Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? Page 25
Bodhrán Barneys
Merton Road, SW19
Until very recently this was just a nondescript old South London pub called the White Hart before it caught the Irish disease. The only thing that seems to have changed, apart from the quite terrible name, is the plethora of beer and food information in coloured chalk sub-standard Gaelic lettering. It’s in a bloody awful location as well.
Callaghans
Piccadilly
Grossly overpriced beer, pathetic decor – ‘while it may be authentic, it’s not authentically theirs,’ said my Irish companion. Probably designed by computer for the American market. Traditional soft-soap ballads playing – probably a CD called ‘Callaghan’s Pub Favourites’. Callaghan’s even have their own merchandise – T-shirts and baseball caps. It’s really just part of a hotel. Not a real pub, more a cultural disease.
Clancys
Holloway
Attractive but expensive take on Irishana. Took me two or three attempts to find it again after my last visit which suggests that it is a state of mind.
NB Went back to this pub recently because I was starving and met a Norwegian opera singer drinking himself into a stupor. He was the only other person there and gave us a quick flick through his repertoire. The Guinness was still too cold but at least it felt like a scene from The Marriage of O’Figaro.
Filthy McNastys
Amwell Street, London N1
Shane MacGowan often sits at the bar and his Pogues gold discs are displayed on the walls. Proper Guinness served at decent temperatures for a young mediaish crowd, most of whom wear those modish sub-NHS designer specs. Trad sessions some nights and at weekends in the back bar. Literary evenings too. No TV, just loud music and loud people talking about their jobs.
Finnegan’s Wake
Fulham Palace Road, London W6
Huge 1940s building just round from Hammersmith Apollo – get lots of people in DJs before ballets, etc. Used to be a bog standard crappy Fulham Palace Road place before getting the shamrock makeover around ’96. Far too Oirishy for real Irish, one would have hoped but, again, not so – gets groups of lads and middle-aged women sitting out the night. They have Irish music live sometimes and it’s usually crap – red-faced blokes with moustaches murdering old standards and encouraging singsongs.
Finnegan’s Wake
Lambs Conduit Street WC2
Used to be The Sun, a fine smoke-drenched drinking hole with interesting beers, before being Finneganised a few years back. I only went in once and it broke my heart so I’ve never been back.
The Kingdom
Kilburn High Road
A big long bar on the left and a big long velvety cushioned bench on the right – no wasting of space with silly partitions. Five Guinness taps and one Beamish. Authentically dingy. Mad old Kerrymen, who have set up home at the end of the bar, jump up to take the piss out of any strangers that might accidentally wander in off the street. Judging by the reaction of the barmaid, this is obviously a regular occurrence.
Liam Og’s
Walworth Road, Camberwell
Like a little village pub or the sort of thing you get off the main road in the south and west of Ireland. When I last went in (early ’94), surrounded by crimson-faced old boys and labourers, I felt like a tourist (which I suppose I was – it’s South London for God’s sake).
Liberty’s
Camden High Street, NW5
Pics of Irish writers on wall suggests tackiness but this is a real Irish pub: great Guinness, football on TV (Celtic are favourites) and very friendly staff. Always seem to be rumours flying about that it will soon be turned into a wine bar but at the time of writing it’s hanging in there. There used to be a short story club which met near the front bar every Tuesday evening.
Lord Nelson
Holloway Road
Pistachio green and black monster. Lads at the bar check out racing on the TV from their pints of Guinness (perfect temperature).
Maggie’s
Chamberlain Road, Kensal Rise, NW10
Imagine going to visit your great aunt and uncle in a little house on the outskirts of Macroom. The sitting room is covered in red and cream velvety flock wallpaper and a few of their OAP friends are round sitting on hard chairs nursing halfs of stout and chatting away in accents you can’t understand. That’s what Maggie’s is like. Old fellas in crisp suits and creased faces. Seems to have disappeared though.
McGoverns
Kilburn High Road
Like a big canteen, mustard yellow walls. A long empty bar on one side, small bar at the back. Old blokes stand about talking football. The only visible beer tap was Kilkenny – prepared for disappointment but all the others hidden. Good Guinness. High-backed armchairs. You’d come here if you were eighteen looking for beer-fuelled, cheap-perfume-and-aftershave action.
Moll Cutpurse
Stamford Hill Road, N15
Old pub with loads of real ale long handles, none of which are connected up. ‘Nah, we stopped doin’ that a while back.’ Middle-aged blokes sit around doing crosswords. Seen better days but a nice atmosphere all the same. Setanta sport on two screens.
