The Rest Is History - 210. London: Places

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Welcome to the second episode in our new mini-series: LONDON WEEK. From Monday to Friday we'll release an episode daily. Monday's 'Londinium' and Thursday's 'Haunted London' are live episodes we recorded on location earlier this year. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday we're releasing episodes on 'Places', 'People', and 'Moments' from London's past. To get ALL episodes right now, become a member of The Rest Is History Club - you'll also get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. London: Places In the second episode of London Week, Tom and Dominic focus on two very different historical places in London's past, discussing Barking Abbey and the 2i's Coffee Bar. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello and welcome to The Rest Is History. Now, yesterday, if you were listening, you will know that we did a walk around Rome and London and we thought it would be fun to have a London-themed week, so we'll be doing another walk later in the week, or ratherlland will be dragging me on another in your bleeding shoes in in yeah in a pair of new shoes inappropriate footwear like the kaiser i was like the kaiser cows wearing inappropriate footwear but we'll come to that in due course so yesterday we're in

roman london and what we're going to do in the build-up to the next war is each day we're going to release a podcast of which this is one, concentrating on a different aspect of London life. So people, places, and moments. And so what we're doing today is we've each chosen a place, haven't we, Tom? We have. That's redolent of a particular era in London's history. Yeah. But you want to talk about a walk, don't you? So the place I have chosen is the only place in London to which I have gone on pilgrimage. And I can tell you the exact date on which I did it. It was the 20th of March last year. This isn't as sentence you often hear. And I remember it because 20th of March, of course, as you will remember, Dominic, is St. Cuthbert's Day, a day that I would normally celebrate by meeting up with Jonathan Wilson and other such people from the northeast and toasting the great saint.

I couldn't do that. We were under lockdown. So I thought, well, I should I should do something Anglo-Saxon. And so. I went for a very, very long walk, so I went all across South London, so out into Brixton, where I live, or Beorted Seegers Stone, as it was known back in the Anglo-Saxon times, through Peckham, the homestead by the River Peck. I got to Greenwich and then to Woolwich. And the Wych is a wych. It's a kind of great trading emporium. So the green trading emporium and a trading emporium that deals in wool.

And at Woolwich, I got the ferry and I went up north and I arrived at Barking which I suppose isn't I mean it's not kind of famous today as a place of pilgrimage but this was the place that I'd come to. Yeah it's not a place you often walk to. It's a very ancient place so it's named in a charter of 735 as Berwick Kingdom, which apparently means either settlement of the descendants of Berwicka or people who live among birch trees. I think I prefer the second. So, Tom, just for people who don't know, tell us where Barking is. Because, I mean, you're doing that London thing. I'm assuming that, I mean, most people don't care about London at all, Tom.

So explain to us. So I've gone along South London. I've followed the line of the Thames. Woolwich, there's a ferry. I've got the ferry over to North London. Across the Thames. Across the Thames. And I'm now in East London.

So quite a long way. I should think about seven or eight miles east of the city of London. Okay. OK, so. So back in. Back in the sixth, back in the seventh century, this was a fair way out from London, the ruins of Roman London. Roman London has been abandoned, but London is a place of interest to the Christian missionaries who have arrived in Kent, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, so Augustine, leading this missionary campaign to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. And Gregory's plan is that there will be archbishops in London and in York, because in Roman times, these were the centres of colonial administration. But they've come to Kent. Kent has offered a kind of, you know, a welcome. London is much more menacing place. It's a kind of,

it's the Badlands. So that's why Augustine ends up becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury rather than of London, because London is too dangerous for him to settle. Too dangerous, why? Inhabited by stray dogs, bandits, ne'er-do-wells, rather like today. Yes, but also under the thumb of kings who have not yet embraced Christianity. So it's dangerous on the personal level. London is a place you don't really want to visit. Because it's ruined, isn't it? Yeah, and ruins provide hideouts for kind of bandits

and all kinds of people you wouldn't want to mix with. So it's a dangerous place. But there's still the ambition to get a bishop into London because it's a Roman city. And there's a feeling that a Roman city should have a bishop. So you get this guy called Meletus, who is the first bishop of London. He goes in there. He tries to set up shop. He gets chased out.

