Friday 12 June 2015

Playing with words

"Malla what, mate?" would no doubt be the response from your average spotty teenager should you attempt to engage him in a conversation about malapropisms. Admittedly it's not one of the most attractive words in the English dictionary; and not one that does justice to such a comic slip of the tongue.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term, let me elucidate: a malapropism according to the Oxford English Dictionary is the unintentional misuse of a word by confusion with one of similar sound.

It just so happens that over the years I've heard my fair share of malapropisms, and I have to say that they nearly always make me smile.


My grandmother was something of a dab-hand in this department. She would inadvertently produce some absolute corkers on a whim, but the only ones I can recall now were those she'd use on a fairly regular basis. I can hear her now saying that she had had a particularly good night and had "slept like a toff." I'm not entirely sure how your average toff snoozes, but it used to conjure up all kinds of weird and wonderful images in my young head.

On having her small garden paved with crazy paving (as was the fashion back in the early 70s), she would proudly open her kitchen door and invite her guests to admire her "crazy pavement."

I also had an uncle who was a prolific exponent of the art. One of his most memorable verbal slips has gone down in family lore. For all the years I had known him, this particular uncle had always sported a toupée, and on one occasion was asked by an inquisitive work colleague how he managed to keep his hair piece in place. "Oh, it's very easy really," came my uncle's confident response, "I have a special fixative which I simply apply to my foreskin." I imagine that must have brought a few tears to his eyes.

Then, of course, there are those deliberately contrived malapropisms. Lillian Jacobs, my parents'  manic and highly eccentric neighbour should have been a professional stand-up comedian. She would deliberately and quite brilliantly construct her sentences with wonderfully ludicrous malopropisms and deliver them in an absurdly comic falsetto voice. I can almost hear her now: "Annette, I can't tell you how moved I was. I was overcome with emulsion." Like some of our most gifted comedians, she was also completely bonkers - harbouring a genuine and totally irrational fear of thunderstorms. At the merest hint of an impending storm, she would knock on our door and hide in our broom cupboard until the storm had passed; at which point we'd have to knock on the cupboard door to give her the all-clear.

In the 80s I was very fortunate to work for an advertising agency whose Creative Director was the verbally dexterous Ken Mullen. As the only advertising copywriter to be quoted in the Penguin Book of Modern Quotations, Ken is a master at creating ingenious malapropisms. On one occasion he described a rather verbose senior member of staff who was occasionally hired by the glitterati as an interior decorator, as the agency's "internal defecator." And on suffering a torturous meeting with two clients who weren't perhaps the sharpest knives in the drawer, he later described the experience as "stalling between two fools."*

* To be a tad anal, this particular line can be more accurately defined as a spoonerism where a pair of vowels or consonants are interchanged for comic effect.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Friday 20 March 2015

The lost art of negative advertising


These days, all forms of communication seem not only to be governed by the rules of political correctness, but also by a total aversion to any form of negative sentiment.

Only a few days ago, a junior account handler came back from a client meeting with a request to remove the word 'but' from some copy I'd written, on the grounds that this was too negative a word. If one were to follow this strange form of logic through to its conclusion, I suspect you'd have to lose an awful lot of words from the English dictionary.

As a copywriter, I am staggered and pretty irritated by this fear of the negative. After all, some of the finest and most memorable ads ever written have conveyed negative messages. Can no-one remember those wonderful ads for Albany Life that graced our newspapers back in the day? Headlines like: 'Are you making plans for your wife's death?' And: 'Answer these ten questions
and work out the date of your own death.'

Then, of course, let's not forget the famous pregnant man created by Saatchi & Saatchi that carried the less than positive headline: 'Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?'

Negativity can, of course, also be charming and witty. Parker pens ran a lovely ad penned by Tony Brignull that encouraged the reader to: 'Rediscover the lost art of the insult.' The long copy cited examples of very witty insults and put-downs, and encouraged the reader to let rip with a Parker fountain pen. Besides being a joy to read, it sold a lot of pens.

