Lord Nelson SE1 0LR

Yes, it looks like every council estate pub* you've ever driven past. It is in fact a FANTASTIC pub within walking distance of the Old Vic. Trash sixties kitsch, with calypso music and excellent burgers. Barmaid is VERY easy on the eye too. I'm going back, and often.


*Back in the 70s, our nearest rough council estate pub was the Double Six, where I did occasionally visit, but only with locals (sort of native guides).

One evening I was elsewhere at gig, and was introduced by some middle class boys to an old grammar school friend of theirs from who was supplementing his living at the bank by setting himself up as a "mobile discotheque".

He was raving how he'd only just put his advert in the paper, and had already captured a gig, which was paying £5 over the odds, at a pub in Turlin Moor.

"The Double Six?" I enquired.

"Yes!" he enthused.

"Er, you do know that's where the barman had his ear bitten off?"

"Oh, they say that about all these places"

"No, but it was on the front page of the Echo. I know people who were there, the Double Six is not a pub to do a disco, that's why it pays so well; no-one else will do it!"

"No, that's just apochrypha! When you go to these places, they're never as bad as it's made out!" he responded with fantastic faith in human nature.

"I take it that you are not familiar with Turlin Moor" I asked.

"Look, you really need look at your own prejudices. This is just a class thing."

I left him to it.

Several weeks later, at another gig I met him again.

"How was the Double Six?" I enquired.

"Oh!" he reacted. "Yes, the Double Six!" as though recalling six months on a pirate ship out of Jamaica.

"I went in there at six (opening time in the 70s) and the landlord was really nice. He fetched me a pint on the house and showed me where to set up in the lounge."

So far so good, but once established, and alone in the lounge he decided to venture into the public bar to seek company, only to experience the traditional bar silencing moment, as the locals turned to glare at the stranger.

"I went to the bar, and the barman had a HUGE wadge of cotton wool taped to the side of his head!" he recounted in horror.

On realising that he faced the recently earless barman, he began to panic.

There was a seemingly harmless old fellow at the bar.

"Excuse me; am I safe in here?" he asked in his best posh lamb for the slaughter tremble.

"Yeh," replied the veteran, "just as long as you don't look at him playing darts; he'll 'ave you!"

Our naif glimpsed across the room at a Neanderthal slamming darts into a dartboard as though into a rival's face.

He concluded "I did the gig, put the kit in the car and drove away shaking!"

"The landlord keeps phoning offering more work, and I'm running out of excuses. I've told my mum to tell him I'm out!"

Bless. They were the days!

Note: The last time I was in the Double Six was August 1976, where Paul Foden, just home from London in his straight tonics and plastic sandals told us tales of "Punk Rock" and the gobbing phenomena that was the Sex Pistols.