Goodbye Malvern, hello Picasso - 29/04/07
There’s an old pub on the edge of the 1980s estate I live on, The Malvern; it has not served a drink for perhaps 20 years. Or there was a pub, here's what was left of the three-storey building this morning. It’s been demolished to make way for a new apartment block called The Picasso.

Many of the pubs of Notting Hill have taken a real bashing over the last decade and more. Those that haven’t become offices or flats have been transformed from convivial drinking joints to wretchedly expensive restaurants like E&O. A few, like the Portobello Star and the Duke of Wellington (known locally as Finches) have been smartened up a bit but are still reasonably normal pubs, an increasingly rare amenity in Notting Hill.

Not that all the old pubs were that convivial. I well remember being in the old Blenheim (the one that’s now E&O) when one of the customers started hitting another with a pool cue. The victim of the attack ran out of the pub only to return moments later brandishing a large knife. At that point, I left.

And there was the time in Finches when two fellows decided the time was right for a fight but held off until they had both broken the heavy bar stools over the counter to fashion serviceable weapons to hit each other with. Again, I left abruptly, without even finishing my pint.

The Malvern used to proclaim on the front that it was founded in 1787. If true, it would have been a country inn more or less in the middle of nowhere, since Notting Hill was not built until the second half of the 19th century.

Certainly, the building that existed until last week was Victorian. Its last owner was the splendidly named Riggs O’Hara (unsurprisingly, not his real name). Riggs is from an Irish-American blue collar Bronx background and came to London in the late 50s as part of the cast of ‘Guys and Dolls’ and never quite made it home. Or that's the story I heard.

In any case, he became a successful theatre director and had small parts in a few films, including a classic of its day though now largely forgotten, the Virgin Soldiers.

He bought the pub in 2003, just about the same time as I moved from Ladbroke Grove to the Swinbrook Estate, making us near neighbours for the last few years. I’d known him before when he ran a studio theatre (where he lived) in Hewer Street.

I met him in 1996 when I was involved with the sadly defunct Portobello Festival (though the Portobello Film Festival lives on) and he staged a production of Romeo and Juliet as part of it. I even performed at his theatre once myself, in a poetry slam, but that’s probably best forgotten.

The Post Office Theatre, as it was called, was housed in a former Royal Mail sorting office which he’d bought and converted, so he has some history in the property game.

His latest enterprise will, I guess, fund a comfortable retirement for him and the young child, not his own, he often takes care of. The story behind that is too complicated to go into; suffice to say that Riggs has been pushing a baby buggy around Notting Hill for the last couple of years. And thoroughly enjoying it, though he is past the first flush of youth – which of us isn’t?

But he’s definitely done well out of the Malvern. He paid just over £1 million for it and the total sales value of the 10 apartments is £4 million. Even accounting for the demolition and construction, that should leave a healthy wedge which I for one do not begrudge him.

I’ve heard a few folk moaning about the loss of the last original building on this estate which was once all Victorian houses, though they were slums. Of course, had they not been demolished in the 1970’s, they would all be worth a million quid plus now as people are obsessed with owning Victorian properties round here. I’m glad of the insanity that means modern properties have less value than 19th century ones; otherwise I couldn’t to afford to live here.

And I don’t care that the old pub has gone. It hadn’t served a customer for so long that I say it’s better for the site to have a useful purpose as housing.

And if you’ve got a spare £450,000 ($777,416.63), and you can stand to live in a block with so pretentious a name that is firmly located on a council estate, why not buy one and come live in my neighbourhood?