09/03/26 - On the Trail of..... The Small World of Sammy Lee

Checking The Gentrification of Soho

It seems that it's impossible for me to simply watch TV without thinking - "I wonder what that location looks like now?". It takes me two hours to get through an episode of The Sweeney. And I haven't even started on Minder yet.

No surprise that the opening sequence of The Small World of Sammy Lee had me planning my annual trip to Soho. I need to make sure that Fuller's haven't ruined the Coach and Horses.

The film is pretty good.... Sammy Lee being what you would get if Bob Monkhouse worked in a strip club and lost all his money gambling.

The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) is a British black-and-white crime drama directed by Ken Hughes and starring Anthony Newley, Julia Foster, and Robert Stephens.

The film follows Sammy Lee, a fast-talking compère at a Soho strip club who has run up a £300 gambling debt with a bookie. Given just five hours to repay the money, he rushes around Soho trying to borrow cash, call in favours, and make deals while still hosting the club’s stage shows.

This website does all the hard work of deconstructing the locations and making my days easier. Less time planning, more time walking.

Without going too mad.... the changes over 63 years....

The opening scene in Peter Street looking west

Once a striptease, now a restaurant at 50 Frith Street

At least the Indian remains at 44 Frith Street

And my favourite change - Books and Mags for Harry Bloody Potter at 157 Wardour Street

Whilst in the location - it's important for me to check on the Coach and Horses in Greek Street. Other pubs are available but none mean as much to me as this place. No need to repeat myself.

Fellow Casketeers waiting for the bolt slide

Fuller's took it over at the turn of the decade. The beer quality and range has improved (Kernal, no less) and the piano has (thankfully) been removed. Only so many times you can listen to Soho loveys belting out "Knees Up Mother Brown" ironically.

The view from the ghost of a piano

I was convinced the wooden bar backboard would be the first thing to be sacrificed in the name of progress. I'm reasonably sure I sent an email offering to buy it, if it was ever to be stripped out. Delighted that Skol, Ind Coope and Double Diamond have not been replaced with Pride, ESB and 1845. As much as I love them all.

Dread to think how long I have stared at this over the years

The final test - the gents. There was a time when you had to be very brave to even venture in. Now it is the inspiration for art. Even if the painter has caught it on a good day.  

Unsure I ever saw it so clean in the 1990s.

The hand dryer - no longer wall-mounted or working - suggests that gentrification has made only small inroads into my happy place.