by John Healy
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Back in London, we are now on the King’s Road, heading towards Sloane Square, where we find Royal Avenue. This is the address author Ian Fleming used for James Bond’s London flat in his famous spy books.
Here in the King’s Road, a very attractive fashion designer called Mary Quant created the mini skirt and hot pants. This world-famous road saw the comings and goings of punks and hippies, and was the ‘place to be’ in the sixties and seventies. The Stones, the Beatles, Bowie; they were all here and left their mark.
I’ve seen shops in the King’s Road with the strangest names, such as a shoe shop called R. Soles and a Chinese restaurant called Ho Lee Fook. That reminds me, in north London there is a taxidermist shop called ‘Get Stuffed’. These are names that one does not easily forget, and that’s called good advertising.
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Many a time as I drove my cab along the King’s Road, I would observe a man sitting at a table outside a certain restaurant, who, in my opinion, was one of the greatest footballers in the world. He always had a bottle of wine and a full glass on his table, which he would regularly raise to passers-by. Yes, it was the famous George Best. I picked him up one day and took him from one pub to another. I suppose that by doing that I must have played a tiny part in his downfall. George eventually had a liver transplant but even so, the demon drink won the day in the end. I have a great photo that I treasure of him smiling and looking into my cab window. I think it’s quite rare because he was nearing the end of his life.
The day Mr Best was in my cab he asked me if I knew any jokes. ‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘You are from the City of Belfast where the Titanic was built. Well, that ship was not really made in Belfast as you thought. It was rumoured that it was made in the Far East, in Thailand, hence the name “Thaitanic”. They just spelled it wrong.’ (OK, it’s a bit weak.)
Anyway, that was only a part of the joke. I went on to say that more people would have been saved if they had listened to the onboard speaker announcement. ‘Some people were waiting for the dancing because the ship’s Tannoy had said there was a band on ship,’ I told him. He did not get the joke straight away, so I said ‘Abandon ship!’ and then he said, ‘Oh, I get it,’ and laughed.
Then he told me a joke about the two Northern Irish ducks on a tandem bicycle. The one at the back said, ‘Quack’ and the one at the front said, ‘I can’t go no quacker’. I had heard it before but it was nice to have it told in a proper Northern Irish accent. I did laugh.
George Best lived just off the King’s Road, near Oakley Street with his lovely [second] wife, Alex, who stood by him for as long as she could. Sadly, he died in 2005. In the same street lived Cynthia Payne, more commonly known as Madam Cyn, whose house of ill repute was some way away in Streatham), and just a few doors along there is a blue plaque to one of the most famous adventurers of all, Robert Falcon Scott of the Antarctic.
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Close by, and spanning the River Thames, is the beautiful and ever-so-flimsy Albert Bridge, built in 1842. This bridge can take most cars but no Rolls Royce or Bentley is allowed across, due to the two-ton weight limit. The Roller and the Bentley each weigh two-and-a-half tons. It must really annoy the owners of these expensive, high-status cars that they cannot legally follow an old banger over the bridge. A black cab is just on the twoton limit but with four or five large passengers on board it is over, although the boys in blue tend to turn a blind eye.
Some years ago the cab trade fell out with the police and a few cabbies felt the full force of the law. This small disagreement did not last very long as the cab trade and the police tend to work together. There are signs on the bridge requesting troops from the nearby Chelsea Barracks to break their marching step. Can you imagine those troops bringing down this bridge with pure vibration? I am sure it would take at least two or three platoons banging their big heavy boots down on the road surface to do that. The bridge still has the original toll booths, although they are no longer in use.
Chapter 7
Back on my imagined taxi journey I have arrived in Ebury Street, where there is a house with a brown plaque commemorating one of the most famous of all composers and a favourite of mine: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Brown plaques were used exclusively for famous foreign people whereas the blue ones were for well-known British people. The story goes that a member of the Mozart family was seriously ill, so to receive the proper treatment the family came to London and rented the house in Ebury Street. It was here that the young Amadeus wrote his first symphony. Mozart was one of the greatest child prodigies that ever lived and was only 35 when the grim reaper gave him the call. He died a penniless pauper in Vienna in 1791. I wonder what great classical works he would have produced if he had been given just a few more years to live? There is a full-size statue of Mozart at one end of Ebury Street in a small triangular area dividing two roads, lovingly known as Mozart Square. It depicts him as a young boy playing a violin, in dancing mode, dressed in the correct period clothes. It is worth a visit.
They say that a certain composer in Vienna called Antonio Salieri stole or plagiarised some of Mozart’s compositions. It was never proved but about twenty years ago sheet music was found in Salieri’s loft, which, when played, sounded surprisingly like the work of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I once picked up Simon Callow and asked him was he in the film Amadeus. His reply was, ‘Perhaps’. Well, I have seen the movie and I know he had a good part, so there was no ‘perhaps’ about it. How modest can one be?
Continuing our journey, we arrive at swankily expensive and affluent Eaton Square. Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees rented a house here in the late sixties. For a time, I was his private television engineer and I remember him saying he was addicted to his television and could not be without it at any time. That meant he paid me well to be on the phone when he needed me. He was such a handsome devil that I was quite jealous of his looks and his money.
