More about London pubs

One reason I am interested in pubs is because in the remote past I was a publican. Leaving aside the bit where I foolishly opted out of Oxford University and became a trainee hotel manager, and leaving out the period when I became Assistant Manager of the Sefton Hotel, Babbacombe, Devon (one of my 58 different jobs), in 1956 I was Bar Manager and cellarman at Shepherds Tavern, Shepherds Market. Mayfair, London W.1. It used to be a pub for the posh people who lived in the area, and the performers on Radio Luxembourg. If you are old enough to remember when pop music came from Radio Luxembourg, Your Station of the Stars, and Hilversum (Dames an Heeren, Jonges an Mechas, heer is Hilversum Ein), spelling probably wrong but that's how it sounded, Dutch, before pirate radio and long before Radio One, those Luxembourg broadcasts did not come from Luxembourg City, but were pre-recorded in studios at 38 Hertford Street, round the corner from Shepherds. Radio Luxembourg invented the Top Twenty in 1948. So regular customers in my bar were people like Alan Dell, Alan Freeman, Jimmy Young, Kenny Everett, Jimmy Savile, and sometimes Jimmy Edwards (handlebar moustache). I have no idea what he had to do with Radio Luxembourg, but perhaps he lived round the corner, as did Stirling Moss. Jimmy Edwards drank only halves, but lots of them.

In my time off, I used to do the odd shift behind the bar at the Grenadier, Old Barrack Yard, off Knightsbridge, helping out my mate Tom (forgotten his second name, but they still have a photo of him in the bar.) I think it was he who invented the particular version of the Bloody Mary for which the Grenadier is now famous. One Sunday afternoon after closing time (pubs used to close in the afternoon) we decided to find out what was buried under a mound in the cellar floor. The Grenadier was once the unofficial officers' mess for the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, and in 1957 the back end of the cellar had an earth floor. In a corner, the earth floor had a small but distinct  mound. That Sunday afternoon Tom, me and Phil a barman from the Dorchester decided to excavate it.

About six inches down, we found an earthenware flagon, carefully corked, with the cork covered in oilcloth tied tight with string and sealed with wax. We chipped off the wax, removed the cloth, looked at the cork. Not a cork as in bottle, but about three and a half inches in diameter. We decided a corkscrew would break it up, so a very sharp knife was fetched from the kitchen and we eased it away from the neck of the jar and lifted it out in one piece. Unmistakably alcoholic fumes enveloped us. We all breathed deeply, amazed.

"Better get glasses," said Tom sensibly, and went off to get some. Came back with Paris Goblets - that's a small wineglass to the uninitiated. We poured an amber liquid from the stone jar into our three glasses. It was like thin golden syrup, but it smelled so divine we had to taste it. It was syrupy indeed, but nutty, alcoholic and delicious. We had a glass each and decanted the rest into bottles and corked them.

The stone jar was embossed with the name of a Chelsea wine merchant. We looked them up in the telephone directory and found they no longer existed. Tom took the empty jar to his friend who ran Gordons Wine Bar in Villiers Stree by Charing Cross. His friend was an expert on the history of booze and also London. He recognised the Chelsea merchant and told us they were importers and distributors of Madeira wine, who went bust in 1847. This suggested that our jar was at least 100 years old. Apparently it was not surprising that the contents were still alcoholic. At that time Madeira was fortified with large amounts of brandy and would last at least 100 years. Had it been in a bottle it would have been worth a fortune. But it was a bit viscous, so we added  a bit of brandy to thin it down, and drank it gradually and with great joy over the following twelve months, or perhaps less.

The reason my thoughts strayed to pubs in Mayfair and Knightsbridge (not areas I visit much, now I live near the Lea Valley and Waltham and Epping Forests, far away from central London), was that I had to attend the Annual General Meeting of the London Branch of the Old Petriburgians Assocation at the Wilton Arms in Kinnerton Street. The only real purpose of the meeting was to decide where we were going to have our next dinner, usually same place as last year, and the year before. We try to make the AGM as short as possible, re-electing everybody nem con, so that we can concentrate on the lamb hotpot they always do at the Wilton Arms, and of course the wine. All very enjoyable, but the other members are city types and none of them lives in London, so they have to get home. So off they go and there I am on my own.

The Grenadier is just around the corner. I poke my head around the door. It is packed with loud Americans and there is no chance of getting to the bar without employing a fixed bayonet, so I decide to carry on to Hertford Street and Shepherds. It has gone down in the world. Gone is the notice which used to say "No dogs except Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, by order of His Majesty King Charles 11, 1671." I do not think the present building could have been there in that year, but in my day it did have a genuine sedan chair as a telephone booth. It also had a notice saying "Unaccompanied ladies will not be served." So the good ladies who stood guard in Hertford Street could not get a drink until they had solicited a gentleman who was not in too much of a hurry. But now Shepherds has two television screens and a wooden boarded floor. The floorboards are probably old, but do they not know that Shepherds was the first pub in London to have a fitted carpet, wall to wall?

Michael Aspel used to come in for half of Guinness. I bet he doesn't drink there now. Long before him I remember the Marquess of Milford Haven (Mrs Queen's cousin) coming in and asking for a box of matches. Of course we sold matches in those days, two pence a box. He handed over a five pound note. They were white in those days. Most people earned less than five pounds in a week. Brenda, our cockney barmaid of considerable but indeterminable age was not nonplussed. She had worked in Mayfair for thirty years, so she had seen a white fiver before, even if I had not. She held it up to the light, decided it was OK, put it in the till, leaving the till drawer open. She gave his Lordship the box of matches then took from the safe a five pound bag of copper coins, opened it, removed two pence from it which she put into the till. She handed the bag of coins to his Lordship and before he had time to protest, which he was about to do, Brenda said firmly, "Legal tender Milord." "Indeed it is," said the Marquess, "and thank you so much." As he went out of the door, several of the customers clapped their hands. Brenda did not acknowledge their applause.

I sat on a stool at the end of the bar looking dignified. Some young men came in and one of them came up to me and said, "Nice pub you have here sir."
"Its not actually my pub," I said, "but it was 52 years ago."
"Impossible," he said, "you don't look old enough." Well of course I don't and I don't feel that old, but I take no credit for that. It just happens to some people and not others.

So I sat on my stool in Shepherds and remembered. Moira Shearer used to come in with her husband Ludovik Kennedy. They sometimes had a drink in the bar, but more often went straight upstairs to the very discreet retaurant on the first floor. One of my regulars in the bar was Prince Hassan of Afghanistan, a sweet little man who invited me to a party in a flat in Bryanston Street, at the back of the Cumberland Hotel. That was an eye-opener. I had been there for at least an hour before I realised that everybody, even the ones in dresses and skirts, was male, and that everybody but me was gay, even the very senior Naval and Army officers, in uniform. Interestingly the RAF was not represented. It needed considerable diplomacy to exit past the very butch and muscular doormen, who I had assumed were there to keep undesirables out, though they seemed to want to keep me in. The Prince came into Shepherds the following evening and apologised. "I'd never seen you with a girl," he said, "so I assumed you were one of us." Well he'd only ever seen me when I was working. I wonder if he's still alive. He'd be in his seventies now, probably the King.

You can get a 38 bus in Piccadilly to Clapton Pond, where you change to a 48 to Walthamstow Central. I prefer buses to tubes when I have time to spare. You see more. Of course Victoria Line from Green Park would have halved the journey time. Either way for us OAP's it's free with a Freedom Pass. Wonderful!