Legendary Stratford pub
The Two Puddings was a pub since 1896 and was once known as the Refreshment Rooms. It gained its later name from the puddings given out to the poor at Christmas from the pub.
In 1956 local music promoter Kenny Johnson, who ran the Jive Dive in Forest Gate, started the ‘Big Beat Club’ in the upstairs room, and is credited with being one of the first ‘discotheques’ in the UK. Kenny’s brother Eddie used to help him out at the music nights, and when the license was offered to the brothers in 1962, Eddie took it on and ran it with his wife Shirley until 2000. Kenny’s night later was called ‘Devil’s Kitchen’ and gigs included the Kinks, Small Faces, David Essex and Screaming Lord Sutch, with customers including Barry Keeffe, who wrote the Long Good Friday and based some characters on people in the pub. One of Eddie’s sons Andrew created artwork for the walls of the upstairs room, while another son Matt went on to be a musician himself in the band The The.
Oral histories
Colin Stoddart
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Background
Colin Stoddart, born 1943 in Romford, was the lead guitarist in Johnny Lonesome and The Travellers and later The Candles, playing venues across Newham in the 1960s.
Transcript
The pub was a long narrow pub with a long narrow bar, and you went in the swing door into the pub, you looked down this long room with the bar, packed out, solidly packed out, and just to your right the large stage, large, small stage, I should say, but it was high. It was at least three foot high. So we tended to be looking over everyone when we were up there and get to know the regulars. Because we started to get regular work there. We got booked quite often to play on the Sunday lunchtime, Saturday night, Sunday lunch time, Sunday evening. And for us that was good, although we were a bit nervous about leaving our equipment. It meant- our equipment’s all on the stage. We could just change, because we wore band suits, and quickly change out the door and get home, and no one ever touched the equipment. It was all locked up the pub, but we’d been playing for a number of weeks here, and there was a regular bunch of guys, seven or eight of them. They stood at the bottom of the stage, so we sort of face them, looking down on them. And they all were starting the evening with buying a case, wooden case of pints of beer, bottle beer in there, which they put in front of the stage, and they were and they were friends, and then suddenly, while we’re playing, and this is after a few weeks, they had an argument. The two were arguing of course we’re playing, we’re loud. The next minute on goes the head, on goes the guy, and one of the friends just got his legs and slid him out onto the street and left him there. And the barman, not Kenny, I can’t remember- the Johnson. He just said, ‘Keep playing. Don’t stop. Keep playing’. And that’s the secret, because they start to pick on the group. ‘Why are you not playing? Or something’. And there was that incident, and another one was in the same bar one evening we’ve been playing on Saturday night, everyone just was drinking. It was a tough area, and guy comes in that’s already drunk. He’d been in another pub, and he stood at this long bar, little crowded, and Eddie Johnson, Eddie Johnson, he was the chief barman with two other people helping him and this drunk at the bar, ‘You going to serve me? I need a drink?’. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute, sir’. He kept on shouting and shouting and this Eddie Johnson came up to the- in on side- the other side, on the side of the bar where he was, up to this guy. He took a bottle of beer. He said, ‘Hello’, and he bit the top off. Literally bit the top of he said ‘Get out of my pub’, to this guy.
