Soho in the Eighties
by Christopher Howse, bloomsbury,
266pp, £20
Soho in the 1970s, with its strip joints and steamed-up caffs, was an exciting place for a teenager to explore. I used to play truant there from my school south of the river. The sex industry was then at its peak as the vice barons were in cahoots with the police. Red lights glowed everywhere. Outside the peep shows on Old Compton Street were bouncers who worked for local Maltese gangsters. One of those Maltese, a great brisket of beef named Big Frank Mifsud, ran pretty well all the blue-movie fleapits, dirty bookshops and near-beer parlours in London’s West End. He died in some poverty in 1999 back home in Malta, where he had begun life as a traffic policeman.
