Tonight:
4°c
"Young m-a-a-a-an! Yong maaaaaaannnn!" was what my first encounter with the seedy magic of Soho's fabled netherworld sounded like. I was 18 years old, running an errand for the magazine where I then worked as a slave, and going harmlessly about my business when this nicotinous crone leapt from a narrow sidestreet and grabbed my sleeve with greasy thumb.
"You got a girlfriend yong maaaan?? I'll show you where the girls are, hmm, yong maaaan?" So demented was her delivery that it took me a while to figure out what she was selling.
I think of her without nostalgia when I read that Westminster is aiming to shut down the last of its illegal sex shops and clip joints. Any service industry for which she was - to use the jargon - the "customer-facing" side of the business is one we can probably do without.
There'll be all the usual starry-eyed guff by professional roués - the sort of late joiners to the Colony Room who bore on about having once nearly met Francis Bacon - about how Soho won't be what it was without its dingy clip joints, its smack-faced walk-up hookers and its shabby, bead-curtained purveyors of out-of-date sex films.
The truth is, if you want filth there are better and filthier ways to get it, and most of us enjoy Soho despite, rather than because of, the crumbling ruins of its vice trade.
I do like those grim old pubs like the Pillars and the Coach that once served Soho's alkies with their gin-and-hot-water. But let's not start some sentimental campaign to make Soho the Disneyland of 1970s grot.
* My views on this may, of course, be a function of having in the past six months turned into a hateful, child-expecting, antiques-shopping, organic-buying north London media arse. Such, anyway, was the drift of my thoughts when I found myself in a garden centre in Highgate last week.
When I moved house I inherited a few square feet of patio and a number of pots of dirt. It felt seemly to visit the garden centre. But where does the ungardener start? I contemplated bulbs, seeds, propagators, compost, seed potatoes. After an hour and three-quarters I came away with one packet of mustard seeds.
These I sowed in some soggy kitchen roll. Three days later, I have succeeded in growing mould.
* Michael Jackson takes a brave risk, doesn't he, with his residency at the O2? Reports seem confused as to whether it will be as few as 10 or as many as 50 nights - and my guess is that's deliberate. He may need the bunce, but at this stage in his career doing too many nights, and not selling out, would be fatal.
Reader views (4)
Soho has always been a playground, right back to its earliest 18th century days. The best of Soho will survive, but who will really mourn the loss of the sleaze?
- Marian Neary, London N1, UK, 09/03/2009 21:31
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Sam, you are so right about Soho. Not that I don't want it's vile brothels closed down. But the tailors, the food shops, the pubs, the street market,the odd newsagents, the cafes - all that is authentic should indeed be protected. It's the last vestige of real bohemia this city has left...unless you count Kentish Town, humbly sitting beneath your heights of Highgate.
- Amanda, London, UK, 06/03/2009 17:43
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In magical Lisle St (electronics, y'know - The Diagon Alley of its day) at the end of the sixties, a nice girl said: 'Got the time, Dearie?' Fortunately I had a large gold pocket watch in my chaste waistcoat, and was able to tell her. Now I worry about having wasted my youth.
- Steve, London, England, 06/03/2009 16:15
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Sam Leith, your columns are brilliant. So glad the Standard made space for you when the Telegraph one went. I really look forward to reading them. Toby Young, Richard Godwin and Charlotte Ross also get my thumbs up. Sometimes I even buy the paper for them (alright, that's going a bit far)
- Nick R-D, London, 06/03/2009 11:59
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