But perhaps the most negative yet remarkably successful and cost-effective adverts ever penned in the history of advertising were written back in the 60s, not by a copywriter, but by the client himself.

Roy Brooks was an estate agent in the fashionable Kings Road, Chelsea. He was, by all accounts, a sardonic individual with a sharp tongue and a very distinct way with words. And he clearly loathed the kind of disingenuous classified ads that plastered the property pages. So to put matters straight and to stand out from the crowd, he penned his own classified ads. To give you a flavour of the kind of thing he'd bash out on his typewriter, here's one he wrote for a property in Pimlico:

Wanted: someone with taste, means and a stomach strong enough to buy this erstwhile house of ill-repute in Pimlico. It is untouched by the 20th century as far as conveniences for even the basic human decencies are concerned. Although it reeks of damp or worse, the plaster is coming off the walls and daylight peeps through a hole in the roof, it is still habitable judging by the bed of rags, fag ends and empty bottles in one corner. Plenty of scope for the socially aspiring to express their decorative taste and get their abode in The Glossy, and nothing to stop them putting Westminster on their notepaper. Comprises 10 rather unpleasant rooms with slimy back yard, 4,650 Freehold. Tarted up, these houses make 15,000.

Besides being brutally frank, and not unamusing, the ad feels honest and undoubtedly appeals to that universal, deep-seated human instinct we all share of wanting to track down that elusive bargain.

The ad below is another wonderful example. I particularly like: '3 normal-sized bedrooms & a 4th for an undemanding dwarf lodger.' And: 'Nature has fought back in the garden - & won.'

So incredibly effective were Roy Brooks' classified ads that in time, even people like my father, who had no interest whatsoever in buying property, would turn to the property section of the Sunday Times just to read Roy's latest offering.

Roy Brooks himself became a multi-millionaire on the back of his successful classified ad campaign, and though he died over 30 years ago, his company still runs to this day. But alas, the property ads that appear on the comany's website are the run-of-the-mill variety, laden with the customary superlatives, and not a single negative adjective in sight. Enough to make poor Roy Brooks turn in his grave no doubt.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds and The Chair Man

Tuesday 14 October 2014

The homeless commercial that's yet to find a home


Just over a year ago my old friend John Mac (who featured in my last piece) called me at home in a state of excitement. "Alex, can we meet up? I'd like to run an idea past you." John is a professional advertising photographer and is without doubt one of the most energetic and impulsive people I've ever known. He's also incredibly talented both artistically and technically when it comes to producing beautifully lit shots for some of the world's most iconic brands.

We met in one of Soho's many watering holes and here he explained that he wanted to shoot a commercial to raise awareness of the homeless in the UK, and donate the finished film to any homeless charity in the UK that wanted to use it. He had recently been given a professional video camera to look after and was keen to put it through its paces.

"I have this idea in my head of a beautifully lit black and white film noir piece shot in the style of an early Roman Polanski. We see an attractive girl running away, and we can hear her terrified thoughts. But we can't understand a word she's saying because she's foreign. And that's the point. We all think we know what homeless people look like. But we don't have the faintest idea." He looked me in the eye. "I think there's something in it. What do you reckon?"

I liked the intriguing nature of the idea, but knew that it would rely entirely on  the power of a superimposed copyline that could encapsulate the idea and make sense of this otherwise incomprehensible piece of drama, and I said as much.

"Couldn't agree more, mate. That's the reason I wanted to get you involved." John finished his pint. "Don't suppose you could write us a line could you, and some dialogue? I'd like to do a casting next week. All being well."

It's not the conventional way one would normally approach such a project. Usually there'd be an official briefing with an account director and planner; there'd be a written brief; an agreed marketing strategy and a creative proposition to reflect the strategy. But John had come up with his own strategy and creative proposition in one fell swoop. And it went something like this: tell people that homelessness can affect anyone, and challenge pre-conceived ideas about the kinds of people who become homeless through no fault of their own.

