The Squire Shop is glimpsed in a video of Soho  late 60s I think. It's on YouTube

Yes, the Look at Life series is worth a watch on YouTube.

There's a real fascination about the Soho of old, isn't there? - reflected in some of the high prices asked for books on the subject.  I did have a little library at one time - and I think our old Cardiff poster Staceyboy did, too.  I used to love Jeffrey Bernard in 'The Spectator' - when he was well enough to write his column.

I'd be very keen to see it; wouldn't you?

I'm still drawn to Soho almost by instinct. So many memories for me - my first visit to Bar Italia in 84, before I'd moved down here, the Bar quiet, Frith Street quiet, some old Italians huddled in the corner watching Rai Uno on the TV, sipping espresso. Lorelei on Bateman Street, Centrale on Moor Street, Pollo Bar and Amalfi on Old Compton Street - all gone. God I've turned into such an old fart banging on about the past. Of course much had already been lost before I arrived - great old restaurants, butchers, delis, clubs, coffee bars. I arrived at the peak of Soho Brasserie and thought I was part of the beau monde as I sipped my citron presse in the Soho Brasserie and flashed my 501s, white socks and Bass Weejuns - very much the hip look of the day with the Wag Club/Jason Jules/Robert Elms kind of crowd who I publicly scorned but secretly kind of admired. A few years later I sold a pair of Weejuns to Sade and Paul Weller in J.Simons so I guess I had socially climbed quite rapidly within the rather narrow confines of the hip London clothes scene.

I went to a book launch at Central St.Martin's 7 or 8 years ago and she was there, being very low key and avoiding all eye contact with perverts like me, but she looked good. I wanted to go up to her and say "Sade - Robert Elms! Why? How could you? Explain the appeal of the ginger scrawn." But I didn't.

Robert Elms and Sade. One of life's great mysteries.

I guess we have all 'punched above our weight' a few times in life.
Listening to his radio programme in the early days he seemed to mention her almost every show.

Perhaps they were just mates, definately a mis-match,
on the subject of Robert Elms I've listened to him getting in/out of the car over the last (maybe) 20 years and since last year more regularly, but now they've reduced him to Fri-Sunday which to me doesn't work very well,  although he often gets up himself there is a lot of stuff he covers that I'm sure is interesting to a lot of us on this forum,

I took against Elms after reading his book some years ago.  His Mum scrimped and scraped to buy him some jeans and he threw a hissy fit because they weren't 501s specially imported for him from the USA or some such palaver.  What a knob.  Sade was a doll but nothing compared with Donna Summer circa '76 - and her music was, quite frankly, nothing much.

This book published next month may appeal:

Some Kinda Soho

https://www.centralbooks.com/some-kind-a-soho.html#horizontalTab3

The voices of disappearing Soho

There has been a programme on BBC one set in 'London's Swinging Sixties' about the social changes that I couldn't watch.

I read loads of books about Soho - Daniel Farson, Bacon, Bernard as you say (a nice Radio4 play/recreation with John Hurt too), Dog Days in Soho, the Litvinoff book etc. I certainly do not have any rose tinted glasses about it all. 

While researching the Sportique shop on Old Compton Street (a John Michael Ingram shop, the place for knitted ties at the time amongst much else) - I found this from one of the originals, which goes nicely alongside the John Rushton interview from yesterday.  This is short (and not Ivy) but definitely worth reading for interest in Soho, early/pre-Mod modernism etc.

https://www.timeout.com/london/shopping/wayne-kirven-style-icon-for-60-years-and-counting-tells-his-london-story

Wayne is another one of those people who I can't claim to know personally but is certainly a friend of friends. A good mate of mine from a lifetime ago - "Rockin' Dave" shows up in his music video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzIyGwmAhCI should you really want to subject yourself to it..) along with another few faces that would be familiar to me from nights hanging out at The New Evaristo and club nights such as "Lady Luck" (briefly held at The Raymond Revue Bar) and The Black Gardenia club. My first job was on Berwick Street, working on a fruit & veg stall but by then it was a grotty street with the only redeeming features being the record shops and Simply Sausages.