North London Tavern (Kilburn)

Henry Hill (Goodfellas)

For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be in boozers. Always fancied a pint. And even today, I can’t help mixing business with pleasure.

I mean, you’ve godda understand; where I’m coming from (Hemel Hempstead), in the neighbourhood where I grew up (Old Town), it was what you aspired to. It was just what you did,…

If you could go into a pub, get served, take a ribbing and pay your way, you were a good guy, a Goodfella. That’s what we called ourselves in Hemel back then; Goodfellas. Like you said to, uh, somebody; You're gonna like this guy. He likes a drink and a laugh, and shoots some good pool. He's a good fella. He's one of us, you understand? We were good fellas. Wiseguys.

And you could forget about those other guys from school, those other schmucks at home of an evening, doing their A-Level homework or elsewhere pursuing other extra-curricular activities - swimming, basketball and the like. As far as we were concerned, those guys were losers and they were welcome to their pointless pursuits.

From our perspective you see, all that made no sense at our age. We were young, slim, virile and unable to put on weight if we tried. Down the boozer with your mates, your Goodfellas, well, everything it just came so easy. It was the only place to be.

There was Me - the kid Henry, Tommy and Jimmy, and we were tight,..like brothers. When we were together in the pub, there was nothing that we could not achieve. When I think back now, on the times that we had, and the things that we did,…

,…Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I remember, we were always in The Three Blackbirds in Boxmoor. The midweek nights were always for the lads, and for the drinking, and maybe a rack of pool. But Thursday, Friday and Saturday were invariably about the ladies. And for that, we used to focus on The Fishery Inn near the station.

Hey, I don’t know much about swimming with fishes, but I can tell you that getting a piece of skirt, for us, back then, was like shootin fish in a barrel. We could literally take our pick. And we did. Regular as coughing up weekly protection. Like this Landlord if he ever shows his face,…….

The beers? Yeah, they always flowed. Flowed like wine. If we wanted a pint, we would have it. If we fancied a girl we made a move. It was really so simple.

And,.. we always had cash on the hip, due to a little scam we had running, working Saturdays stacking shelves at Tesco’s in The Marlowes. It was a real, real, nice little number. Whenever we needed more money for the pub, we'd just do extra hours after school in the evening. To us, it was better than Nationwide.

Yeah, we had it all back then in those wonder years. The booze, the skirt, the cash and the good times. Anything we wanted we just took,..Just Me,..Me, Jimmy and Tommy, living the life, doing those things whilst the other schmuckleheads towed the curricular line.

Those early days were the best, and of course over time little things change. The drinking became heavier, the pints more expensive and the ladies less easily, but the constant was always the craic. There was always a carefree good time to be had in the boozer with your mates.

Of course, the dream was always to live there. You know, to be in the pub 24/7, to become a Landlord. But unfortunately for Jimmy and I it would never happen.

We could never be made landlords because we had English blood. It didn't even matter that my mother was an alki from Dundalk and that Jimmy’s old man was a discredited priest from Kilkenny. To run your own proper boozer, you've got to be one hundred per cent Irish so they can trace all your relatives back to the old country, the Emerald Isle. See, it's the highest honour the industry can give you. It means you belong to a family and crew. Once you get a license to serve booze,…well, It's a license to do anything. As far as Jimmy was concerned with Tommy getting his own boozer back in 1995, it was like we were all being made landlords. We would now have one of our own as a guvnor.

And what a guvnor he has turned out to be. The best I’ve ever seen. But there ain’t many like Tommy, and boozers like his are unfortunately a dying breed.

Shambolic gastro impersonations like the 'NLT' are an insult to our pub heritage. Their only saving grace is that the new breed of pub entrepreneur that run them, are f*cking easy to extort from, …..albeit elusive to get hold of in a service capacity.

Seems to me if you come to false pubs like this for a laugh, the closest you’d get is a Leffe and a chuckle over not paying for it.

Anything time I fancied a laugh back in the day, it was just a phone call away. Free drinks. The inside info for lock-ins all over the town. I bet twenty, thirty quid in the fruity and then I'd either blow the winnings on a round or get people to buy drinks for me.

It didn't matter. It didn't mean anything. When I was broke, I'd go out to places they liked me. We were known everywhere and everybody got rich on our company. Everything was for the taking, there were pool tables and fruities in most boozers. And now it's all over. Try getting rich on the company in the North London Tavern, and you’d be lucky to scrape your bus fare home.

And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different; there's no action... You have to wait around in gastro pubs like everyone else. Can't even get cheap pints and have a craic. There’s no angle. Right after I got here for my appointment tonight, I ordered a pint of cider, and I got given a bottle of Magners. It cost a fiver,..and like a schnook I just paid it.

But the worst thing these-days is the service. Just look at the knuckleheads behind the jump here this evening! Oblivious to who I am. One dog goes one way, the other dog goes the other way and there’s me, the grey haired guy, here in the middle, just waiting to get served and to get my weekly dues, sayin ‘Whadda ya want from me?’

As I soon as I get the attention of one of these schmucks I’ll tell em exactly what they can do for me. I’m imparting the news that I’m upping the weekly protection with immediate effect!

*Waving a fifty, trying to get served*

“Hey buddy! What am I? A schmuck on wheels!? A F*CKING MIRAGE!!"

Henry Hill's rating for the NLT - 1/10

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