hi all

[kimlizzi]

Hi I am Kim yes female i love real real ale and like a odd glass of real cider in this hot sunny weather just been to a great little micro in my local town of sittingbourne in KentThe old oak good welcome good beer shame only two customers come on peeps suport this local new venture

[Richard English]

Good to see you, Kim. As a fellow Man of Kent I am pleased to see you.

Kent, of course, was once the home of hops and even now hosts one of Britain's oldest breweries in Shepherd Neame.

Whereas it is difficult to persuade those who don't go to pubs to change their habits, every little helps and every time you say to someone how good that pub is, it will be more grist to that mill.

[curMUDGEon]

Good to see you, Kim. As a fellow Man of Kent I am pleased to see you.

Kent, of course, was once the home of hops and even now hosts one of Britain's oldest breweries in Shepherd Neame.

Whereas it is difficult to persuade those who don't go to pubs to change their habits, every little helps and every time you say to someone how good that pub is, it will be more grist to that mill.

So you're from East of the Medway, an area I often visited in the 'seventies, my grandparents having retired there some years earlier. Hop fields everywhere and plenty of Femlins Bitter, albeit badged as Whitbread Trophy and often on blanket pressure, back then. Where though in that half of Kent were you from ?

[Richard English]

I was born in Maidstone - right on the Medway - so I've never been sure whether I am a Man of Kent or a Kentish Man - but I suspect it was the east as I was borne in Loose.

[curMUDGEon]

I was born in Maidstone - right on the Medway - so I've never been sure whether I am a Man of Kent or a Kentish Man - but I suspect it was the east as I was borne in Loose.

A Kentish Man of Kent then, you can't go far wrong with that title.

[johng]

i was in the Wheatsheaf (london bridge }tonight .i was the only customer and i only had a half.your pub seems busy compared to mine. cheers john

[curMUDGEon]

i was in the Wheatsheaf (london bridge }tonight .i was the only customer and i only had a half.your pub seems busy compared to mine. cheers john

What, the one in Stoney Street, a few doors from the Market Porter ?
Not so many years ago it was doing a roaring trade, bought significant volumes of beer from a microbrewery near me, and even sold Courage's Russian Stout.

[FLYINGGEORDIE]

The Wheatsheaf London Bridge closed a while ago and The New Wheatsheaf is just around the corner below ground in 24 Southwick Street. I may be from Tyneside but know my London pubs.

[Richard English]

The Wheatsheaf London Bridge closed a while ago and The New Wheatsheaf is just around the corner below ground in 24 Southwick Street. I may be from Tyneside but know my London pubs.

That sounds to me very much like the location of the (in)famous Becky's Dive Bar. That was in a cellar in Southwark(sic) Street.

[curMUDGEon]

The Wheatsheaf London Bridge closed a while ago and The New Wheatsheaf is just around the corner below ground in 24 Southwick Street. I may be from Tyneside but know my London pubs.

That sounds to me very much like the location of the (in)famous Becky's Dive Bar. That was in a cellar in Southwark(sic) Street.

Yes, Beck's Dive Bar certainly was below 24 Southwark Street, and I had no idea that it had reopened with a new identity, and no doubt a bit more upmarket than in Becky's days.

[Richard English]

The Wheatsheaf London Bridge closed a while ago and The New Wheatsheaf is just around the corner below ground in 24 Southwick Street. I may be from Tyneside but know my London pubs.

That sounds to me very much like the location of the (in)famous Becky's Dive Bar. That was in a cellar in Southwark(sic) Street.

Yes, Beck's Dive Bar certainly was below 24 Southwark Street, and I had no idea that it had reopened with a new identity, and no doubt a bit more upmarket than in Becky's days.

It would be hard to think of a more grotty pub! Do you remember Harry (the large-stomached barman) or Norman, the always-drunk (when he could scrounge the cash) pianist?

[curMUDGEon]

[quote="Richard EnglishThat sounds to me very much like the location of the (in)famous Becky's Dive Bar. That was in a cellar in Southwark(sic) Street.

Yes, Beck's Dive Bar certainly was below 24 Southwark Street, and I had no idea that it had reopened with a new identity, and no doubt a bit more upmarket than in Becky's days.

Richard English wrote ;
It would be hard to think of a more grotty pub! Do you remember Harry (the large-stomached barman) or Norman, the always-drunk (when he could scrounge the cash) pianist?[/quote]
.
.
No, sadly my visits were too few to remember who was there but I do reacall empty casks doubling as seats and toilets that weren't checked for cleanliness hourly as they are in certain pubs these days !

[curMUDGEon]

Walking along Southwark Street yesterday afternoon I thought number 24 looked familiar from the outside but what a disappointment ! Getting on for forty years since I last used Becky’s Dive Bar I should have expected things not to be quite the same but gone is one of the capital’s most characterful pubs only to be replaced by “leather sofas and stylish photos” in allegedly “atmospheric brick cellars” while somehow claiming “a tavern culture” - and they’ve even got the cheek to borrow ‘The Wheatsheaf’ name from that consistently excellent but now closed pub round the corner in Stoney Street. I just turned round at the bottom of the steps thankful that my two pints and meal in Harvey’s Royal Oak, Tabard Street, had been as good as ever. I was also impressed with the Adnam’s in the Lord Clyde, a new pub to me, and there was nothing wrong with Greene King’s IPA Reserve in the George.

