News this week that The Royal Albert Pub (460 New Cross Road) has changed hands - it is one of a number of pubs previously run by Antic which have been taken over by Portobello Brewing. The start of another chapter in the history of this long established pub and sometime music venue (see previous posts for some of its history)
I found this flyer for a night out there in April 1999 when it was in its incarnation as the Paradise Bar. A note in my diary records that I went there with my late friend Katy Watson for 'Je Suis Music' a 'self-proclaimed pop-retro kitsch night' with DJs Joe Egg and the Futurist Girls playing 'a never-ending stream of 1980s pop', lots of Fun Boy Three, Smiths, Heaven 17, Soft Cell and Aha. All with the lit up multi coloured disco dancefloor. It was one of a range of campy nights put on by Joe and Nervous Stephen, including French Disko and Pretty in Pink themed nights (not to mention the Belle & Sebastian fanfest 2000 Troubled Teenagers which I've mentioned before)
There was a Pop Culture Quiz which me and Katy won, she took the Suede CD prize. I would still get the music questions right but not sure about the TV ones!
(It was a strange weekend, on the Saturday I had been on a demonstration about the war that was raging in Yugoslavia and a nail bomb had gone off in Brixton, planted by a far right activist as the first of a series that also targeted Brick Lane and the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho).
I always meant to go to this, being a big fan of Stephen Nervous and Joe Egg's negligee at the Dogstar in Brixton. Sounds like it was similar music; you'd pop along to have a pint, read the Sunday papers and hear Robert Wyatt's version of I'm A Believer and next thing you know it's 10pm and you're dancing on a table to Betty Boo with a local ragga guy. And you've got work tomorrow
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