Picture: The trio at the Plough but with Blind Douggie sitting in on drums. Bicycle Jim lurks in the background.

Whether Denis knew much about the history of the Plough when he became tenant is unknown but it was an ugly redbrick postwar building on the corner of St John’s Hill and Strath Terrace, SW11. (I use the past tense because the place has now been demolished and, as I write, the site is awaiting the inevitable block of flats to be erected.)

In the 70s the pub had been quite a jolly working-class boozer selling good Youngs ales although anyone who wasn’t a Battersea gor-blimey was regarded with suspicion to start with.

Unfortunately, Fred, the guvnor died suddenly and in his wake came a series of disinterested and incompetent managements and the place was gradually avoided by anyone who wanted a civilised pub with a welcoming ambience.

Denis imagined that if he put on jazz a couple of nights a week the “nice people”, as he referred to his desired clientele, would come flocking in. It wasn’t a bad theory because the demographic of the Clapham Junction/Battersea area was changing quite dramatically as younger middle-class couples bought up property and many of the old three-storey Victorian terraces were being converted into flats for the trendy influx.

To a degree that is what happened because, in my experience, if there is one thing that most yobs and Neanderthals hate it is jazz.

But there were quite a few things going against making the Plough a really successful jazz pub.

First there was the layout which made it difficult for more than a few punters to get near the band and there was no amplification system either.

Then there was the totally depressing cloud which seemed to hang over the place, with its brown walls and carpets. The stench of postwar austerity seemed to linger on into the 90s in the Plough although Denis did his best to cheer the place up with new flooring and furniture.

The piano which Stan Greig had provided was sinking by a semitone every week or so and Denis, naturally enough, thought that buying the instrument was the end of his outlay and objected to forking out money for a tuner continually. This sometimes meant my trying to play a hopelessly out-of-tune piano, horrible for me and just as bad for anyone listening too.

Another minus point was Denis’s wife Eileen who profoundly loathed all forms of jazz music. It was her habit to play Elvis Presley and suchlike on the pub’s tinny sound system immediately before we started the session which went down like a pork chop in a synagogue with the jazz-seeking audience who turned up a little early.

Continued on Junction 4