As far as I was concerned, it was a reasonable proposition. And in John's hands I knew that it would be a compelling piece of film. So I slept on it and penned a line in the morning.
Sarah-Laure Estragnat

Casting took place the following week at the Soho Hotel, and John was keen for me to attend. He had been through a list of drama school students who were fluent in at least one other language and had selected a handful for the part. Following that one casting there was only one he felt could do the piece justice. But even then he wasn't 100% convinced. And then, as is so often the case when working with John, he had a piece of good luck. One of his make-up artists from Paris called him to say that her best friend, the young French actress, Sarah-Laure Estragnat was in town. John isn't one to miss an opportunity. Within a couple of days he'd arranged a meeting in Maida Vale, and with a digital recorder in hand we did a few test readings. She was brilliant and didn't need any directing.

John spent the next few days doing a recce. Locations would revolve around Woolwich tunnel, Borough market and Waterloo. Sarah-Laure would return to London in two weeks and shooting would take place over two evenings from around 8.00pm to 2.00am. All he needed was a small crew to help with lighting and a make-up artist. (As it turned out this wasn't to be Sarah-Laure's Parisian friend but John's long-standing make-up lady, Anne-Marie Simak.)

I attended the second night of shooting around Borough market. It was fascinating to see John at work on a film, frenetically waving directions to his actor and lighting men. The locations he had selected were particularly atmospheric, especially in black and white. And shooting each scene from different angles was fairly intense. Sarah-Laure was incredibly professional, following every instruction to the letter. Some scenes would be shot umpteen times, and it was distinctly chilly. This was November after all.

At one point, a young couple canoodling in an archway had inadvertently found themselves in one of John's immaculately framed scenes, and he wasn't too happy about it, so he prized himself away from his camera and stormed over to the offending couple. "I'm sorry, but can I ask you to do that somewhere else? We're filming." The couple looked a little startled, giggled and shuffled off in search of another dark corner away from prying eyes. John came back to his camera beaming and chuckling to himself. "Nice night for it." And that was about the only short break in the proceedings.

I took my leave of them at around midnight. It was exhausting just watching all this nervous energy.

A couple of days later John sent me his rough cut. To my eyes it looked perfect, with each short set-up flowing seamlessly into the next. And, of course, the lighting had John's inimitable fingerprints all over it. Final editing, grading and dubbing were completed by Vee Pinot, Matthew Lee-Redman and Zak Kurtha over at Hogarth Post-Production.

The upshot is that this commercial received a great deal of praise from a number of senior figures from various national charities. One in particular (which will remain nameless) loved it, but was unable to screen it for certain "political reasons" which it wasn't prepared to divulge. And as we speak, no other homeless charity has wanted to make use of this free commercial, which John had kindly produced as a favour.

In a recession, it's rather bizarre that charities are happy to employ designers and advertising agencies for which they have significant budgets; and yet turn away free advertising when it comes their way. A case of charities turning their noses up at charity perhaps?

You can see the commercial below:

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Monday 6 October 2014

Bit of a ladies' man

Vilna, 1900
There's something captivating about digging up the past, and I suppose it explains why the TV series 'Who Do You Think You Are?' has proved to be such a hit. It's human nature, after all, to be curious about our forebears; to know who they were, how they made their way through life, and perhaps most importantly, if they shared some of our own human traits and foibles.

In my own case, digging very deep is particularly difficult, since both my paternal and maternal lineages stretch back to Russia at the turn of the century, and most records were destroyed in the upheaval of the Bolshevik revolution and the overthrow of czarist rule.

It's a shame, because there are fragments of a shattered past that are intriguing to say the least.

My father's grandparents owned orchards and were inn keepers in or near Vilna, and by all accounts had a relatively comfortable life, until, that is, the Pogroms swept the country. As Jews, their lives would have been thrown into turmoil and in a desperate attempt to escape the violence they, like so many others in the same predicament, fled, leaving everything behind. In doing so they boarded a ship which they mistakenly believed to be bound for New York, but was actually destined for Liverpool.