And he flees not only London, but England itself. He basically scarpers back to Gaul. So, again, London is left without a bishop. But meanwhile, in Kent, more and more people are becoming Christian. The ruling family in particular are becoming Christian. And you get this guy called Urquhart, who's probably of Kentish Royal descent, who gets appointed Bishop of London, have another crack at it. And he goes back and he is able to establish the church in London sufficiently that Urquhald is the first in the continuous line of bishops that runs right the way up to the present day. So there's still a Bishop of London now. Bishop of London stands in a line of descent from Erkenwald.

Now, Erkenwald, before he becomes Bishop of London, has set up two abbeys on the outskirts of London, one at Chertsey, which is southwest of London, andes at Barking will become one of the great, great centres of scholarship and specifically a female scholarship. Because the person who is put in charge of the abbey is Erkenwald's sister, Ethelberg. Ethelberg? Ethelberg. Okay. Or Ethelberger, if you fancy her. Let's go with Ethelberger. That. Or Ethelberger, if you fancy her. Let's go with Ethelberger. That's slightly easier to say.

And she is a saintly figure, a virgin, a nun, but also a great scholar. And she establishes this idea that Barking should be a place not just for prayer, but of scholarship, and specifically of female scholarship. So I never had Barking down as a sort of blue stocking stronghold. Absolutely. But this is what it was. And so when she's a figure of transcendent holiness, when she dies, a nun in Barking sees her drawn up to heaven, carried on golden chains.

So she's been taken up and she becomes a saint. And from that point on, basically, the abbess of Barking is the kind of the top abbess in the whole of England. And that's that's a status that she she has right the way through the Middle Ages. There's a wonderful there's a wonderful scholar of this period called Eleanor Parker, who's at Oxford. And she has a blog under the name of's at Oxford. And she has a blog under the name of Clark of Oxford. And she's on Twitter as well. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's absolutely one of my favourite Twitter accounts, one of my favourite blogs. And she kind of goes through the Anglo-Saxon liturgical year, which may sound a bit boring, but it really isn't because

it's full of kind of all the fantastic stories of what the saints get up to, the miracles, mad Vikings, all this kind of thing. Eleanor described barking abbey in in a post she did on it as perhaps the longest lived institutional center of literary culture for women in british history which is a kind of you know an amazing thing but people make more of it tom they should make more of it well because the reformation intervenes but before the reformation you know they're this incredible um tradition that that Eleanor describes and a whole kind of succession of of remarkable women so in the reign of Edgar the peaceable um Anglo-Saxon king of the 10th century called peaceable not because he was a hippie but because he maintained the peace by hanging anyone who gave him any problems. Yeah. Strong leadership for a stable prison.

Yeah. Yeah. Law and order. So Edgar the Peaceable fancied this Anglo-Saxon lady called Wolfhilda, who had grown up in Wilton, which is just outside Salisbury. So very local to me. And Edgar the Peaceable really, really fancied her. But Wolfhilda was obviously very holy, wanted to go off and devote herself to God. So had no time for the advances of Edgar the Peaceful. And Edgar was he was so bad that he sent a message to Wolfhilda saying that her aunt was ill. So Wolfhilda, obviously, you know, very anxious about this, comes rushing to her aunt, goes into her aunt's bedroom. But is Edgar the Peaceful there?

Wow. It's not the aunt at all. That's not very peaceful at all, is it? And so Wolfhilda gives him a slap, runs off, and escapes by going down the drains, apparently. That's very carry- on, isn't it? Yeah, it's very. It is. Yeah, it's carry on Anglo-Saxon nunnery. Anyway, so Wilfelder protects her chastity and virtue and ends up as a very particularly saintly abbess of Barking.

Well, that's good. So that's good. Other famous people who became, who were barking. So Thomas Beckett's sister, Mary, Mary Beckett. She's not technically famous, but I mean, he's famous. Yeah. She's got famous relative. She's a top sister.

