Soho days

The cartoon drawn for Norman Balon's 90th, by Michael Heath

My mind has drifted back to Soho in recent days. There was a time, a dozen years or so ago, when I was a regular in the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, or Norman’s as landlord Norman Balon hoped it would be called but rarely was.

A new book ‘Soho in the Eighties’, by the excellent Daily Telegraph journalist Christopher Howse, has triggered this wave of nostalgia; not that I was present for the escapades he recounts, with the tragicomedic figures likes of Jeffrey Bernard, Daniel Farson, and Francis Bacon dominating his work. Many of the stories, though, are familiar and a few of the characters were known to me.

A central figure in Mr Howse’s enjoyable book is the aforementioned Norman Balon. Now approaching 91, Norman styled himself as the ‘rudest landlord in London’. Every Christmas, regulars would be handed a mug bearing the slogan alongside a cartoon of Norman bellowing ‘You’re barred!’. I had four or five of these once but they have all gone but for one which is hidden from view and all are forbidden from using.

The surviving mug

Norman could certainly be very rude. One quiet afternoon in the early 2000s I was there with a drink, a couple of others were elsewhere in the pub and Norman was leaning over the bar reading a newspaper. A family of American tourists entered and a very-mannered lady possessing a grating, nails-on-blackboard accent, asked ‘could we see the hot menu please?’

Without looking up from his paper, Norman growled: ‘We don’t have a hot menu and we don’t serve fucking tourists, now fuck off’.

Clearly shocked, the American lady replied: ‘Well, that wasn’t the reply we expected’, before swiftly scuttling from the bar.

The few people there simply swallowed their laughter in their drinks and Norman looked up smiling, ‘I enjoyed that’.

Another time, I found Norman with his arm in a sling. I asked what had happened and it emerged he’d been pushed to the ground after leaning on the car of a fellow who had foolishly parked outside the pub in Greek Street.

‘He told me to get off his car and I told him to “fuck off cunt” and he pushed me and I fell to the ground,’ he cheerily recounted. The police had turned up and asked Norman if he wanted to press charges.  ‘No,’ he’d replied, ‘it was my own fucking fault.’

Despite his best efforts, however, Norman was not only a good pub landlord but evidently was and remains a decent man with a warm heart. It wouldn’t have looked so good on a mug though.

Soho in the Eighties, by Christopher Howse, is published by Bloomsbury.