It has been reported recently that there is a ban on drinking on any transport run by Transport For London, which covers the Underground, Buses, Overground, Suburban trains, Clippers and the cable cars. It was in the news because the shadow Home Secretary – Diane Abbott – was pictured on a tube drinking a can of pre-mixed cocktail.
However on Monday, Helen and I were drinking on the Underground, in a totally legal way. We had a slot at Cahoots booked. A cocktail bar hidden away underground in Kingly Court just off Carnaby Street. It had used to be an emergency shelter during the Second World War, but contrary to whatever the bar may tell you, it was never actually a tube station.
If you didn’t know it was there you could quite easily pass it by, with only a little “this way to the trains” sign pointing the way to a gate in one of the passages leading into Kingly Court. The entrance has been made to look like it was a tube station, the maroon tiles are the same as can be seen on a great number of other central London stations.
You go down the stairs and are met with a layout of what could have been a station platform, with signs and route maps, the tiling of old etc. And the far side of the bar is laid out with seating that appears to be laid out in a disused tube carriage.
It is low lit and quite atmospheric, and the staff are dressed to fit in with the theme that the year is 1946. The drinks menu is in the style of an “of the age” newspaper, and it is all very well done.
You have to book slots, so that there is actually a seat for you, and we only used an hour of our allocated two. Which is probably a good job. The cocktails are strong, and very well presented, but there isn’t actually a lot of volume there, mainly due to there being Titanic worrying lumps of ice in each glass. And with prices started at twelve quid a pop for a cocktail, it doesn’t take very long at all to work up to an ear-wateringly high bill.
It’s a great experience, and would be good fun for special occasions, but not the best for casual drinking.
After staggering back into the daylight we went for food and up to the first floor in Kingly Court to the Stax café. Adorned with posters from musical icons over the years, and a menu full of Stax related food names, it claims to be a soul food café. Somewhat unusually it was run and staffed entirely by Spanish people, one of whom explained that their beef bacon and chorizo was off the menu as their delivery was stuck somewhere behind a blockade in France.
With it being a Stax café, you might expect the accompanying music to be a treat from the label’s wonderful sixties and seventies soul output, but in seemingly oblivious style, I don’t think I heard a single Stax song whilst I was in there, not even in any of the samples on the variety of hip hop that was played. Nothing from their associated Atlantic or Volt labels either, but they did manage to put on some tracks from their biggest rival at the time – Motown.
The food was good, and there was a fair amount of it. The cocktails may not have been as exotic, or as wonderfully presented as the ones in Cahoots, but they were still good and a damn site cheaper.
Then it was time for the main event. Imelda May at the London Palladium. An evening of Celtic soul, with Leo Green’s Orchestra for backing, and recording for BBC Radio 2, for their Friday night concert show programmes. Which when introduced as such on a Monday night does seem a bit odd.
When we had been to see Imelda May at the Royal Albert Hall some eighteen months ago, she had said about wanting to do a project relating to the great Irish songbook. And so this concert was taking a trip through those acts that she felt represented Irish music that influenced her. Apart from the finale of “Danny Boy”, there weren’t any of traditional Irish songs I had been half expecting (“Black Velvet Band”, “Molly Malone”, “Wild Rover”, “Irish Rover” etc.). Instead there were songs from a more contemporary selection of Irish bands, such as The Cranberries, Hothouse Flowers, U2, Sinead O’Connor, Rory Gallagher, Van Morrison, Damien Rice and Thin Lizzy.
Her first special guest was Damien Dempsey, someone who she has recorded songs with, then came Bronagh Gallagher, who Imelda May lived with in the past, and who was in The Commitments, and so they did two songs from that soundtrack. Finally she was joined by a very excitable Ronnie Wood as they romped through a couple of full on rock ‘n’ roll songs.
The two plus hours went so quickly it was difficult to believe it was nearing eleven as we came out of the Palladium. It was a great show (again), just a shame we don’t have the Tuesday off as well now.