Ben Crouch's Tavern, 77a Wells St

It took me a couple of years to figure out that this pub was called Ben Crouch’s Tavern. We’ve all known it as the Scary pub – and for good reason. It’s scary.

Not scary like some working-man’s, casually-racist, piss-hole boozer in Aldershot where the locals bleat out ‘No Surrender’ until the wee hours before rolling home and smashing their wives’ faces in with an empty Newky Brown bottle.

Nor is it scary like some quasi-hidden, champagne bar off the back of Carnaby Street, where a glass (not a pint) of Peroni can fetch anything up to £12.50. Not because it tastes good. No. It will taste like a glass of Peroni, but you’re paying for the privilege of drinking it in a Tupperware box with a select committee of wankers. This committee has been hand-picked by a group of wankers. The wankers’ wankers, if you will. They wear shirts and say phrases like ‘good call’, ‘totally’ and my personal favourite ‘can I set up a tab?’ F#ck off.

The scary pub is scary because it is riddled with all manner of ghoulish decorations. The walls are pasted with skulls, gargoyles, cob-webs and other medieval horrors. I assume they had cobwebs in medieval times. Pumping out a whole spectrum of grunge, rock and a little metal. The music isn’t good enough to command any respect from any true rockers, but it’s a welcome gesture – even when some Nickleback sneaks onto the playlist, you forgive it – because it’s quiet a naïve, unpretentious pub.

The drinks are cheap, the service is quick and the food is edible. I can’t stress how amazingly, very OK this pub is.

Then there’s the toilets. Filthy. Often accompanied by an annoying weekend bog-jockey, which in this context is amusing enough as it is – but they play scary sounds. It might be the sound of Frankenstein’s monster lolloping down a cobbled London street, or some mad-professor slaving over a network of pipes, test-tubes and Bunsen burners. It doesn’t matter. It’s just some familiarity and company as you piss.

The pub smells. Since the smoking ban the air tastes like a combination of WKD and toilet duck with an after taste of sweat and vinegar. Every surface is sticky and you more than often get bothered by some extra from the Pirates of the Caribbean trying to sell you the flowers he’s stolen off some dented railings outside a primary school. But he’ll piss off and you can get on with your drink. It’s OK in the scary pub. Everything is just OK. And that’s why it’s really rather amazing. Try it.

I would never take a girl there.

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