She's a top sister. So she gets it after her brother's been killed. It's a kind of mark of penance. So basically Henry II, yeah, groveling gives her says be abes forgive me and another another relative of a famous medieval figure um Elizabeth Chaucer who is the daughter of Geoffrey Chaucer she's a nun there yeah again not technically famous but you're getting a sense that um this is this is the go-to place this is this is the place for kind of top nuns um which is which is why it's such a shit you know there are times where i really hate the

reformation and the thought of what happens to barking abbey is one of them um so this great ancient historic center of learning gets closed down it all gets flogged off um and all that basically you know it all gets demolished and basically all that remains is um one of the three gateways it's it's called the curfew tower so you can still see it there in the middle of barking but but nothing nothing else remains i had you down this is we've done 200 odd podcasts and you've never really come out but i've always suspected that you were unsound about the reformformation. No, well, I'd read so much about Barking Abbey. Yeah.

And, you know, what an amazing centre. And to go there and to see, you know, there's absolutely nothing there. It was very, very sad. However, I then continued my pilgrimage, Dominic. When you say pilgrimage, I mean, were you carrying a cross? No, but I was, you know, I wanted to see it but i was you know i wanted to see it it was a place i wanted to see i walked there but then i wanted to continue the pilgrimage because the story is not completely over not every trace of barking has gone oh this is exciting yeah so i then walked um westwards so through the east end yeah and i got to the

tower of london god this is quite a walk, Tom. Yeah, it's a massive walk. It was absolutely massive. It was quite hot. And I, you know, and it was the lockdown. So it was shut. So and I'd run out of water. So I was getting quite dehydrated. Anyway, I arrived by the Tower of London. There is a church called All Hallows by the Tower. And it's a very ancient church, but it looks quite modern. And that's not because it got burnt down in the fire of London, but because it got blown up by gunpowder in 1650. So, all right.

So 16 years. Yeah. So it was it was a kind of storehouse during the Civil War. Yeah. And then it got very, very badly bombed in the Blitz. And this bombing revealed something really, really startling, which is an Anglo-Saxon doorway made out of Roman tiles. And this is basically the only fragment of Anglo-Saxon architecture that you'll find anywhere in London.

And it dates right the way back to the time of the founding of Barking Abbey. And the reason, the link with Barking Abbey is that in the Middle Ages, it was this church, Orhalis by the Tower, was known as Birking Church. And so the presumption is that it was founded by Erkenwald and given to Barking Abbey. And as such, it's a kind of, you know, it's a precious living link to the traditions of Barking Abbey. And in fact, so it's, you know, it joins the Anglo-Sax the traditions of Barking Abbey um and in fact so it's you know it joins the Anglo-Saxon traditions of Christianity to the Roman history of London because the the brickwork is there so very very very moving there are um there's a stained glass window that um name checks

Barking Abbey there's an icon of Saint Ethelberger um in in all hallows and also you you may remember there's a there's a very small church also in the city dedicated to saint ethelberger which survived both the great fire and the blitz but then got blown up by the ira oh yeah you remember that i do i think 1993 yeah part of that kind of massive bombing campaign in the city i mean they weren't targeting saint in Athelberger, but it was collateral damage. And I got welcomed to All Hallows by the vicar who gave me a wonderful welcome. Did he know you were coming? She. She?

Yeah. So she's in the tradition of St. Athelberger. Right. She did. I phoned ahead and she gave me a cup of tea, which was one of the best cups of tea I've had. Were you not breaking lockdown regulations there, Tom? No, I think it was okay. I think it was okay. That's what he's saying for the benefit of the podcast. Dominic Cummings of history, they'd call him.

Yeah, maybe I've given it all away there. So two questions that I think the listeners will want to know. One, how did the walk conclude? Oh, so I carried on through the city. I went to see the docks that King Alfred built, only surviving portion of Anglo section architecture on the banks of the Thames. I went to Westminster Abbey, of course, you know, built by Edward the Confessor. Yeah. And then I walked back to Brixton. Crikey, that is a walk, Tom.

