Suggs and the City: Journeys Through Disappearing London Read Online Free

pop pioneers. Without them there would’ve been no Tommy Steele or Billy Fury, no Cliff and the Shadows, no Johnny Kidd and, further on up pop’s long and winding road, no me. What a cultural vacuum there could’ve been.
    I’ve been going to Bar Italia for aeons and, being the hardy individual I am, I like to take my coffee al fresco . Partly because of a pathological aversion to offices, I try to have all my meetings there, much to the consternation of my agent. It can be quite cramped as we huddle round tables and it can get a bit fresh in the winter, but I am sure it’s extremely efficient. But more important than efficiency, there are few finer places to sit and watch the kaleidoscopic street theatre of Soho unfold.
    Because the concept of sitting at a pavement table was as remote as closing down a post office in 1951, Daniel Farson watched the Soho world go by from inside Torino’s Cafe, and what a different world it was. In the days before freezers and fridges were commonplace, ice used to be delivered in huge blocks by robust geezers who, in Soho, were usually of Italian descent. Farson mentions blocks of ice that were left outside shuttered restaurants and had ‘started to dribble across the pavements’. Rather as the modern out-of-town revellers do now on a Friday night.
    He also talks about the large number of musicians who’d venture into Soho on Monday mornings armed with instruments in their cases, making their way to the Musicians’ Union offices on Archer Street in the hope of securing employment in a dance band, theatre orchestra, club band and so on.
    Around this period, Bar Italia was set to take delivery of a new-fangled machine made by Gaggia, thus making it one of the first espresso bars in London and, to paraphrase the famous song that featured in the show written by the ex-jailbird and Soho drinking accomplice of Daniel Farson, Frank Norman, with lyrics and music provided by Lionel Bart, the arrival of frothy coffee meant that fings weren’t what they used to be.
    Unfortunately, things nowadays aren’t what they used to be either when it comes to classic, family-run cafes. In the 1950s Soho had the greatest concentration of Formica-festooned Italian coffee bars in London, but over the past decade or so many of my old favourites have served their last fried slice. Perhaps the most shocking closure in recent times was the much-loved New Piccadilly Cafe on Denman Street, which first opened its doors coincidentally in 1951. Described by classic-cafe connoisseur Adrian Maddox as a ‘cathedral amongst caffs’, the New Piccadilly’s populuxe interior remained intact right up until 2007 when a rent hike of Land’s End to John O’Groats proportions forced its owner, Lorenzo Marioni - who’d put in over 50 years’ service at the cafe - to throw in the tea towel. This great cafe, with its iconic 50s décor, was like a set straight out of Expresso Bongo , a film that starred Cliff Richard in that famous, not-to-be-reprised role of Bongo Herbert. Cliff is still clinging to his youthful looks but the New Piccadilly has bitten the dust. Its closure sounds a bit of a warning. I feel I ought to remove my bowler as a sign of respect when I mention it. And, to be honest, every time its name does pass my lips or comes to my mind I feel sickened that I/we/they didn’t do more to save such an important cultural icon.
    Fortunately for us another caff that belongs to old Soho and is still open for business is the Lorelei on Bateman Street. The wood-panelled exterior of this A-list anachronism is painted in the colours of the Italian flag, and its village-hall-like interior features a large, tobacco-stained mural of a mermaid that covers one wall. Also on the menu, décor or otherwise, are faux-leather banquettes, dodgy light fittings, a linoleum floor, creaky chairs, perfect pasta and pizzas, excellent espresso, great chips, an elderly owner and, just when you thought things couldn’t get more authentic,