King of Diamonds, 1 Greville Street

King of Diamonds, 1 Greville Street, EC1N 8PQ

Having recently spent several hours trapped on a reeking railway platform in India, with bird excrement falling like rain all around me and a thousand people staring on, I'm finding it hard right now to be impressed by Bad Things. But I suspect that the station in question (Ambala Cantonment, for anyone seeking scatological thrills) and this pub deserve each other, separated as they are by 4000 miles and a mindblowing wealth gap. Stuck on the bottom of a tower block the way that shit sticks to the bottom of a shoe, the nasty cheap exterior to the King of Diamonds proves to be worthy of Ambala's grim train station architecture, and is rather unfortunately the pub's best attribute. On entering, everything immediately goes downhill. In a feeble attempt to mitigate the dingy cadaverous atmosphere the interior has had a posh Firkin-style makeover, with cream and green walls and light wooden tables in the desperate hope that it will suddenly appeal to sophisticated laydeez. Oddly, it doesn't. Crowded behind me at the bar are the sort of first-jobber spoilt rich-kid idiots I have spent my life trying to escape, not a sophisticate - let alone a laydee - among them. When I manage to kick myself through their scrum to find a seat in a quiet corner I am confronted on the opposite table by a couple breaking up. Tearfully. Loudly. Oh. Hemmed in by a wall of bland yet sophisticated cream, dazzled by halogen spotlights and surrounded by heartbreak, I make a dash for the upstairs roof terrace. This has decking underfoot, not as some retro Alan Titchmarsh Putney garden fashion statement, but in a genuine 1980s 'Club Tropicana' attempt at Mediterranean cool. Adding wonderfully to this impression are an assortment of dying pot plants and what appear to be bulletproof windows. Yes, windows. On an outside terrace. Which rather undoes the whole point of being outside. By this point overwhelmed by the crapness of the joint, I did not even bother to explore the underground pool hall, which I imagine looks something like Fagin's lair crossed with a Miami Vice luxury apartment. It's taken me months (and a trip to Ambala Cantonment) to bring myself to write this review, such is the awesomely hideous power of the King of Diamonds. It is, in its way, a rather impressive place.

Reviewed by Fred Flange, Nov 2004

Telephone: 020 7405 0999

Nearby pubs: The Cittie of Yorke, 22 High Holborn (290 metres), The Mitre, Ely Place, Hatton Garden (110 metres), The One Tun, 125 Saffron Hill, Farringdon (160 metres), The Clockhouse, 82 Leather Lane (240 metres), Clerkenwell House, 23-27 Hatton Wall (250 metres), Deux Beers, 3 Hatton Wall (280 metres), The Printers Devil, 98-99 Fetter Lane (290 metres)

Nearest station: Chancery Lane, Zone 1 (250 metres)