It was a long walk. It was a very long walk. Yeah. The other question, though, is, so if listeners are inspired by your talk of top nuns to go and visit Barking Abbey for themselves, what will they see? They will see this single tower, the curfew tower, one of the three gateways that led into the abbey,

and that's all that remains. And is it sort of surrounded by, I don't know, I can't imagine, what is there in Barking? Is it surrounded by sandwich shops? No, there's a very nice green open space um there's a church next to it um and then you've got uh barking high street lots of street markets all that kind of thing well it's it's it's uh it's a good place it's not it doesn't have the aura of a great center of female scholarship let's put it like that so what the barking tourist board will make of your description who knows

because you kind of you gave with one hand and took away with the other i felt that but um everybody should go and check the tower out for themselves i think well i think it's i think it's one of those places that you need to know what stood there or else it won't particularly hit you as anything worth visiting like 99 of archaeological sites in other words well definitely like anglo-saxon london of you know, as I say, there's basically only this doorway. I mean, that's all that's physically preserved of it. Yeah. So if you want to go in search of Anglo-Saxon London, you know, there's very little to see.

You really need to take your imagination with you. Yeah. Okay. It's like that thing that members of my household have been known to say when I've suggested visits to historic sites where they've said, is it just a heap of stones? Yeah, because you're barking at me, it's not even a heap of stones. There's literally nothing. So it's even more exciting.

But Dominic, that's why I went on my own. Yeah. I mean, I knew better than to drag Sadie along for that. Yes. Look, darling, we've walked 20 miles and here it is. The single best image of you, Tom, is that image of you having dragged your family... It's on the internet somewhere, isn't it? Because you tweeted it.

Of you having dragged your family to Hadrian's Wall. Yes. And it's pouring with rain. They're clearly... Years ago, on a summer holiday, two small girls standing there in their anoraks. Yeah, in the outskirts of Newcastle. Looking so miserable in a garage forecourt or something.

Happy days. Brilliant. So we should take a break, I think. And when we return, let us, we'll be catapulted forward into the 1950s. There will be drinks and the mood will be very different from the female scholarship of Barking Abbey.

So we'll see you after the break. Brilliant. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain

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therestisentertainment.com that's dot com. That's therestisentertainment dot com. Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History and welcome back to our London week. All this week we're looking at the history of the British capital and today we are looking at places and in the first

half we looked at Barking Abbey, which was my nomination, and Dominic, now time for your nomination, which I think is much more recent, isn't it? It is indeed. So we're in the years after the Second World War in the 1950s. Now, Tom, you said in the first half that the vicar of the church, the All Hallows Church or whatever it is, not that I've forgotten, but... All Hallows Tower. I kind of have forgotten.

So she gave you a cup of tea. Yeah. Not a cup of coffee. No, not a cup of coffee, cup of tea. So had you been strolling around London in the years after the Second World War, you would have found lots of places to give you a cup of tea. But coffee might have been more of an issue because, of course, England, London had had a history of coffee houses,

but was very much a kind of tea place, I would say, kind of first half of the 20th century, kind of George Orwell writing essays about how to make the perfect cup of tea and so on. But the 1950s are boom years for coffee, Tom. And why is that? So lots of Italian immigrants moved to Britain in the years after the second world war

uh there's a big demand for labor um italy is a great exporter net sort of net exporter of people and so they're bringing their kind of shiny coffee machines they are bringing shiny coffee machines so the place that a lot of italians i mean italians go all over the country they go to places like bedford um working brickmaking and so on. But they, in London, lots move to Soho. Because Soho has always been, it's a terrible cliche, but it's kind of because of all the melting pot and stuff. Yeah, so Huguenots go there, don't they?

Huguenots, exactly. So if you go to, I mean, Soho, for overseas listeners, it's right in the heart of London. It used to have a kind of seedy reputation, but not really anymore. Sort of very trendy media kind of people. But in the 50s, it was kind of notorious as the red light district, wasn't it? Yes. Kind of vice. I think the 50s, it wasn't quite as seedy as it would become in the sort of 60s, 70s.

