“Half of bitter please, Gwen”

I watched Rillington Place on BBC1 last night and thought of my great friend Frank Waites. We sat next to each other at school and were obsessed with John Reginald Christie. Frank’s dad ran The Bramley Arms near Latimer Road tube when Notting Hill was probably the roughest area in London. Frank told me that there was an old barmaid called Gwen who’d been at The Bramley for years. The pub was a short walk from Rillington Place and Gwen remembered Christie, a silent, sinister loner sitting in the corner with his half of bitter. The Bramley Arms, like Rillington Place, is no longer there but crops up in Quadrophenia and in various episodes of Minder. However, from between the eras of Christie and Arthur Daley, this is the track that always reminds me of Frank, the Bramley and the edgy charms of Notting Hill in the 1970s.