I had the opportunity recently to sit and talk to Tony Shrimplin who curates the Museum of Soho – a word of advise here if you hit the naughty square mile looking for it, it is a virtual museum. Tony is a long standing resident of the area and talking to him about my own personal history in Soho brought back a few memories.

I first landed in Soho aged 10/11 via a Red Bus Rover and just really didn’t know what to make of it? It was very grubby in parts back then, but it still had a crackle of excitement going on.

Anyway, about those memories. One is the second series of the TV show ‘Budgie’ which starred Adam Faith. I’ll be honest here and fess up that from time to time, I still go down a little back alleyway, thinking I might just bump in to Charlie Endell or Laughing Spam Fritter. I may have just have watched that marvellous series a few too many times.

Then there is my other Soho ‘hero’, if that word is appropriate here when talking about Jeffrey Bernard. Bernard was a journalist by trade, but he became famous more in the capacity of being a legendary character in Soho and a drinker.

Wonderfully, my Budgie and Bernard memories have a connection and that is the work of another writer, him being Keith Waterhouse. Together with Willis Hall, they wrote the ‘Budgie’ TV series and then Waterhouse went on to write the stage play ‘Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell’

I first saw the play in 1989 and the performance of actor Peter O’Toole in the lead role was an absolute joy. The combination of fantastic, witty dialogue and the masterly delivery of O’Toole was an education to some like me, then toying with the idea of writing a book. The title of the play is taken from the apology that The Spectator magazine ran in the space allotted for Bernard’s ‘Low Life’ column, when he failed to deliver copy for the deadline.

The play used the premise of Jeffrey being locked in overnight in his favourite Soho boozer ‘The Coach and Horses’ famously run by its fearsome landlord Norman Balon. Whilst waiting to be let out O’Toole regaled the audience with stories from Bernard’s colourful life.

And what a life it was. Born in London, into a middle class family, he first arrived in Soho aged 14 in 1948 and then, as he himself described it in 1978 ‘from that point I was never to look upward. It was here in the cafes and pubs of Dean Street and Old Compton Street that I was to develop my remarkable sloth, envy and self- pity.’

He moved to Soho aged 16, and was ‘active’ there in the years of The Colony Rooms run by the legendary Muriel Belcher, and he mixed with the artist Francis Bacon, photographer John Deakin, and poet Dylan Thomas, among an army of legendary debauched Soho figures.

His life was one of being wind blown really. He had a variety of jobs in between pub visits. Miner, ‘washer upper’ in restaurants, a builder, a stagehand and he also boxed professionally.

He then turned to writing.  First, he contributed a horseracing column for ‘Queen’ magazine  – racing and gambling – were another addiction.

He ended up working for thirty years for The Spectator – with his column memorably described by Jonathan Meades as ‘suicide note in weekly instalments’  – as well as Private Eye and an on and off relationship with The Sporting Life.

He was listed in ‘Who’s Who’ and appeared on Desert Island Discs

In among everything else, he married four times and had 1 daughter

My own favourite story about his drinking, which by 1986 was estimated to be two bottles of Vodka a day, is the one when asked by a doctor how he ‘took’ the drink, his reply of ‘with ice, soda and lime.’ The doctor told him to remove the lime because of his diabetes…

Towards the end, not surprisingly, Bernard was a very ill man. He had lost a leg from the complications of the diabetes – The Spectator posted on his page ‘ Jeffrey Bernard has had his leg off’ – along with failing eyesight, pancreatitis, large cysts on his neck, and his kidneys had failed. He only lived due to being wired up to a dialysis machine on a regular basis. When he gave that up, the game was over.

He died of renal failure on the 4th of September 1997, aged 65, in Soho.

Where else?

The Mumper of SE5