Molly Malone’s
Whitecross Street, EC4
Pre-fashionable Irish theme pub just on the edge of the city. I saw David O’Leary score his penalty v. Romania in 1990 World Cup here. ‘YEEEEE EEEEEESSSS FUCKIN YEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!!!!!!’ said the man next to me. Went back recently and it too has gone. Is there an anti-Molly pub policy in London?
North London Tavern
Kilburn High Road
Old-fashioned, high-ceilinged Edwardian boozer with dark wood fittings. No internal connection between the ‘posh’ lounge and the more downmarket (and thus appealing) public bar. A crowd of content owl fellahs watch the racing on the telly. Barmen smart in white shirts.
O’Hanlons
Tysoe Street, London EC1
Dublin Guinness – seems like a quite genuine old country pub but you know it can’t be. Friendly staff, great food and the best beer selection in London (they brew their own). A mixture of people from middle-aged businessmen to the ubiquitous young Clerkenwell trendies. While you’re standing around waiting for a table, check out the attractive old mirror.
The Old Bell
Kilburn High Road
Crappo English boozer exterior suggests it’s not an Irish pub at all but inside it is a cavernous real Irish drinking den. A stage and at the back a massive mural of an Irish farm labourer. Irish voices echo from all parts of the building. Smells of lock-ins and snooker.
The Ould Triangle
Plimsoll Road, N4
Used to be the Plimsoll, now sports shiny new wood fittings and dense 60s style cigarette smoke that makes it difficult to see the other side of the pub. Sessions some days. Very fine Guinness. The clientele is very small – possibly a jockey family nearby.
O’Neills
Fitzrovia
Fakey two-floored pub for thick men in suits who talk about sport and like shit beer.
O’Neills
Rupert Street
Scary non-Irish Irish pub. Foreign barstaff didn’t understand our accents to start with then laughed when we scarpered after a half pint. Could they be deported, perhaps?
O’Neills
Euston Road
It’s near the Barclays cash machine and it also has special music nights. Girls I know like the little barman called Fiachra who looks like Liam Gallagher.
Pelican
All Saints Road, W11
Pool room upstairs and darts. Popular for market traders from nearby Portobello. One of best Paddy’s day venues if you like tears, hugs and sentimental music (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?). Used to have Irish cable sport channel Setanta, but not anymore (a hurling downturn?). There’s a colour code system to denote how long people have been drinking there – bright red, more than 15 years, down to pinkish, last couple of months.
Powers
Kilburn High Road
A trendy
pub/bar, dark atmosphere, Victorian artefacts scattered about and eclectic art on the black wood walls. More of a thirtysomething urban post club scene crowd than other nearby pubs, does DJ parties and gig nights. Do they run an anti-old-bloke policy?
The Queen
Ferndale Road, SW9
Yes, it’s in Brixton, but no, it’s not achingly trendy. Far from it; far from everything in fact (somehow it feels like you’re in Dresden in the aftermath of Bomber Harris’ tender ministries). A solid, sound old London-Irish pub with a generous lock-in policy. Magnus Mills drinks here.
Quins
Hawley Street, Camden
I was very drunk when I came in here after a long session but I remember the Guinness was too cold and I drew a ballpoint-pen tattoo on somebody’s cleavage.
The Rose
Snowsfield, Borough
The place to watch hurling and Gaelic football. Big screen at the back for crop-haired young sports fans, small TVs at front for older crowd. Great mural along the back wall of a stylised Irish pub crowd in which all the punters look like film stars. If you like hearing Life Stories, this is the place to come.
Rosie O’Grady’s
Camden Road
Smallish North London pub with not too much over-the-top Irishness and a penchant for real music sessions. Rumour has it that Rosie O’Grady is the landlady (and therefore a real person) and not a marketing brand, which is almost unheard of these days.
Scruffy Murphy’s
Fleet Street
Ropey boozer cashing in on famous name on the site of older English pub. To begin with there was an old rusty bike outside, but presumably someone pinched that. The 1920sness of it is all a bit much and the beer isn’t that great either. They usually have Irish people behind the bar but they’re more likely actors than trained staff. Tends to get too full of ‘suits’.
Scruffy Murphy’s
Piccadilly
For a theme pub it’s not bad – small, with OK decor and beer that is marginally cheaper than other pubs in the area (which if you tot it up over several years could be beneficial for your pension plan).
Shannons
Putney High Street
One-off kit pub in a crappy pseudoposh S. London location which, by the time this comes out, will have changed its name to the latest pub fad (McTavish’s, Bavarian Sausage Kellar, Ye Olde Worlde Tavernee, etc.).
