition and have a Pints Day. For the last three years I have pulled the first pint of the day, hence my photo on the wall. It’s all for charity, and always a very jolly affair, but I don’t tend to hang around too long, as it’s not just beer you can order by the pint, it’s anything you want. I’m usually gone by the first order for gin.

Well, that’s enough digression, we have an onerous schedule to follow. Come on, keep up at the back! Man cannot live by drink alone. Although many round here have tried. Including Ian Board, the second manager of the Colony following the redoubtable Jewish lesbian Muriel Belcher, who reckoned the only nourishment he was getting for many years of his life was from the lemon in his gin and tonic.

Back in 1951 Daniel Farson moved on to Wheeler’s fish restaurant on Old Compton Street at 2 p.m. In its time Wheeler’s was one of London’s premier eateries, with a menu which boasted 32 different ways of serving lobster and sole. Once there, he met up with some of his arty chums - like Lucien Fried, I mean Freud - and he paints quite a picture of the place (geddit?) in its heyday. However, Wheeler’s rolled out of Soho a few years ago and there are only a handful of restaurants that remain from that time. Jimmy’s Greek restaurant on Frith Street is still going (without Jimmy though) and I often used to go to this basement eatery with my mum for a slap-up plate of moussaka and chips and a vintage bottle of retsina. Legend has it that Jimmy’s subterranean vaulted ceiling was originally built as a section of an unsuccessful tube line. Maybe they could sell it to Crossrail: just imagine, you could then drop your kebab before you’ve even left the tube station!

It’s fair to say that I wasn’t really a gastronome in my teens or early 20s. But I wasn’t alone in that: the food revolution was some years off. The only gastronomy you could find in pubs back then came in the form of ham or cheese rolls in a Perspex bread bin on the bar, not forgetting a pickled egg starter, of course. However, exotic food and I made up a few years later and are now the best of friends. Though I still keep my distance from the jellied eel, much as I have tried to embrace that particular delicacy.

Out of the vast array of restaurants that the district has to offer, one of my current favourites is Quo Vadis on Dean Street, which has also added its own rather terrific members’ club to Soho’s firmament. Quo Vadis was not only around in the early 1950s, it was a Soho fixture before the talkies arrived. The building itself has its own global claim to fame, as it was upstairs here that Karl Marx put the finishing touches to his romantic comedy
Das Kapital
. But this classy establishment has changed greatly since its first owner, Peppino Leoni, passed away a few years ago, so I think a visit to another Farson favourite is in order, the Gay Hussar on Greek Street.

I’m not a regular at the Gay Hussar, although every time I set foot in the place I feel I should become one because this small, dimly lit, wood-panelled, banquette-lined restaurant has real atmosphere. The layout of the dining area has barely changed in 60 odd years and nor, by the looks of things, has the menu, which makes this place a real retro experience. There can’t be many finer sights, on a cold winter’s day, than a plate piled high with roast duck, mashed potato and red cabbage, and a quaffable glass of Hungarian red or three.

The Gay Hussar began life as the Budapest in the late 40s, before its founder, Victor Sassie, opted for the new name in the early 50s. The Happy Hussar would probably have saved a lot of confusion over the years. Being a late convert to the Gay Hussar, I didn’t get to meet Victor, who sold the place in 1988, but I recently shared a glass there with actress Amanda Barrie - she of
Carry On
and
Coronation Street
fame - who remembers him from the early days, thanks to the kindness he showed her when she was an impoverished aspiring dancer and actress.

I decided to take Amanda back to the Gay Hussar for the first time in over 50 years. Sharing a bottle of Bull’s Blood in this restaurant beloved by journalists, media figures and left-wing politicians, many of whom feature in the huge collection of framed caricatures that hang from the walls, Amanda revealed how, as a waif-like teenager, Victor Sassie took pity on her and used to give her cheese and crackers in the restaurant because the food provided at the Theatre Girls Club where she lodged was not what you might call
haute cuisine
. Just think, had it not been for Victor’s generosity, Amanda might well have jacked the acting lark in and we’d never have got to see her Cleopatra, the role she was born to play.

Some film buffs might argue that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton are the classic classical lovers in the Hollywood blockbuster
Cleopatra
, but for me it has to be Amanda and her dashing Mark Antony, played by Sid James. No film can be entirely without merit if it includes the classic line ‘Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!’ And speaking of old cheese, the cheese that Victor fed her wasn’t just any old cheese: no, this was a special, soft, reddish Hungarian cheese that was served on an oval silver platter and resembled a mousse. Over the course of our lunch Amanda recalled the cheese so vividly, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t eaten it since, that I decided there and then to investigate whether or not a little reunion might be possible.

As I mentioned, the menu has barely altered at the Gay Hussar, so I thought there was a fair chance that the mystery cheese was still being served. I secretly described it to the manager, who informed me that it was called Liptauer and, yes, it was still on the menu. When he plonked the cheese mousse surprise down in front of Amanda five minutes later, the look on her face was not unlike that of a startled rabbit, which you’ll be glad to hear is not on the menu here. Do not underestimate the power of cheese. A Proustian experience was triggered the moment Amanda dug her cracker into the orange globe and the memories came flooding back.

