Flushing out London's 'fatbergs'

Most of us enjoy a night out 'up West'. London's Theatreland around Leicester Square and Soho is a playground of clubs, pubs and eateries. 

Sadly, one of my favourite Soho restaurants recently fell foul of a recent cockroach incursion. Understandably, Westminster's food inspectors slapped a temporary closure order on the joint. We thought those anchovies tasted a bit funny!

But the problem of hygiene and sanitation scuttles far deeper than a few cockroaches. As you know, every now and again that vicious West End whiff whips up the nostrils, especially in hot summer weather. Much of this 21st Century big stink comes from the 'fatbergs' of congealed cooking fat clogging up the West End's sewers.

So, spare a thought for London's team of sewer flushers who are currently blasting the 'fatbergs' with powerful water jets. They aim to clear 1,000 tonnes of putrifying cooking fat blocking the sewers beneath Leicester Square (above photo).

For many years now, West End restaurants and residences have been callously chucking cooking oil and fat down their drains into London's Victorian sewers.

According to Thames Water's puff people, (I mean PR team) that's the equivalent of "nine double-decker bus loads" of solidifying, oxygen-eating and methane emitting sludge.

The flushers' 'lard' job is made even tougher by the wet wipes and sanitary products bunged down there too. (Sorry, lard-on the pun). Good luck guys!

There's only one group of Londoners who love this stinky stuff - the West End's rats - who 'dig' fat as a food source and dig into fatbergs for nightly warmth. In fact, you'll rarely see a rat in a fat free sewer. 

Now, sir, madam, would you like to see the dessert menu?

Photo: Thames Water


Paul Coleman, London, July 2010

A portion of Piccadilly and a slice of Soho

The New Piccadilly café established itself as a popular melody in the songbook of London life for over fifty years. Located just around the corner from the discrete red lights of Soho and blazing neon of Piccadilly, London's most famous café offered its regular patrons cosy warmth on dark wintry days and calm shade away from summer's shimmering heat and dust. 


I count myself lucky. True, I miss the place, being one of a legion of former New Piccadilly regulars who relished those days when the café's friendly waiters, clad in their colonial-style tunics, served us wholesome and satisfying grub. The familiar and friendly atmosphere would wrap itself around us as we sat on our wooden pews at formica tables, illuminated by Festival of Britain lights straight from 1951.

We miss owner Lorenzo Marioni (above), who came to Britain from Italy in 1949 and later took over the business from his father, Pietro. Lorenzo would orchestrate the lunch and tea-time rushes, accompanied by classical music on the wireless. Beside him hissed the New Piccadilly's huge espresso and cappucino-making machine, encased in enamel so pink that it would've brought a blush to Lady Penelope's cheeks.


In its 1950s heyday, the New Piccadilly welcomed Hungarian dissidents, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Maltese and Irish, all tough guys who occasionally threw tea cups and then their fists. In those austere post-war days, the café operated next door to the Casino de Paris strip club. Outside on Denman Street, 'women of the night' plied their trade night and day, often in 'pea soup' fogs. 


Smack bang in the heart of the West End, London's 'Theatreland' luvvies also flocked to the New Piccadilly. When the post-war fog and gloom began to lift in the 1960s, the New Piccadilly attracted a glamorous clientele, including British actress Diana Dors (below), who regularly sipped frothy coffee whilst enjoying the relative anonymity that the café offered.

When I first found refuge in the New Piccadilly in 2004, it seemed to have captured the nostalgic feel and flavour of 1950s and 60s London. Nowadays, the café is a part of my own personal nostalgia*. If only that atmosphere could've been somehow bottled and preserved. Sadly, Lorenzo was forced to close the business in September 2007, forced out by a yearly rent of £51,000 with the business rate and insurance on top. "It's £70,000 before I open the door - and I'm selling cups of tea at 50p," Lorenzo once remarked. 


The New Piccadilly, as London as egg and chips, has since been ripped out of Denman Street. That entire block is now due for a shops and office development, one of those pre-derelict glass and steel plazas boarded up with Starpizza and Express Bucks, devoid of character and tradition. Y'know the kind of place, a consumer void with no soul and no balls where it's hard to believe anything really interesting is thought, spoken or conceived.


Happily, Lorenzo escaped these corporate sorcerors, a cheery postcript to the tale of the New Piccadilly. Some of Lorenzo's former neighbours, shopkeepers on Denman Street, told me recently that Lorenzo is enjoying his well-deserved retirement.  "I'll be off on a yacht to the Caribbean with a blonde on each arm," Lorenzo joked with me days before he flipped the sign on the door to 'Closed' for the final time. 