Today one of my cousins has a handful of sepia prints of our forebears in Russia. Draped in sartorial, silk robes and sporting long, distinguished beards, they peer out of their brown tinged world; a world that was not to last.

I remember my late father talking about his own father recounting his childhood: "Father had a happy childhood," he used to say, "and would often fondly reminisce in old age how much he had enjoyed playing in his parents' orchards as a boy."

Of my mother's Russian lineage, I know next to nothing, other than the fact that one of her grandparents was both deaf and dumb and had settled in Whitechapel. The mind boggles.

Some months ago the subject of genealogy surfaced while sitting in a Turkish bistro in Soho with my old mate John Mac. John, a photographer by trade, began to tell me about his own grandfather who died before he was born, but whose wife he knew well and remembers fondly as 'nan.'

"He was a hugely successful artist, and a bit of a character," confides John while tucking into his shish kebab. This was the first time John had ever mentioned his grandfather, and I was all-ears.

Alastair Kenneth Macdonald, better known in his day as the artist and illustrator, A K Macdonald,
was the son of an eminent  doctor who had worked with Lord Lister - the man who brought us antiseptic surgery. Macdonald's Spanish mother tragically died shortly after giving birth to him, and the family moved to the ancestral home on the Isle of Skye. Here the young Macdonald and his brother explored the wild landscapes of Skye and would eventually be packed off to school in Edinburgh. The boys' grandfather was a man of considerable means having established his own civil engineering firm during the height of the Industrial Revolution. But after his schooling, the family's fortunes collapsed and the young Macdonald took up an apprenticeship with an architect in Glasgow on account of his keen interest in sketching. The appointment wasn't to last as the boy preferred drawing from life, and felt stifled by drawing buildings. So he sought training at the Glasgow School of Art, but in fact left after just six weeks. He subsequently showed some of his sketches to the Editor of the Glasgow Evening News, Neil Munro who immediately saw the lad's talent and gave him his first commissions there and then. From then on, there was no looking back. The commissions began to roll in. During this period, Macdonald was to meet the actor George Hawtree who was appearing in a Midsummer Night's Dream in Glasgow. The actor was so taken with a piece Macdonald had produced for the production that he promised to introduce him to a London editor. He was as good as his word, and weeks later, the young lad found himself on the staff of The Longbow, a noted London periodical. His work got noticed immediately and it wasn't long before he'd be producing work for some of London's most prestigious publications including The Tatler, The Bystander and The Sketch.

"So when you say your grandfather was a bit of a character, do you want to elaborate?" I ask John quizzically. "Well, he was obviously a man of great charm as well as talent. And he was clearly attracted by the opposite sex," John manages between mouthfuls of chicken. "He was surrounded by all these lovely young things. That's all he ever seemed to draw. He drew them beautifully, of course."

Indeed, it does seem to be the case that a great deal of his illustrations are of diaphanous young ladies in various states of undress, though these are always charmingly rendered, and never suggestive or vulgar. And his line work is extraordinarily fluid and precise. You can see from his work why he was in such demand, and it's remarkable that he was able to produce these drawings with no formal art training to speak of.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Macdonald enlisted in the London Scottish and found himself in the trenches in France, and within three months was invalided out, returning later as an officer with the Gordon Highlanders. He didn't stop sketching, however, and his frivolous young ladies would adorn the walls of his mess and draw the admiration of one particular Colonel.

Following the war, his work continued apace. And by 1924, Alastair Macdonald, now a married man with a daughter of his own, was to meet a distant relative, the illustrator Alice Helena Watson who shared the same agent, Francis & Mills. He offered her the opportunity to come and work with him in his studio. In normal circumstances it would not have been deemed proper for a married man to make such a proposition, but Macdonald was family, after all and Alice's mother could see no harm in it. Inevitably, a relationship developed, Macdonald's marriage fell apart and the two eventually married in 1926. She was 20 and he was 45.