One evening at about nine p.m. the phone rang and my first wife picked up the receiver. After a short time she slammed down the phone, so I asked who the caller was. She said it was some crank caller pretending to be Barry Gibb. Was she surprised when I told her that it really was him! I had forgotten to tell her I was working for him. Luckily he rang back and got a big apology. Then off I went into the night to repair the superstar’s television set. He was one of the nicest high profile people I have ever met.
The late Kenny Everett used the Bee Gees’ hit song ‘Massachusetts’ on his crazy funny show. With forty or fifty sets of false teeth on a table, Everett sang ‘Mass of Chew Sets’ to the same air as the original tune, which was hilarious. I went to Kenny Everett’s house once – it was in the Holland Park area. The comedian was sitting on top of a very large colour television set with his usual mad look. ‘I expect it’s full of gremlins,’ he said, and, you know, I really think he meant it. Unfortunately, Kenny Everett died in 1995 at the age of 50. How sad is that.
Chapter 8
The day, the month, the year will never be forgotten. 9/11, 2001. Nothing was ever achieved by that crazy act. We must never forget the thousands of innocent people that were killed and all those loved ones that were left behind to mourn their passing.
That day I knew a Eurostar train was due to arrive from Paris, so I swung my cab into Waterloo Station and joined the other waiting taxis, hoping to get away quickly with a decent fare. It would be my first that day, and my last, because of what was about to happen. This was one day I will never forget.
I drove my cab along the ever-increasing queue of punters, some tired from their journey, some excited and coming home to loved ones, until it was my turn. There they were, four extremely attractive, teenage American girls. They wanted to hear a Cockney accent but were not too disappointed when all I could provide was an Irish brogue. We laughed and joked in the usual way. They told me they were all from New York – from, of all places, Manhattan. They said they had spent some time touring around Europe and London was their last city to visit. The next day the
y would all fly home from Heathrow. They were very exited about grabbing a tour bus in order to see London, ‘the greatest city in the world’.
These lovely New Yorkers were all much larger than me so I did not get in their way as they loaded their own luggage into the baggage compartment. I might have been squashed in the process.
‘Where to, ladies?’ I enquired. They told me they wanted the Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater, so off we went, manoeuvring with ease around Hyde Park Corner, up Park Lane, around Marble Arch and into Bayswater Road.
It was then that I turned on the radio. I heard the announcer say these two words, ‘New York’, followed by the word ‘Manhattan’. (As I remember this, a tear has fallen on my keyboard and I’ve had to take a break to dry my eyes so I can continue with this sad tale.)
One of the American girls asked me to turn up the volume and we heard the newsreader say that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers in Manhattan. He said six people had been killed. (How wrong was that man.) He then went on to say in a broken and shaky voice that another plane had crashed into the second tower, and that both buildings were beginning to collapse.
The American girls were weeping and screaming in the back. Tragically, they all had relatives working in the Twin Towers on that fateful day. We were only a few minutes away from the hotel, so I put my foot down to get them to their destination as quickly as possible. The situation was getting out of hand and I couldn’t handle it. When we arrived at the Lancaster I ran into the foyer and alerted the head porter, who then emerged with the concierge and another porter. The girls were now guests of the Lancaster Hotel and it was up to the staff to look after them.
I did not take a fare from these distressed girls, it would have been inappropriate. I never saw any of them again but they pop into my mind quite regularly. I hope they all recovered from their awful ordeal in London. As for me, I drove my cab straight home to get over my traumatic day.
Chapter 9
It was April 1984. I was hailed in the street by a man who wanted me to drive him to an address in St James’s Square. When we arrived at the destination, my customer paid the fare and went on his way. I started to leave the Square but my movement was blocked by a chanting crowd of dissident Libyans who were opposed to the dictatorial rule of Colonel Gadaffi. They had gathered just across the road from their embassy and were blocking my exit. A young policewoman cleared a way for me and I was off out into Lower Regent Street with my ‘For Hire’ light blazing away in order to attract my next customer.
Later I heard on the radio that an automatic gun had sprayed a volley of bullets from the window of the embassy. Around thirteen Libyan protesters were wounded and one policewoman was shot dead. This was the very same lady who had freed me from the Square minutes earlier. I was in the line of fire ten minutes before that murder. It just goes to show that you never know when your time is up.
This poor woman was only doing her job. She was WPC Yvonne Fletcher and thanks to Gadaffi’s thugs, she lost her young life. The killer and his henchmen walked free to fly back to Libya. Now, after the 2011 uprising in Libya, the British government might get their hands on the gunman who shot this brave young WPC. Disgraceful behaviour by these people who I call ‘thug killer’ diplomats.
Chapter 10
I wanted to become a black cab driver for many years. When I was working as a television engineer in the West End, I realised this was a great ambition of mine, so to make my dream come true I went on to do ‘The Knowledge’. Apparently, this qualification is equal to a degree. To do The Knowledge entails riding a moped around London Town, the City of London and to a lesser extent the Metropolitan area of Greater London. The latter covers a thirty-five mile radius from Charing Cross.