Even if Lorenzo hasn't sailed off fully laden into a Caribbean sunset, it's good to hear he's finding some peace and joy. It's well deserved. After all, Lorenzo and the lads dished up good food and drink for Londoners over decades - served always with a slice of Soho and a portion of Piccadilly.

(Above): Infuriatingly, on some days, the New Piccadilly closed due to the café's appeal as a ready made film set. For instance, in the The Girl in the Cafe (2005), Bill Nighy plays Lawrence, a lonely civil servant who falls for the enigmatic Gina (Kelly Macdonald). Oi! Bill, Kelly, you're sat at my table! 

* nostalgia = past pain

Dors image: Image Shack

Paul Coleman, London, February 2010

Pain today, gain tomorrow...hopefully, maybe

Tomorrow never comes, so the saying goes. Yesterday, I blogged positively about rail projects that ought to reduce overcrowding on London’s rail and tube trains during 2010. Today, the story focuses on the pain that Londoners are told is necessary if rail and tube capacity is to increase in the future. The 2012 Olympic Games are driving a lot of these rail capacity upgrades.

‘The shovels have tasted earth,’ is how London Mayor Boris Johnson (below, left) greeted the onset of construction work on Crossrail, the east-west rail service designed to relieve tube congestion and due to open in 2017. Shoppers on Oxford Street and bus passengers passing through Tottenham Court Road have already tasted the road-level disruption caused by works that will enable Crossrail’s vast tunneling operation to begin. Many Soho businesses have been struck with compulsory purchase orders and Crossrail, wholly owned by Transport for London, has not yet settled a single compensation claim.

Above, (left to right):

Crossrail BoJo, PPP Gordon and High Speed Adonis.

When all the muck is churned out of the ground beneath Selfridges and Centre Point over the next few years, be prepared for lots of blocked pavements and diverted buses and heavy lorries clogging central London’s streets. Support from David Cameron’s Conservative Party means Crossrail enjoys a cross-party consensus. “We’re not offering up any sacrifice on any part of the programme,” said Terry Morgan, Crossrail’s non-executive chairman. “We want to do the whole lot.”

Elsewhere, the Jubilee Line ought by now to have been running more frequent and longer trains but Tube Lines missed the December 2009 deadline to complete the signaling upgrade (top photo). It's part of the ongoing Private Public Partnership debacle foisted upon Londoners by Gordon Brown. “Tube Lines owe Londoners an apology for their failure to deliver,” cry Transport for London. Tube Lines say TfL, specifically London Underground, hasn't given their work teams enough access to the tracks.


For passengers, this means that Tube Lines, consisting of an Amey and Bechtel partnership, will want even more weekend or part-weekend closures of the Jubilee Line this year, on top of the 120 already inflicted on Londoners and way beyond the original prediction of around 50. Interestingly, Bechtel are also part of Crossrail’s project delivery team and Morgan used to run Tube Lines.

Let’s not forget Network Rail's £5.5 billion Thameslink project that has put Blackfriars station out of action until late 2011. By 2012, longer 12 car trains will run on the route between Bedford, central London and Brighton but fuming passengers have already run out of patience with the operating company, First Capital Connect.

The North London Line will also be severely disrupted from February onwards as the line is upgraded to accommodate longer and more frequent trains in 2011. Ubiquitous 'rail replacement' buses will run between Hampstead Heath and Stratford stations as services will be suspended between Gospel Oak and Stratford.

In March, Transport Secretary Lord Adonis (above, right) - some people's worst nightmare, a trainspotter with power - will produce his ideas about the route of a new High Speed route between London and all parts north of Watford. Over 30 sites for a London high speed rail terminal have been identified. Strange this, as a site near Euston has always seemed the logical favourite. It'll be a biggy, able to handle up to 18 trains and 20,000 passengers per hour.

Woops! I almost forgot to mention 2010 could see strike action over cuts in rail maintenance and track renewals. 
Finally, if an economic recovery trickles and pushes up inflation, expect the train companies to be falling over themselves to raise fares.
All those 'rail replacement' buses aren’t cheap to run, y’know.


* More about Crossrail in a later posting...


Top photo courtesy of Tube Lines
Lower photo courtesy of Crossrail Limited

Paul Coleman, London, January 2010