The alimony of £8.00 a week was initially something of a financial burden, but as the two took on work together and finished each others drawings, their finances improved steadily, and by the time they were parenting two sons in 1928, things were certainly looking up. In 1931 they moved to the affluent and leafy neighbourhood of St John's Wood, occupying number 16 St John's Wood Park, a large imposing property that had previously been the magnificent home of the best-selling author, Ellen Wood - better known as 'Mrs Henry Wood.' While Alice took on numerous commissions to illustrate children's books by such authors as Compton McKenzie, Margaret Lodge, A. S. M Hutchinson and her own sister, the author, Effie Watson who wrote under the pseudonym Dale Maniford, her husband's work continued to grace the pages of high society journals.

At around this time Alastair received a commission to design a sumptuous promotional booklet for one of Cunard's luxury liners: The Acquitania for which he would receive the astonishing sum of £1,000. In addition, he and his wife would enjoy free board upon the liner to the USA. They were in fact offered the Royal Suite and dined at the Captain's table. The trip, which must have been quite something was ultimately marred when Macdonald's agent absconded with all the money. To give you some idea, £1000 back then would be worth around £57,000 in today's money. A huge sum to have had stolen.

That misfortune marked a turning point in Macdonald's career. Magazines increasingly turned to photography and many that had employed his talents either changed in character or disappeared altogether. "There are," says John, "many parallels between his industry and mine. Look at the way digital technology has affected the world of photography, film making and retouching. If you can't embrace the changes, you tend to get left behind."

Alice, by contrast, found that more and more children's books wanted her work, so she had to work twice as hard to compensate for her husband's lack of work.

By the time the Second World War had broken out, the shortage of paper had dealt Macdonald's business a fatal blow, and his work dried up. To add insult to injury, their home was bombed in 1940, and the couple moved to number 24 Church Row, Hampstead. It was hardly downsizing. Church Row is one of Hampstead's finest roads, and its Grade II listed Georgian properties are today among the capital's most desirable. (Some years later, the famous comic genius, Peter Cook chose to live on this very same road at the very height of his professional career.)

To make ends meet, Alice had to go into overdrive on the work front as well as letting every spare room to students while cooking ten meals every night. Naturally, Alastair would help by taking on some of his wife's work, but there can be little doubt that it must have been difficult for them to sustain the lifestyle that they had become accustomed to.

John remembers seeing a letter addressed to his grandfather from the Savage Club which he had been a member of. His account stood in arrears to the tune of £1,000 and the club had regrettably taken the decision to reject his membership.

During this period, the two boys James and David lived with Alice's sister Effie in the Chilterns. They stayed there for three years, received no schooling and were looked after by a housekeeper.

Alistair only received one commission following the war, and this was to illustrate Anthony Armstrong's fairy tale The Naughty Princess, which had first appeared in 1935 alongside Macdonald's drawings in The Strand magazine. In the late 1940s, Alistair became ill, but continued painting until he died in June 1948 at the age of just 67.

It was a sad demise, and the family had no choice but to leave Church Row.

Alice continued illustrating books into her old age and lived with her sister who became ill with cancer and died in 1960. Following Effie's death, Alice lived in various different properties in London and took on occasional illustration jobs. In her 70s, she sadly began to lose her eyesight, and her remaining years were spent in Lewisham where her son David had bought a flat for her. She died in 1984 aged 88.

POSTSCRIPT

In writing this piece I was struck by a couple of uncanny coincidences that span the generations. Like his grandfather, John has also spent much of his professional working life capturing images of young female fashion models albeit with a camera rather than a pen or paintbrush; images that have appeared in the equivalent up-market publications that his grandfather's work would have appeared in all those years ago. And like his grandfather's father, John's own father married a woman of Spanish origin.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 


Thursday 14 August 2014

Sometimes it pays to stick your head in the sand

I first encountered Martin Handford at Maidstone College of Art back in 1980. He was a couple of years above me and had got himself onto the prestigious illustration course, which at that time was one of the best in the country. (The college has since been merged into the Kent Institute of Art in Canterbury.)

