Shaftesbury Avenue

Off...

When you got to Shaftesbury Avenue, we took us always up to plays and everything we did, we saw in some kind of off, you know, Broadway production.

Because once you've

seen it, you know, it's made to be performed, not to be analysed, I think.

Now, in what direction will matters move? The first and most obvious thing to do, the thing that in many cases is being attempted and in a futile, insufficient way getting itself done, the thing that I do not for one moment regard as the final remedy, is the remedy of the architect and builder, profitable enough to them anyhow, to widen the streets and to cut new arteries.

Now, every new artery means a series of new whirlpools of traffic such as the pensive Londoner may study for himself at the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue with Oxford Street.

And unless colossal or inconveniently steep crossing bridges are made, the wider the effluent arteries, the more terrible the battle of the traffic.

Imagine Regent's Circus on the scale of the Place de la Concorde, and there is the value of the ground to consider, with every increment of width the value of the dwindling remainder in the meshes of the network of roads will rise, until to pave the widened streets with gold will be a mere trifling addition to the cost of their improvement.

Now, in what direction will matters move? The first and most obvious thing to do, the thing that in many cases is being attempted and in a futile, insufficient way getting itself done, the thing that I do not for one moment regard as the final remedy, is the remedy of the architect and builder, profitable enough to them anyhow, to widen the streets and to cut new arteries.

Now, every new artery means a series of new whirlpools of traffic such as the pensive Londoner may study for himself at the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue with Oxford Street.

And unless colossal or inconveniently steep crossing bridges are made, the wider the effluent arteries, the more terrible the battle of the traffic.

Imagine Regent's Circus on the scale of the Place de la Concorde, and there is the value of the ground to consider.

On the way, he had passed several recruiting posters for the First World War pointing accusatory fingers at him, and a shop called Iowa's Lord Kitchener's Valet, full of reproduced bric-a-brac of the British Empire, backed not by bugles calling, but by the universal clang and moan of amplified electric guitar.

On a Shaftesbury Avenue hoarding, he had seen a monstrous image of a rear view of a brawny worker, naked to the waist, and from there enclosed in tight-buttoned red, white and blue breeches.

I'm Backing Britain was scrawled across this person's bulging backside.

Above him, on the steps of the National Gallery, were the peripatetic folk with the new ancient faces, Jesus boots, caftans, sporadic bursts of song, or tinkling breaking a tranquilized hush.

Of course, he wrote it in 1996 at the newly renamed Judi Dench Theatre.

For those of you who don't know or missed this update, it is currently the Shaftesbury Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End, right now home to the naughty puppets of Avenue Q, but it is set to be renamed in honour of the theatrical titan Dame Judi Dench, which incidentally I think is very positive and exciting and gives that theatre a more specific identity than the name Shaftesbury ever did.

I am generally speaking in favour of theatres being named after individuals rather than abstract places and concepts.

Lyric Theatre, Lyceum Theatre, Apollo Theatre, we will get to you next.

You could hear how much it came out of decades of reggae, but you could also hear how it undergone like a series of continuous mutations.

And then you could hear how there was an infrastructure of clubs, not even that many clubs, Thunder and Joy in Shaftesbury Avenue, but there were these labels and the labels were from Stevenage, from Hertfordshire.

They're not from like Soho.

You know, Black Market Records is in Soho, but the labels are not.

I did a single with Pat Cash and John McEnroe called Led Zeppelin Cover, right? And Roger was the singer.

What happened for the release? They wanted to do a gig at the Limelight in Shaftesbury Avenue.

If you remember that old church.

I frequented it