Postcards From The Dead

Sebastian Horsley was a friend. He died 10 years ago tomorrow. I found this postcard a few days ago. I had used it as a bookmark, but not in his book: Dandy In The Underworld. Now it’s perhaps a Coda. He was a witty and mischievous soul, I loved him. I still, at times, wish he was playing a prank on us all. 

Isn’t this one of those moments when we have to entertain the notion of the dead communicating with us – Gustav Temple (Chap Magazine).

 

Last Orders

I am saddened to hear another old chum died on Saturday at 56 of a brain tumour.

I missed you when I left England and now forever more.

I met him at The Colony Room in 2006 and became addicted to him. When that folded I followed him about.

If you have ever had a cocktail almost anywhere in the world there is a good chance Dick Bradsell had something to do with it. There are hundreds of articles online about him so you you can find out for yourself.

Here are two rare photos of him in The Colony

(No Photos, No Phones, No fuckin' Jokes)

I think he was showing me a bill, or a writ.

 

Changing the loo paper roll in a hurry

And here he is sounding like himself and Grayson Perry

NEW YORK TIMES

He once said that of all the bars where he had worked, his favorite was the Colony Room, a famously divey den where the likes of the artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud went to slum and where shaking cocktails was discouraged.

“The owner hating me making cocktails so much, he used to hide my equipment,” Mr. Bradsell said in an interview. When a fellow bartender arrived, he said, he improvised and used his fingers to strain his friend’s drink.

 

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