Astonishingly, Amanda first arrived in Soho in 1948, aged just 13, having been expelled from her school in Lancashire. She moved into the Theatre Girls Club, which was situated directly opposite Victor’s restaurant. This building, which today provides accommodation for the homeless, was initially built as the Soho Club and Home for Working Girls in 1883 and provided short- and long-term accommodation for ‘young women engaged in business, and students’. In the 1920s it became the Theatre Girls Club and provided the same service as above, but exclusively for women working in the theatre. In the 20s, acting was a precarious occupation for women and the link between this profession and the oldest profession in the book hadn’t yet gone away.

The key function of the Theatre Girls Club was to prevent unemployed actresses from considering a rather different ‘role’ between jobs out of financial necessity. The seamier side of the district wouldn’t have escaped their notice, owing to the fact that, prior to the introduction of the Street Offences Act (1959), scores of prostitutes openly touted for trade on the pavements of Soho. Girls didn’t have too far to travel in order to fall from grace, so to speak. Amanda remembers the ladies of the night as being rather friendly and said that because she was so young they used to look out for her and made sure she got home safely.

The Theatre Girls Club was also the temporary home of former Tiller Girl and future Speaker of the House of Commons Betty Boothroyd. My all-roller-skating, all-dancing, cartwheeling late mother-in-law, Christina Martin (the cartwheels normally took place at parties - when a chap was being a bit tedious she would hand him her glass, do a cartwheel, retrieve the glass and say, ‘As you were saying...’), also lived at this charitable institution when she was between jobs in variety theatre.

Amanda lived at the Theatre Girls Club for several years and left when her career began to take off. I got the chance to go inside this white-stone and red-brick building with Amanda, but sadly no trace remains of the fabulous Victorian interior she remembers from her time at the club. However, one thing that’s changed very little is the view from the fourth floor, where her dormitory used to be, although the slap-and-tickle goings-on she used to witness occurring in the upstairs rooms across the street appear to be a thing of the past. Looking out to the north end of Greek Street you can see Soho Square and just before it sits the Gay Hussar.

 

Having feasted on wild cherry soup, goulash and a nibble of cheese, it’s 3 p.m. and time for a couple of sherbets at one of the most remarkable survivors from Daniel Farson’s 1951 Soho sojourn. I’m off to the Colony Room Club on Dean Street which has barely changed in 60 years . . . well, until very recently, that is. It is with the gravest of expressions that I have to report that since this visit the Colony has served up its last beverage and has gone the way of the dodo, and with it Soho has lost its bohemian heartbeat and one of its best friends. Back in the days of Prohibition - well, that’s what I call the era when pubs shut at 2.30 p.m. and didn’t open again till 5.30 p.m. - a Soho drinker could potentially die of thirst in the afternoon, but none did thanks to a loophole in the licensing laws that permitted private members’ clubs to sell alcohol from 3 p.m. till 11 p.m. And the most celebrated Soho private members’ drinking den of the period was the Colony. Opened in 1948 by the formidable Muriel Belcher, this watering hole soon became the favoured afternoon hangout of committed hedonists and will be forever woven into the fabric of Soho’s history.

One of the club’s strictest rules remained to the very end: members must not be boring. Belligerent, bevvied-up, bellicose, bombastic, boisterous and bonkers were all by the by, but boring . . . um, no! Unfortunately, the selection process wasn’t foolproof because I managed to slip through the net, but, as I mentioned earlier, I first started coming here before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and I think I was finally rewarded on account of my persistence. Yes, I’m nothing if not persistent and often ended up in that state after a session at the Colony.

I well remember the first time I went through the Colony’s emerald-green door on Dean Street and up the dingy staircase to the tiny club room on the first floor, its walls covered with artefacts donated by the constant stream of artists who’d been seduced by the club’s raffish charm over the years. I was seven years old when I entered the claustrophobic, bilious-green club room that day in 1968, and when I left a couple of hours later I’d probably aged another ten in terms of life experience. The Colony was the sort of place that you either instantly fell in love with and felt right at home in, or took fright at and couldn’t wait to get out of. I fell straight away into the former category and have fallen in, and indeed out of, it ever since.

The first obstacle to overcome when venturing into the Colony was the stream of expletives that Muriel Belcher hurled at you on arrival from her ‘throne’, which was a barstool by the door. If you could handle that, which many couldn’t, you were in. My mum had no problems with the language or behaviour at the Colony as she worked in a similar club just down the road called the Kismet, which had a navy-blue hardboard ceiling with stars and moons cut out. The Kismet was located in an airless, damp, smoky cellar off the Charing Cross Road and was nicknamed ‘the iron lung’ and ‘death in the afternoon’ by those who’d had the pleasure. It was a place where the low life met the elite. In the
Daily Telegraph
obituary of the fiery, red-haired journalist, writer and Soho addict Sandy Fawkes (December 2005), who had a liking for such drinking establishments and was a friend of my mum’s, a story is recounted of a passing visitor asking what the strange smell was at the Kismet. ‘Failure,’ was the reply.

The atmosphere and clientele of the Colony that I remember from my first visit probably hadn’t altered much since Daniel Farson first stepped over Muriel’s threshold in 1951. The place very quickly became a popular hangout for budding artists after a skint Francis Bacon walked into the newly opened club in 1948 and Muriel offered him a tenner a week to attract new members to the club. Bacon encouraged fellow painters and their wealthy patrons to join the Colony where they socialised with a diverse array of characters whom Muriel felt would complement their artistic bent, all of them packed tightly inside that dark, smoky room. There were jazz musicians, painters, toffs, strippers (still wearing their feather boas), poets and gangsters. If homosexuality was still ‘the love that dared not speak its name’ on the streets of London, here in the Colony it could sing, shout, dance and paint its name and address.