So in the 50s, I think, above all, it's cosmopolitan. I mean, it does have that kind of artist exactly i mean of course there are a lot there are you know um prostitutes there are sort of dodgy bars there are all those kinds of things um but i think when people think of soho they think it's going to be full of delicatessens coffee shops all these things so you have lots of coffee bars um around old compton street in particular in soho so there are lots of italian restaurants so they're called things like amalfi and and presto and so on there's a place in frith street called mocha which is supposedly the first

place in britain to have an espresso machine so a gadget machine so Dominic, this is the 50s. This is the 50s. London is still very dingy, very kind of smoky, austere. So not a place full of light and colour and vibrant street life. No. So Soho is a kind of a blaze of colour in an otherwise dingy urban landscape? I think that's a tiny bit harsh, but I think there's a bit of truth in that. So Soho is a blaze of, i mean i suppose you would say now people would say now a blaze of diversity to some extent um it's it's less monochrome than much of london uh you can buy foods that you can't get elsewhere you can buy foreign newspapers those kinds of things you

might go there for an italian meal that you might not find you know a few streets away so it's busy and it's exciting um and if you go down to old compton street um in let's say 19 beginning of 1956 and you go to number 59 you can find among the coffee bars, there is a coffee bar there called The Two Eyes. So it's called The Two Eyes. It starts as a kind of sandwich bar stroke coffee bar, and it's opened by some brothers called Irani, who I'm assuming are of Iranian descent. And there are three of them.

They're originally going to call it the three eyes. They're one of them. But one of them falls out with the other. So he's booted out, and it's the two eyes. And it's not very successful, actually. There are lots of better coffee bars around and sort of milk bars. Yeah, so what's a milk bar? You just go and drink milk?

Yeah, so a milk bar, basically, I think it's kind of like a coffee bar, but it serves milk. There's very trendy kind of late 50s things. But it's literally just milk? No, I think they have other stuff in milk bars. I've always been slightly puzzled by milk bars. You kind of read it. I think they sort of started in Australia, actually,

and then came to Britain. And they're very sort of redolent of the late 50s and early 60s. When I used to go to holiday to Wales as a child in the early 80s I remember there was a milk bar in Mahanthlith which I think must have been one of the last remaining milk bars in Britain. Anyway so the Two Eyes is there and it's this sort of slightly failed sandwich bar straight coffee bar so if you went into one of these 50s coffee bars there's a sort of espresso machine clanking behind the

counter there are sort of pot plants there are sort of trendy plastic chairs and there's sort of youngsters sitting around with their copies of kind of French existentialist books and so on so Tom have you ever seen there's a film called The rebel with Tony Hancock, which is a sort of,

it's a sort of, it's a film mocking that sort of trend, the late fifties trend for kind of existentialism and all this kind of people wearing duffel coats. Exactly. Exactly. People wearing duffel coats, sort of beatniks,

British beatniks. And in this film, I think Tony Hancock drops out and he wants to become an artist or something. And he goes into this coffee bar and he says he wants a cup of coffee. And he says, I want a cup of coffee with no froth on it. And the woman behind the counter is like, no froth? What's he want no froth for? And there's a man with a massive moustache who's an Italian

who says kind of, what did I invest in an expensive machine for when he wants no froth and all this kind of thing. Anyway, so The Two Eyes is a failed version of this. The Iranians eventually sell it. They sell it to two

Australian wrestlers. Wow. One of whom, the one of whom I think is the only one whose name remains, is well known, is a guy called Paul Lincoln

who traded in the wrestling arena under the name dr death so dr death they've got a coffee bar now the two eyes it's equally useless it sort of hemorrhages money and you may be too busy wrestling probably probably yes exactly can i have a coffee no i've got to go and yeah you've got to go and work on my cape or whatever. But what sort of rescues the fortunes of the bar is they have a tiny basement. So basically, the coffee shop itself, there's a room for about 20 people. And in the basement, they can fit in, I don't know,

100 people or so in this sort of sweaty cellar. And at the end of the cellar, they have a stage made of milk crates kind of milk bottle crates and there's a microphone which according to the thing i read online it says the microphone is left over from the burr war i don't know i'm not convinced that could be true i can't believe they had microphones in cellars in the seems improbable it does seem improbable. If there are any historians of microphones in the

Boer War, let us know. If only there were some historians involved with this podcast, you could tell us. Anyway, so they start having people to play music in the basement

and they get a band called Wally White and the Vipers. Are you familiar with their work, Tom? Love them. So you may mock Wally White and the Vipers, but they were produced by a man um so you may mock wally white and the vipers

but they were produced by a man who you'll definitely heard of called george martin oh right so they actually have a few hits they have some top 10 hits now what the music that the wally white and the vipers are playing is skiffle so most british listeners will probably have heard the word skiffle most of our overseas listeners probably won't and won't know what it is so skiffle is really really hard to define but it's i suppose purists will probably complain about my definition but i would say skiffle is the kind of music that you find in mid to late 50s britain and it's basically like a very diluted version of blues of folk kind of proto rock and roll very diy And very DIY, isn't it? Very DIY.