At the time I remember him being a pretty chirpy chap despite being so skint that he had resorted to selling his entire wardrobe, including an impressive pair of brothel creepers, in a desperate bid to raise much needed funds.

Unlike all his compatriots at Maidstone, Martin stood out from the crowd ('crowd' being an appropriate word to use here). You see, all he ever drew were crowd scenes. And his technique hadn't changed a jot since he was a young lad. He would labour over his intricate compositions for weeks on end, using nothing more than felt tips. And his finished pieces were mind-bogglingly detailed with countless characters immaculately rendered in miniature.

The tutors at Maidstone went to great pains to get him to experiment and evolve his style of drawing, but Martin wasn't having any of it. For his entire time at Maidstone, he continued producing the most astonishing series of crowd compositions, and I very clearly remember his final year exhibition, which attracted by far the largest number of visitors who seemed drawn by these unusual works like bees around a honey pot. One piece in particular still sticks in my memory. It was a crowd scene depicted at Lords cricket ground. Besides being able to see thousands of spectators, ones eyes were drawn to the playing area where you could discern several little white figures, and one solitary pink figure jumping over the stumps. This, of course, was the famous Lords streaker whose unexpected appearance during the 1975 test match prompted the late John Arlott to coin the phrase 'freaker.' "We have a freaker down the wicket," quipped Arlott. "It's not very shapely; it's masculine; and I would think it's seen the last of its cricket for the day."

By this stage, Martin was already getting real illustration jobs for national publications and was much in demand. A couple of years later while in my first advertising agency and working with my Art Director, Colin Underhay (also from Maidstone), we had the opportunity to employ Martin's considerable talents. The agency wanted to create a special Christmas card, and Martin seemed like the ideal illustrator for the job. We deliberately kept the creative brief fairly open and asked Martin to create an amusing Oxford Street Christmas scene. His solution was certainly novel. The scene he came up with depicted a throng of shoppers intermingled with  a series of unconventional Father Christmases indulging in the most uncharacteristic activities including vomiting, urinating, mugging passers-by and in one instance, carrying a blow-up sex doll. It was a kind of modern-day take on one of those debauched scenes by Bruegel or Hieronymus Bosch. And had it been produced in today's politically correct atmosphere, I'm sure it would have been shelved in favour of something rather tame and less offensive. But this, of course, was 1980. The card went into production and was sent out to all the agency's clients.

In 1986, Martin was asked by Walker Books to create a character with distinctive features that would give his compositions a focal point in much the same way as his pink figure jumping over the stumps or his Father Christmases did. His response was to come up with a character named 'Wally' - a world traveller and time travel aficionado. And in 1987 'Where's Wally?' first appeared in the UK. Its popularity was instantaneous and huge. There would be seven books published in 28 countries. (In the US, the title was tweaked to 'Where's Waldo?') Then there were the inevitable spin-offs of notebooks, pillows, posters and video games, not to mention syndicated comic strips and an animated TV series.

By 2007, 'Where's Wally' had sold no fewer than 74 million copies worldwide, and in the same year Martin sold the global rights to the acquisitive Entertainment Rights group for £2.5 million.

I don't suppose Martin has recently felt the need to sell off items of his wardrobe. Though I suspect that signed copies of red stripy T-shirts might fetch a small fortune.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds 

Thursday 7 August 2014

The day Bob Dylan dropped by for coffee

Hanging on our walls at home are two Graham Clarke hand-coloured etchings. Clarke's naive, wobbly renditions of English scenes are his stock-in-trade, and are the kind of items that will occasionally turn up in their frames at Oxfam.

The two that hang at home are nicely framed and mounted, but for me their intrinsic value lies not in their charm but their provenance. You see, they were once the property of one, Lou Hart and back in the 80s, adorned the walls of Winkles Wine Bar in Litchfield Street.

