[quote="Tubby Isaacs" post=678683]Aren't they wonderful?

Do you know the apparently permanently closed Seven Stars in Brick Lane? It was featured in a splendid episode of Minder.

Drank there only as a tourist as friends lived in the area.Always preferred the grittier parts of the city as i think we knew this was all going to be gentrified by Thatcher in time.
In our relentless quest for good quality amphetemine the East End was the place to go.

It's still on iPlayer, Tubbs.

Weird, I was wondering around the area yesterday and looked out for the Seven Stars. I'm reading Iain Sinclair's White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings at the moment, and that pub is a meeting point early on. It's set in the mid-80s, and there's an old school stripper working the pub, then they go for a curry at the Nazrul. Seems prostitution was rife around the Seven Stars then, 100 years after all the Jack the Ripper business that happened in the vicinity.

Tell you what, it's the business this book. His non-fiction leaves me cold (walk around, moan about things changing, remember an historical figure, repeat). But this is outstanding, a genuinely brilliant novel; all his interests come alive in it.

I loved Alan Moore's From Hell when I read it a few years ago. It's only now I realise that the "ten years of research" he put into it must have involved reading Sinclair's White Chapell... and Lud Heat over and over, because From Hell is bascially a mash-up of the two - almost everything is a direct lift! But no one will tell you this because they don't want to say anything bad about Alan Moore, cause he's good, and nice.

There was a lot of prostitution in that area 10 years ago, particularly in Old Montague Street.

There were two absolutely heartbreaking "reality" films made in the area in 2002, one about 2 crack addicted prostitutes who squatted in the then derelict Tower House, and another about a homeless family who survived on stealing petrol.

Directed by Pamela Gordon, who I interviewed for a college project, and was extremely helpful.

Can anyone find them online? Shown as part of a channel 4 strand called "Wasted".

Todays masterpieces taken by the then young John Claridge-one for you Tubby!

Just rolled up to say the same thing! (I come equipped with a link though)

`We Lead Others Follow
Triffic.

Oooh brilliant.

Alf Ramsey used to be a customer if he had a bit of time before his Ipswich train left.

Lucia Lanigan wrote:


I am curious to read White Chappell. I also agree that From Hell was very well done. However, both of them would surely give major credit of the Duke of Clarence/William Gull storyline to Stephen Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution. It was the first Ripper book I'd read and it was a fascinating read...and crushing to find that it was all an elaborate work of fiction.

No matter. Patricia Cornwall pushes it farther and names a solo Walter Sickert as the unquestionably the Ripper in her book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper - Case Closed a few years ago. Nowhere is Stephen Knight mentioned in the book.

Bit earlier than 1988, and a bit further east, but watching The Chinese Detective.

The Isle of Dogs (if that's where it is) looks very bad indeed.

In the meantime, some nice pictures from the Boundary Estate of Bangladeshis cooking:

spitalfieldslife.com/2012/08/25/boundary...cooking-portraits-2/

I'll be at Spitalfields this afternoon working with the Team London Ambassadors telling people where to go (nicely). They're the one with the straw hats on and it's a Legacy project. The idea is that in future London will have a large pool of volunteers to help out during big events, exhibitions, celebrations etc.

Tubby Isaacs wrote:


It was. I moved there whilst the Chinese Detective was being filmed, my dad became drinking buddies with David Yip. I guess the Isle of Dogs was such a desolate place at the time that it wasn't hard to become drinking buddies with a stranger, but it probably didn't harm things that both were scousers.

There's an episode where Yip has to find a suspect in the grimmest block of flats you could ever wish to see. Those flats were in the location where situated where the Four Seasons is now. I remember crying the first time we drove past that block of flats, they were so terrifying, even in turn-of-the-decade 1980s Liverpool. It was one of the first buildings they knocked down at the start of the enterprise zone.

I twigged Yip was from Liverpool. Shows through quite a lot. He's compelling though.

I can't yet place that scene with the horribe block.

Spitalfields 1912. Incredible number of kids everywhere.

www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/...96250175&index=0

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k7m4h

BBC4 programme on now, about the East End on film.

It features an interview with the real Tubby. Canning Town is featured for a couple of seconds, and looks dreadful.

And there's a sequence on Don McCullin, the excellent photographer.