And the DIY, the amateur spirit is the point. So it's people who basically bought cheap guitars, washboards and things like that, and they're playing in their bedrooms as teenagers. So Beatles, Beginners, the Skiffle group. Yeah. So almost a lot of these bands, a lot of the iconic bands of the 60s began

or as skiffle bands or started out playing skiffle when they were 14 or 15, just sort of playing almost kind of folk blues kind of music, but in a very sort of jaunty, jolly way in their bedrooms on those sort of terrible guitars. So this is what Wally White and the Vipers are doing. And they're very successful in this you start getting cues outside the two eyes by the i think by sort of 1957 or so and then um people start to notice skiffle so 56 57 in britain is a sort of really interesting kind of cultural

moment when a few years before nobody was really talking about teenagers and youth culture and then by 1957 or so it's in the air everybody's talking about it bill haley and his comments have come at the end of 1956 sort of people have heard of rock and roll they've heard of elvis and there's clearly there's more money around and people are talking about coffee bars and they're talking about soho is a kind of absolute center for this and soho exactly and the two eyes is picked up by a bbc program called six five special so it's tv it's very groovy and it's a it's a it's a sort of pioneering um program about youth culture and and pop music and the bbc actually take over the two eyes and do a live six five special from the Two Eyes,

which I think must now be lost. And that sort of enshrines it suddenly as the place. So this is good news for the wrestlers. Brilliant news for the wrestlers. Absolutely splendid news. So Dr Death, who had thought he was taking over a failing sandwich shop, suddenly finds he's taken over a place which has this neon sign that says, the world famous two eyes

coffee bar the home of the stars wow so it's one of the first examples of those places that you get later on let's say the cavern club of a sort of probably quite down a heel night spot that basically becomes very sort of emblematic yeah the symbol of a wider kind of cultural, indeed, economic kind of movement. So you start getting these singers and people will say, well, they were discovered at the Two Eyes. They played at the Two Eyes. And that's their equivalent of sort of. So who's the most famous? So the first one, probably the most important one is Tommy Steele.

Oh, yeah. So Tommy Steele's first single was called Rock with the Caveman. And his big hit was actually Singing the Blues, January 1957. He's often described as the first, and maybe Lonnie Donegan, but Tommy Steele is the first true British pop

star. He's 19. His youth, his working class because he's from Bermondsey, they are sort of part of the package, and he's packaged as the British Elvis. He's also the first British star, I think, who has screaming, who has girls screaming. And are they screaming in the basement of the Two Eyes?

They were screaming. Well, I mean, him having been at the Two Eyes, all these people who were at the Two Eyes or weren't, it's sort of shrouded in myth and controversy. So his managers basically, and one of his managers was a guy called Larry Parnes, who was very famous for developing this type of stable in the late 50s. Larry Parnes said, oh, I discovered him singing at the Two Eyes. And that, again, this is probably the first example of that sort of theme

that you get so often in the 60s, that there's a particular iconic venue and people are discovered there by managers. You know, it's the classic Cavern Club kind of story. And then transformed. And this is what supposedly happens to Tommy Steele. So you say about the names, Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, Tommy Quickly, Duffy Power, Rory Storm, Johnny Gentle, Dickie Pride.

There's a point at which you think some of these- I mean, imagine being Johnny Gentle. Well, Dickie Pride. I mean, would Gentle, Dickie Pride. There's a point at which you think some of these... Imagine being Johnny Gentle. Well, Dickie Pride. I mean, would you be Dickie Pride? I think I'd rather be Dickie Pride than Johnny Gentle. Or Duffy Power. Would you be Duffy Power, Tom? Yeah, Duffy Power.