[curMUDGEon]

I’ve just found the following somewhere from a ‘white rabbit’ and trust that it might bring back fond memories to the likes of Richard English who remember that “splendidly squalid” pub.
.

This is partly an attempt to create some sort of little electronic imprint on an obscure piece of social history. A Google search for Becky’s Dive Bar produces only one direct hit – a piece of doggerel by beer writer Maximus Bibendus. His profile shows that he is a member of the Guild of Beer Writers. I was once invited to the annual dinner of the Guild of Beer Writers. I was shown a menu, which looked less like a menu than an alcoholic endurance course: eight courses each cooked in beer with accompanying beer for each course. Being a lightweight I passed. But I digress.

What was Becky’s Dive Bar? Well, it was a splendidly squalid below street level bar on Southwark Street, near London Bridge station. You entered it carefully from street level down a series of stairs, which were carpeted after a fashion, but the carpet was detached from the stairs at various places, thus constituting a tripping hazard. A former girlfriend once reached the bottom of the stairs in a rather undignified manner, with one less heel than she had at the top. There were two bars, a public and a saloon. In a reverse of the usual arrangement, the public was rather upmarket as against the saloon. The public bar actually had seats. In the saloon you sat on barrels. There was a gents. It had the most pungent catch you in the back of the throat smell of ammonia I have ever smelled. I have come across one worse gents in my life but that was in Beirut and is another story.

Despite – or perhaps at least partly because of – the squalor, it was a magical place. It served wonderful things then hardly available generally. There were no beer pumps. The beer barrels were simply put on frames on the bar, a tap knocked into the spile holes and the beer poured. The main stock in trade was Ruddles County, a beer now available in bottles in Sainsburys but then hardly known outside Rutland (for overseas readers, the smallest English county and slightly larger than a postage stamp but the location of the brewery for this now famous beer). There were also behind the bar bottles of every beer you have ever heard of, and some hardly anyone ever has to this day, plus a range of spirits. The bar was the haunt of some wonderful eccentrics. A drunken red headed Irish journalist had what seemed to be a reserved seat at the end of the bar. I once heard him recite Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘Wreck of the Deutschland’ word perfect from his seat, apropos of nothing. At least I think it was word perfect. I didn’t have the text to hand to check.

And Becky? Well, no-one really knew anything much about Becky. She was sometimes known as ‘California Becky’ but I don’t know why. Did she have an accent? Yes, it is called ‘slurring your words’. She invariably dressed in black. Her hair was dyed the most raven, blackest black. How old she was I cannot begin to guess but she was already pretty elderly. She drank something extraordinary. Then she drank some more. And then some more again (you get the idea). By the end of the evening she was invariably blotto. She liked my friends and me and we liked her. I do believe that she genuinely liked people as opposed to pretending to for commercial reasons. She had a gramophone. Yes, I mean a gramophone as opposed to anything more modern. She also had the most bizarre collection of records. When she put on The collected speeches of Winston Churchill you knew she was completely gone. Harry assisted Becky. He was the cellarman and had the hugest beer gut I think I had ever seen. We once got very drunk with Harry and he confided in his cups that he did rather fancy Becky. The idea of the two of them getting it on makes the mind boggle. I think he just said this for the sake of appearances. His appendage must have been anaesthetised by alcohol for years if not decades.

But damn! On Friday or Saturday night Becky’s Dive Bar was the place to be.

How did it end? Well, the local council did an inspection. They did not like what they saw. Okay, it was squalid. And their point was? Various friends of Becky including myself made desperate attempts at a clean up. For example, the grease of generations (plus indeterminate objects that had mysteriously become attached to the grease) was removed from the kitchen. Too little too late. I should have said that as well as the public parts there were two layers further underground which had formerly been a debtors prison. I went down a few times. It was a very strange experience. The cell numbers were still over the doors. They were three further subterranean layers. They were sealed off and for good reason. They were a former plague pit. ‘Nuff said. Somehow it seemed apt.

Becky’s Dive Bar was duly closed in a flurry of public health summonses from the appalled jobsworths. Nobody knows what happened to Becky. She just disappeared. The gaiety – if not of nations – at least of London was diminished thereby. If I extract a conclusion from the story of Becky and her Dive Bar it is this: there are some people for whom the usual rules ought not to apply. They don’t work for them and they add something to the richness of life by breaking every rule. They appeal to my anarchist streak. By pushing them under we are all diminished. Let glorious eccentrics be!

By the way, there are no pictures online, or otherwise accessible to me of Becky’s Dive Bar. The picture is of Southwark Street, however. I rather like it. It is described as ‘man in overcoat ambles past Poured Lines by Ian Davenport on Southwark Street, London’.

[Richard English]

I was primarily a lunchtime user of Becky's, as I worked nearby in Southwark Street as a photocopy-machine mechanic - one of a number of jobs I tried before settling on the travel business.

But I did occasionally go in there during evening forays into London with a friend, searching - as teenage boys do so frequently - for accommodating young ladies. Such trips invariably ended in failure and so a few beers at Becky's helped dull the pain.

By the time Becky's closed as described above I was an ex-regular and so was unaware of the shennanigans. Happy days, nevertheless.

[Moonraker]

But I did occasionally go in there during evening forays into London with a friend, searching - as teenage boys do so frequently - for accommodating young ladies.

How succinctly put! How differently most youngsters today would write that!

[Owen Bell]

How differently most people of your generation would express it. Vulgarity is not the sole province of the young.