Old Soho, running up against New Soho, running up against tourists.
I sat in The Coach and Horses tonight and watched Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. I recognised Hilary from The French House sitting just next to me. With her, a well known cartoonist, an epoch maker of old Soho. Through Maddy and The Factory in the past I’ve been made welcome by that shrinking crowd. The cartoonist tonight was angry about tourists. “I was there, you know, when he decided to kill himself.” This is a play about a personality, magnified, localised, amplified. You can’t be like that any more. Ollie Reed. O’Toole. They all died their wet deaths, and what remained? This kind of thing. Eulogies to people who threw their colour at nothing.
There is nothing to celebrate with this story, but for the “glorious past. This is a fucked story of self abuse pushing to idiocy. This is a charismatic beautiful man who fell apart and took his own life, and the play we have about him promotes his monster. I really struggled not to hate it. It was located so perfectly, acted without bullshit and with compassion. We sat together in the pub where so much of it happened and he lost his fucking LEG to bad circulation.
Some very funny audience snipes after the show, particularly into the “20 grand an episode soho dwarf” now running private eye. I had a good night. I didn’t want to celebrate wet death.
This morning I woke up to remember we had guests for lunch. Mad rush to M&S to buy chicken and bits. Frank went tidy mad and I cooked the hell out of everything. Three hours after I left the house in a panic there was bird with cauliflower cheese and honey carrots and roast tatties and stuffing and gravy. Nom. I got to hang with old friends and Frank.
Now I’m happy to be home again post show. I drunk loads of wine. I’m good to stop. But Tristan, Frank and I are sat around a table, and Tristan is likely staying on the sofa.
Sleep? Hopefully. Soon.
AlBarclay 