Lou was my father's Best Man and an old family friend. He was quite possibly the shortest man I've ever known, being slightly shorter than my mother who is barely five foot high. But what he lacked in stature he more than made up for with a larger than life personality. He was in short (no pun intended) one of life's natural raconteurs with a very dry wit and fabulous comic timing, and thrived on holding court while chain smoking.

Lou, as far as I can gather, wasn't a great student, left school early at 14 and took a succession of mundane, dead-end office jobs before doing National Service at the end of the war. And then, around the time that my father was engaged to marry my mother, his fortunes were to change quite dramatically. He was to win the football pools. I'm not sure how much his prize money amounted to, but I suspect it was in the hundreds rather than thousands. It was, however, something of a small fortune back then in the early 50s. And with this new found wealth, he very sensibly set himself up in business. First there was a newsagent and sweet shop, which he later sold and with the proceeds bought a cafe in Litchfield Street in the heart of London's theatre land. The cafe included a very dingy and dank wine cellar. Under Lou's stewardship the cafe was named Bunjies, and this underground cavern, though small and decidedly poky, was opened up as a venue for live music. And it was this most unlikely of venues that in the 60s became something of a cult haunt for anyone who was anyone on the musical scene. Such became its status that it attracted the likes of  Phil Collins, Sandie Shaw, Art Garfunkle, Rod Stewart, David Bowie and Jarvis Cocker, to name just some of the burgeoning talent to grace this place with its presence. At the very height of its fame in the 60s, Bob Dylan who happened to be in town, dropped by unannounced and had to pay his entrance fee to get in.

Morgan Levitt used to cook at Bunjies and remembers a young guy who used to do the washing up. "We used to rib him about wearing rubber gloves to protect his fingernails," says Levitt. The young man in question had a distinctive name: Cat Stevens. A couple of months after his stint in the kitchen at Bunjies, Stevens released his first album. The rest, as they say, is history.

In the 80s Lou sold the business and around the same time the LP album 'Live at Bunjies' was released. As a young kid I vaguely remember the black sleeve nestling between my father's collection of classical music. I don't think it ever got played.

Lou's next venture was just doors away from Bunjies. This was to become Winkles Wine Bar. I remember it well. A clean, bright establishment with polished pine furniture that had a distinctly Alpine feel, a good selection of wines, and little Lou occupying centre stage with his acolytes hanging on his every word. He was, of course, in his element.

In truth, the place wasn't run as a business so much as  a social club. And Lou would constantly complain that the tax man was becoming the bane of his life. I strongly suspect that he ran the establishment year in year out at a loss. On several occasions, my brother and I would drop by unannounced and Lou would immediately ensure we were well fed and watered before regaling us with his latest anecdotes, and would, of course, refuse to accept a penny in return. I'm sure he treated all his customers this way. His customers, after all, were his good friends.

Years later, after Lou's untimely death in his seventies, my father would become one of several beneficiaries of his will, and would encounter for the first time some of Lou's good friends. In many ways his was a life lived to the full. I remember hearing from someone that two of his regulars at Winkles, a couple of gay senior civil servants, were in the habit of offering Lou the run of their Mediterranean villa during the summer months. But I also sense that his life was tinged with sadness, for as far as I know he never had a soul mate, and would invariably take the last train home to an empty house each evening.

As for Bungies, I remember visiting it one afternoon in the 90s. I was with my working partner and we were working nearby in Soho, and had quite literally stumbled upon Bunjies by chance. At that time I had no idea that it still existed, so we both stepped down into its once famous cellar and ordered lunch - an unappetising concoction of lentils and pasta - from a girl with dyed hair and a pierced nose. Some months later the place closed down and has since reopened as a Turkish restaurant complete with belly dancers. I'm not sure that Lou would have approved.

Alex Pearl is author of Sleeping with the Blackbirds