One must commit to memory all the street names, the history and any landmarks encountered on your daily route. It took me the full four years to obtain my highly-prized green badge but I was in no hurry because I was in full time employment as a TV engineer.
One young man I met on The Knowledge had a photographic memory. He completed the task in just two years and decided to have a celebratory holiday – I think he went to Spain. While he was away he was run over and killed by a taxi cab. What an ironic thing to happen.
* * *
You must wear your badge all the time when driving the cab. If for any reason the driver ever has to appear in court, the law states that the badge must be worn in the dock. Oliver Cromwell was the first person to license the cab trade in 1654. A law dating back 300 years to Cromwell’s time stated that a carriage driver had to have a bale of hay in the boot of his vehicle to prevent cruelty to his hungry horse, which would have been out working all day without food. Cromwell’s law was certainly good for the poor old nags. The authorities kept that old law on the statute book. It was repealed about ten years ago. The police used that ancient law to stop any cab driver that they wanted to talk to, and would say ‘Where’s your bale of hay?’ Of course, as there was never any hay in modern cabs they could then legitimately search the cab and talk to the suspect driver. What a way to treat cab drivers. We are the Knights of the Road. Sometimes the law really is an ass.
Incidentally, while I was doing the knowledge, I fell off the moped three times, but all I hurt was my pride.
Chapter 11
Our next stop on my mythical tour is The City of London, which is divided from Greater London by an old Roman wall called London Wall. Within it lies the Golden Mile, which is the financial centre where fortunes are made and lost with the press of a button. (The latter seldom happens).
There were many gates into the City of London. They were built by the Romans, but sadly they have all disappeared now, swallowed up by ‘progress’. Some bits of London Wall, though, still exist to this day. The Romans built London, constructing a great city in 443 AD that they named Londinium, but they abandoned it in the early fifth century. Apparently Rome was attacked by both Goths and Germanic tribes at the end of the fourth century so the legions all went home to defend their own land, leaving behind them a thriving City that continued to prosper.
Construction workers are still digging up lots of old Roman artefacts including well-preserved tombs and graves. If a new building is to be constructed in the City of London, builders have to allow archaeologists time to start a dig. They get at least one month to unearth the many valuable ancient treasures lying beneath their feet, otherwise all these precious items would be lost forever. The builders are never very happy about this but there is nothing they can do about it. This is the law, although the archaeologists are hard-pressed to find all there is to be found before the cranes and the pile drivers move in.
A team of archaeologists got very excited recently when they unearthed a complete Roman mosaic floor – a rare find, although not as good as when they discovered the remains of a complete Roman gladiatorial arena within the confines of the beautiful and extremely ornate Guildhall. I believe it was in pretty good condition. One day on my lunch break I parked my cab just outside the hoarding that had been placed around the discovered arena. Peering through the small public viewing window I swear I could almost hear the roar of the tribunes, the centurions and the baying crowd of Romans egging on their champions with their thumbs up or down. One to kill, one to save. How about that! It was a weird and strange experience I had that particular day. Incidentally, a few years ago the Museum of London discovered that the thumbs down sign was not to kill the defeated fighter but to save him, and the thumbs up was permission to kill the unfortunate loser, so films like Gladiator and Spartacus got it all wrong.
A good friend of mine who was a construction worker in the City told me that about twenty or thirty years ago they dug up a skull on a new Cheapside building site. The police were promptly called and after detailed examination the forensics team proclaimed that the skull was that of a 2,000-year-old Roman, obviously well preserved. Alas, the rest of the bones were never discovered.
I love the name Cheapside. There are others such as M
ilk Street, Silk Street, Bread Street, Wood Street, Poultry, Cloth Street, New Change, Old Change . . . I could fill a whole chapter with these beautiful names but I must press on.
Years ago, a radio programme called The Goon Show indicated that they had just dug up a skull. Harry Secombe said: ‘It must be a woman.’
‘How do you know?’ asked one of the other Goons. ‘Well the mouth is still open,’ said Harry. I think it’s quite funny, but these days it would be viewed as ‘not politically correct’ by the dogooders.
Chapter 12
I had just dropped a fare off at the Tower of London and was driving The Hack back along Lower Thames Street. It was then that I noticed a crowd gathering on the corner of Pudding Lane and Monument Street. Curiosity made me swing the cab over to have a nose. There is a plaque on a wall in Pudding Lane stating that the Great Fire of London started here in a baker’s shop in 1666. The Monument was built close by to commemorate the Great Fire and celebrate the rebuilding of the City, although this obelisk is not on the exact spot where the fire started.
The assembly of people that day consisted of The Lord Mayor of the City of London, the Worshipful Company of Bakers and lots of dignitaries. The press were also present. I noticed a very small red fire engine dating from the late eighteenth century parked nearby. I asked what was going on and was told that the Worshipful Company of Bakers was here to officially apologise to the Lord Mayor for starting the fire and destroying a major part of London.
