Chris And The ‘sex Pistols’

[Guest Tim]

CHRIS AND THE ‘SEX PISTOLS’

As he fries up breakfast for a customer in the Queensland sunshine, Chris Putze remembers the wide-boys of Soho.

 

His Use Your Loaf sandwich bar was a few seconds from the EMI building in Golden Square, "where we used to have the show-business hopefuls in for coffee; those who tried and didn’t make it. Six hundred customers of a lunchtime. Carnaby-st. characters, football commentators, the Sex Pistols...you name it.’

 

Today Chris might commiserate with a real estate agent nursing a hangover and talking million-dollar deals on the Gold Coast; remembering as he serves him coffee, the sandwiches he made that were voted by BBC-TV’s Nationwide as Central London’s best. Forty varieties of cheese, cheese-and-pickle, cheese-and-tomato, cream cheese and strawberries...

 

Chris and his wife, Linda, not only served Soho, but had a second coffee-bar in Covent Garden. ‘When they wanted to lease new premises the owners came and saw our operation and asked if we’d take a lease. It was in the house where Boswell did his writing. You might have expected "difficulties" in Soho, but we never had a problem. In Old Compton-st., in the 60s, in the coffee-bar that launched Tommy Steele, the two Australian wrestler owners were "invited" by a sinister identity to contribute 20 pounds a week to prevent their bar being smashed up. The surprised identity discovered himself suddenly airborne ... and on the other side of the street.

 

‘When we opened, we’d get the cleaners in for a cheese roll and a cuppa before they started work; then the bread delivery men, the office workers and the solicitors. We’d sometimes see the same people for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and a coffee on the way home. There was a lot of loyalty.’

 

When running two businesses in London got too much, Chris and Linda headed for the wide open spaces and relative peace of Australia. After a stint by Chris as chef at a casino, they found a little cafe called The Bat on Chevron Island, a haven of village-style atmosphere across a bridge from Surfers Paradise.

 

It had a private garden area behind it where pizzas were eaten and transactions were done, said Chris. A movie studio finally objected to the use of the name and The Bat had to close.

 

Today the garden is The Secret Tea Garden and the front section Use Your Loaf. The Secret Garden is a cool oasis of green creepers, pot plants, flowers and ferns with two cockatiels twittering in a cage. A replica sign from an 18th.C. London Inn lays down the rules of the establishment: NO THIEVES, NO FAKIRS, ROGUES OR TINKERS. NO FLEA-BITTEN TRAMPS, NO SLAP AND TICKLE. NO COCK-FIGHTING.

 

There is an easy street access from The Secret Tea Garden, but in 12 years, says Chris, ‘nobody has done a runner’. ‘There have been one or two got almost back to their offices and realised they haven’t paid, and they have returned.’ And there was a high-profile lady associated with the law who went off leaving an unpaid bill of $65. A bookmaker companion returned and fixed things up.