There are loads of good pubs in Borough, right? Well, sort of. The Lord Clyde and Royal Oak are both a bit fiddly to find to non-regulars and don’t start me on The George. Would you Trust the National Trust to run a pub? So why The Kings Arms? On a small side street just off of Borough High Street, it is not open weekends or holidays and is pretty poky. And yet in 2008 it felt like I spent half the year in there. And it was a lovely half a year.
Basically The Kings Arms was the nearest decent pub to the Resonance FM studios when we were making the second series of Freaky Trigger and The Lollards Of Pop. So every Tuesday night we would meet for swift pre-show pint, desperately try to plan the show and then reconvene an hour later. Occasionally a few extra members of the team might just wait in the pub for the team to come back. Because The Kings Arms is that classic of a type, a dependable, solid boozer which always had OK ale on, always had pork scratchings and seemed to bring out the best in us. Numerous examples spring to mind when we left the radio studios to continue the show in the pub, where with a few text messages and a few beers we usually created the radio show we wanted to make.
I remember in particular after the first show I hosted, the Murder show, myself, Alix, Sarah, Tom and Rob (who was producing) returned to the pub to discuss whether or not it was a good idea to have run a live murder mystery with my guests without really telling them what was going on. The consensus from the guests traumatised by the mystery gunshot was it was a bad idea. And yet after a few more beers it all seemed really rather ridiculous. Another night, after this show, we just got Al Ewing to say Tim Boo Bah over and over again.
And the last show of that season might as well have been recorded in the pub. And it certainly continued in this vein. My fondness for the Kings Arms is huge, and like many pubs on this list it has rather notable toilets too. Poked away without being poky, and with lovely staff – the great pity is when we made the third series it was a Saturday show and the Kings Arms was closed. We never found a suitable replacement. Though I can say in comparison The Blue-Eyed Maid is horrific. Actually in comparison with a shit pub, the Blue Eyed Maid would still be horrific. The Kings Arms, great.