One Week With John Gulliver - Graffiti at Prince of Wales pub in Primrose Hill 'not a Banksy'

Published: 14 October, 2010
by JOHN GULLIVER

IT may look like a Banksy and feel like a Banksy but it isn’t one. 

Presumably, that was a big disappointment for Enterprise Inns, who were hoping the mystery depiction on the wall of their pub in Primrose Hill of a young girl holding a heart shaped balloon was, indeed, a Bansky.

At first hopes rose high – until it was realised the mural was definitely not by the fashionable artist.

The liquor chain were hoping the mural would boost the sale price of the Princess of Wales pub at an auction on Monday.  

The guide price for the pub is £1million.

Enterprise, struggling in the recession, has already scooped £12.5m from the sale of 10 London pubs – including The Osteria del Ponte in Kilburn for £1.05m and the Junction Tavern in Kentish Town for £1.07m.

Nearby on a blank white wall of a corner house in Rothwell Street there is another eye-catching piece of graffiti art – a very good portrait of a young man and a dog.

He looks uncommonly like a homeless man often seen sitting outside Shepherds supermarket in Regent’s Park Road with his dog,  waiting for a “bit of change.”

Anyone with an appetite for public art like me can only hope no one will have the audacity to remove it.

Reunion of the Fleet Street radicals who lit up the Star

HE can remember the hour and the day as if it was yesterday, although it took place 50 years ago.

It was 5pm on October 17, 1960 that Ralph McCarthy, the editor of the London evening paper the Star, announced, in a tight voice, to the entire editorial staff of 100 reporters, feature writers and sub-editors, that they had seen off the very last edition of the paper.

Though rumours had been circulating for some time about the possible closure of the famous radical paper, the news came as a shock.

And for Sidney Rennert it meant the end of 12 years with what was, uniquely, a radical Fleet Street evening paper.

He went on to become the industrial reporter for the daily, The Sketch, for another six years when that too died on him, as it were, persuading him to move sideways into public relations.

Note for young readers: In 1960 London had three evening papers, the Star, Evening News and Evening Standard with a total circulation of nearly four million.

And they were all paid for.

Today, only the Standard remains – and its free distribution figure is about 600,000.

Sidney, now 87, is helping to organise a 50-year reunion on Monday with about a dozen survivors of the staff of the Star, at the Cheshire Cheese pub off Fleet Street, one of the many watering-holes when Fleet Street was synony­mous with the Press.

Recalling the day his world collapsed, Sidney told me from his Somers Town home on Tuesday: “There was immense sympathy for us and the editors of every paper bent over backwards to find jobs or offer freelance work.

Within a few weeks all but four of us had found jobs. I cannot imagine that happening today.”

A few yards from the Cheshire Cheese, another reunion will be taking place at the same time – survivors of the great liberal daily, the News Chronicle – the Star’s sister paper, also shut down 50 years ago – will also be commemorating that fateful day.

I gather Geoffrey Goodman, the doyen of industrial reporters, who lives in Highgate, is helping to organise the “News Chron” bash.

Both papers were owned by that former great British institution – the Quaker chocolate firm.

I say former because Cadbury’s was eaten up recently in a scandalous take-over by the US firm, Krafts.
Is nothing sacred in this land?

Remembering Michael Foot

A CELEBRATION of the life of former Labour Party leader Michael Foot will be held at the Lyric Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue on November 8.

There will be a mix of comedy, music, literature and politics, with speakers and performers ranging from Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Helena Kennedy, Geoffrey Goodman, Timothy West, David Steel, Roy Hattersley, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband.

The night is compered by newscaster Jon Snow.

There will be film screenings and the Tred­egar band and London Welsh Chorale will play some favourite music of Michael’s, who lived in Pilgrim’s Lane, and died in March aged 96.

Tickets are free – with an optional donation to CND – but it’s first come, first served.

To book a ticket go to www2.labour.org.uk/celebrating-michael-foot

It’s art, by and for the people

IF there is such an art form as People’s Art you will find it at an annual arts and crafts fair in Gospel Oak this weekend.

I wandered into Blackfriars Hall in Southampton Road several years ago not knowing what to expect from the fair, then only a few years old, and was smitten by the sheer range of oils, watercolours, hand-painted postcards and embroideries – all created by local people, old, young, well-off, not so-well off, and all amateurs bitten by the creation bug.

I note that the old favourites, the Pellegrinetti family, will be exhibiting – Robert with his etchings, his aunt,
now 88, with her postcards.

The 21st fair, hosted by St Dominic’s Church, starts at 9am and ends at 4pm, and is highly recommended