| Like many writers and artists who frequented | | | | friend, Keith Waterhouse, to write the play |
| Soho's The Groucho Club and The Coach and | | | | Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell, based on a real incident |
| Horses, Afshin Rattansi first met Jeffrey Bernard | | | | when Bernard found himself locked in the pub |
| in the 1980s. A revival of the Keith Waterhouse | | | | overnight. Bernard was later portrayed in the play |
| play starring Tom Conti in which Bernard is the | | | | by Peter O'Toole, another Coach regular. But the |
| lead character, talking about life at the Coach has | | | | pub is best known for its fort nightly Private Eye |
| just opened in London's West End, coinciding with | | | | lunches at which the great and good are plied with |
| the announcement that Rattansi's novel "The | | | | cheap food and even cheaper wine in the hope |
| Dream of the Decade" will be on sale at the | | | | they will be indiscreet. One of the more recent |
| bar.The play is named after the line that often | | | | scalps was John Hemming, a new UK Liberal |
| appeared in the UK's Spectator magazine where | | | | Democrat MP who confessed to getting his |
| Bernard's column, "Low Life" would have appeared | | | | mistress pregnant last week after an Eye |
| had Bernard not imbibed too much to complete | | | | lunch.Peter O'Toole was a perfect Bernard when |
| his piece. Rattansi recalls Bernard explaining to him | | | | he appeared in the 1989 premiere. He had been |
| that he only drank to stay the pain of diabetes. | | | | warned so many times of his own demise. And |
| "But on a particularly sunny Saturday morning in | | | | he responded by perfecting the look and manner |
| Groucho's, I asked why he wanted a Vodka Tonic | | | | of a very polite, but very insolent, ghost. As the |
| as there was sugar in the Tonic. He told me that | | | | New York Times has it, "he is theater through |
| sugar in tonic was okay. He then proceeded to | | | | and through, as witness his apprentice years at |
| drink himself into a kind of coma."The Dream of | | | | the Bristol Old Vic when he did one of the great |
| the Decade includes vignettes of characters that | | | | Hamlets, along with Chekhov, Beckett and John |
| frequented Soho in the 1980s and is a quartet in | | | | Osborne's Jimmy Porter, plus the dame in the |
| one volume. It was Norman Balon the famous | | | | theater's annual pantomime. And then, after he |
| owner of the Coach and Horses up until a few | | | | had yielded a goodly part of his interior to |
| weeks before the revival of the play who said | | | | surgery, he came back on the London stage in |
| the novel should be sold from behind the bar of | | | | 1989 in the play "Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell," a |
| the infamous tavern. The new owners of the | | | | one-man show and a bow to being |
| rapidly changing pub say they will carry on the | | | | self-destructive, alcoholic but undefeated."Bernard's |
| tradition. "The Dream of the Decade - The | | | | life, as reconstructed in the play at least, is hardly |
| London Novels", which is officially to launch in the | | | | inspiring or even particularly eventful. Dedicated to |
| UK in the winter, is thus available at a special price | | | | the pursuit of drink, gambling and sex, he |
| in the most famous public house in London.The | | | | stumbles from one minor crisis to another, each |
| play, often remembered as a one-man show but | | | | entirely of his own making. The highlights are |
| in fact packed with characters performed by a | | | | incidents of child-like silliness, such as his |
| versatile suporting cast of four, was a highly | | | | involvement with a friend who runs a book on |
| successful vehicle for its original star Peter | | | | cat-races that he holds in the hall of his Battersea |
| O'Toole, who appeared in the original run at the | | | | flat.The script is littered with the type of |
| Apollo Theatre and in a later revival at the Old | | | | anecdotes which would fall flat if told by lesser |
| Vic. 'For the next three months, I'm going to be | | | | voices. A less successful raconteur would find |
| playing a smoker, a drinker, a womaniser and a | | | | himself mumbling, "It's funny if you're drunk," |
| gambler - all the good things in life,' says Tom | | | | apologetically. The Waterhouse-O'Toole magic is to |
| Conti, who at 64 is a year younger than Bernard | | | | make them funny when you are stone cold |
| was when he died. But Conti looks in far ruder | | | | sober.Waterhouse's Bernard is a feckless, |
| health. He has often hinted in the past that he and | | | | irresponsible and self-indulgent drunk, who lurches |
| his wife of 38 years, actress Kara Wilson, have | | | | from one pointless bohemian distraction to |
| enjoyed an open marriage. There only daughter | | | | another without a care in the world. He is also |
| Nina, herself an actress, has said that both her | | | | charming, loyal to his friends, generous of spirit, |
| father and mother had enjoyed 'a string of | | | | enormously witty, without malice or shallow media |
| affairs' during their marriage.'It is a gift of a role. | | | | cynicism. The play is a hymn to a beautiful loser, a |
| Jeffrey was a one-off - great fun and a very | | | | free spirit, enslaved by the spirits you pay for.In |
| likeable man. The last time I saw him was in | | | | the "Dream of the Decade" characters are the |
| Wheeler's restaurant in Soho and he looked as if | | | | same even if thematically there are deeper |
| he wasn't going to last the day. He was | | | | historical resonances with changing British and U.S. |
| completely unrecognisable from the man I had | | | | culture and of how the media scene has |
| met years previously. It was really quite | | | | changedas the newspaper barons of old gave |
| scary.'Another character in the novel, the owner | | | | way to big corporations. Rattansi began his career |
| of the Coach and Horses, Norman Balon, has just | | | | writing for the London Guardian newspaper, which |
| retired. Mr Balon, whose memoirs are titled You're | | | | informs the last novel in the volume, "Good |
| Barred! You Bastards, worked at the Coach & | | | | Morning, Britain." The London of "Dream" is far |
| Horses since 1943. The pub, which occupies a | | | | more inclusive that Waterhouse's Bernard's |
| prime location at the corner of Greek Street and | | | | London. And the bar in the second novel, |
| Romilly Street, provided inspiration for Bernard's | | | | "Reproach" is starker and colder than the Coach, |
| Lowlife column in the Spectator until his death in | | | | famous for its literray, artistic and theatrical |
| 1997.Bernard's antics at the Coach also inspired his | | | | crowd. |