Marty Wilde was the father of Kim Wilde, wasn't he? Yeah, I think he was. And Vince Eager, I think, was quite successful. I don't know about Tommy Quickly. I haven't followed his career. But there are two other singers who are supposedly involved with the Two Eyes. And again, it's one of those stories that you sort of think that they sort of tell in their autobiographies, but the autobiography is a ghost written. So you don't know whether it's a bit like kind of

Suetonius and his Lives of Roman Emperors. You don't know whether it's part of the formula. Is it just part of the formula and and especially in these cases they themselves probably just end up believing what's written in their autobiography because they can't remember whether they were there or not so the first example of a famous one are you familiar with the career of terry nellums so terry nellums is a messenger boy from acton and he plays in a teenage skiffle band. So in other words, he's heard blues music and stuff like that, picks up a guitar, plays with his mates,

has a little stint at the Two Eyes, and he's filmed there by Six Five Special, the cameras. And he is seen by a TV producer called Jack Good. And Paul, our producer, definitely knows who Terry Lellums is. Well, he's given away his real identity. He's given away the real name. Well, he's not his real identity. He's given away his stage name. Because Jack Good says,

you can't be a success if you're called Terry Lellums. You should call yourself Adam Faith. So he becomes Adam Faith, and Adam Faith is one of the... He's one of the... I guess our younger listeners probably won't even have heard of him. He's one of the absolute sort of outstanding British rock and roll singers of the very late 50s, very early 60s. So pre the Beatles, selling tens of thousands of copies of their records a day.

Number one in Christmas 1959. And his single, What Do You Want, his most famous single, was produced by John Barry of the Bond film. So another kind of great 60s name. So that's Adam Faith. The sense that the 60s is incubating here. Exactly. The Two Eyes is the place.

And the other person, Tom, now, are you familiar with the musical career of Harry Webb? Is that Cliff Richard? It is Cliff Richard. Because he was the only one you hadn't mentioned. I mean, he's still around, isn't he? He was on the Queen's bus in the Platinum Jubilee Parade, I think. He was.

He was. He's been uncancelled, hasn't he? Yes. He went through a bit of a dip a few years ago. He's been in every Jubilee celebration, and he's had a hit in every decade since the 50s. It's very impressive. Yeah.

Peter Pan of pop peter pan of pop yeah so he had a booking at the two eyes in the summer of 1958 and again that becomes part of his kind of as it were his legend in the late 50s and then he gets his deal with emi and uh on it off he goes um his band was renamed from the drifters to the Shadows, and they become very successful. The rest is history. The rest is history, Tom. So The Two Eyes has this moment, really, as the sort of the basement where you go to hear Skiffle. Between about 1957 and probably 1959.

Does the ceiling drip with sweat? I'm sure it does. And it echoes to the screams of the teenage fans. I think it's probably also a very good example of that place that basically, by the time you've heard of it, it's over. Yeah, it's cool.

Its moment has gone. So like the Cavern, like Carnaby Street, like all those sort of iconic places that were produced in the youth culture boom of the late 50s and 60s. So basically what happens to the Two Eyes? It's obviously uncool by the time the Beatles

become well known, 1962-63 because skiffle is no longer the thing. It's become proper rock and roll and pop music and rock music as it divides later in the 60s. The Two Eyes closes in 1970, so that's the end of it. And Two Eyes closes in 1970,

so that's the end of it. And if you go there now, do you know what you'll find? It's all Compton Street, so yes. It's actually fish and chips. So it's a fish and chip shop. So basically what you should do is do a walk to Barking Abbey, but see if you can take it

on Compton Street and reward yourself with some fish and chips. Well, as you said, I mean, that's pretty much the opposite of Barking Abbey. So I think it's a great tribute to this episode that we've managed to get two such different places in. Top nuns and Cliff Richard.

Top nuns and Cliff Richard, yeah. Brilliant. Okay, well, fabulous. So we will be back tomorrow with two top Londoners. Top Londoners? Who are we going to choose? Who are we going to choose? Who are we going to choose? Very exciting.

So tune in tomorrow and find out. We will see you then. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip, and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.