The Toucan
Soho
Great little bar right on the edge of Soho Square – nice staff, quiet, didn’t seem too touristy (which is hard to believe considering the location). Would have stayed for the night but hit it at the end of long afternoon session. Miles better than the WaxyOneilly Murphys in the same area.
The Twelve Pins
Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park
Not encouraging from the outside but a spacious light interior is surprisingly present. Impossible to escape the TV sport experience, no matter where you are in the pub a screen looks down on you. Lots of wood and yellow stained-effect paint.
Waxy O’Connors
Rupert Street
Cavernous theme booze in the heart of the West End. A dead tree is the centrepiece. Different styles of bar – a cellar where there’s sessions, loud music piped upstairs, Guinness or Murphys and proper barmen (Dublin/Sydney rather than Madrid/Bordeaux) serving in black trousers and white shirts, red-faced twenty-something Irish city type crowd with too much money singing away to the toothbrush and knickers in handbag brigade. Groups of foreign tourists sit at tables with just a mineral water between them – this sort of behaviour should be outlawed.
Winchester Hall Tavern
Archway Road
A huge and very beautiful High Victorian boozer with Irishness running through its veins and not its colour scheme. Ornate glass, high ceilings and two bars – one for youngish blokes and old ladies, the other for sixty-something Irish guys with melancholy faces. The only bad thing is that it’s not a lucky pub for the Irish football team.
Irish Crossword
compiled by Terry & Pat
ACROSS
1. Liquid cross in Ireland. (9)
6. One from 1 ac., 2, 5, 14 dn, 15 may be arresting. (5)
9. Fall from Faith (left with part of church). (5)
10. Silver coins scattered about holy man make people dubious about God. (9)
11. Listen to this! Rum trees love Marg! (10)
12. Against Antrim’s National Trust Institute for a start. (4)
14. Red Hats confused by famines. (7)
15. Murder Dan, say, in Leinster. (7)
17. Refuse to deal with Cricketing Captain. (7)
19. Internal cast-iron guttering needed by 22! (4,3)
20. One vehicle? Terrible! (4)
22. Obese female with uplifting device needs TV priest. (6,4)
25. American female carpet weaver? (9)
26. See 14 dn. (5)
27. Writer – weird essayist who lost little sister. (5)
28. ‘Les Moynes’ is wrong – and broke! (9)
DOWN
1. Western drinks found west of England. (5)
2. Faraway place with strange prayer pit? (9)
3. Irish dance No. 1, etc., jigged – let’s vote again! (2–8)
4. Orders not the only fruit? (6)
5. Strange land in UK, after first deserted in County Louth. (7)
6. The understanding of ‘Soldier Road’. (4)
7. Bad weather, we hear – it’s time for a monarch! (5)
8. Not like 22, but still a drunken bent saint. (9)
13. Love-sign with representation unknown used to imitate oil painting. (10)
14, 26. Capital has active youth policy leaders in strength – could make a meal of it. (6,3,5)
16. Annoy a childish horse with artist and container of ecstasy. (9)
18. You won’t find 22 in this drink space! (7)
19. Trendy person? That’s callous! (7)
21. Part of aria vocals on river. (5)
23. Boardsmen who 7? (5)
24. Love drunken Dubliners – should start the betting! (4)
Irish Crossword
compiled by Terry & Pat
[For the answers – see Solutions]
Helpful Irish Maps
Distribution of tourists in holiday season
Distribution of rainfall
Distribution of conversational topics
Index
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.
Abbot, Bud 36, 44
ABC 86, 88
Abrakebabra 202, 219
Acapulco 122
Adams, Bryan 214
Adams, Gerry 20, 233, 236, 285
Adare (County Limerick) 100–109, 214
Afrika Bambaata 39
Afrikaaner-style facial hair 89
Alarm, The 197, 202
alcohol 16, 40
alcoholic (bitter and twisted) 157
aliens 182
alloy wheels 270–72
America 61, 66, 72, 74, 76, 82, 88, 106, 122, 128, 176
American tourists 12, 221, 229, 274–75
Amis, Martin 107
androgynous vicars 167
Anglo-Saxon 57, 58, 64, 136, 144, 199, 267
Archer, Jeffrey 112
Archway Road 14
Armigideon Time 176
‘art’ 197, 200
art galleries 83
arts festival 186–207
Athenry, Fields of 46, 71
atonal, improvised alto saxophone 1
attack breasts (Northern European style) 83