Goodbye Kentish Town

Just heard the news that one of my favourite London places, Kentish Town Pool And Snooker Club, is closing.

For those of you who haven't been there here's an extract from a book I am working on. Well, on and off between other projects...

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In his epic poem The Waste Land TS Eliot claimed that April was the cruellest month. But then again he’d probably never seen Kentish Town on a dark January night in the pouring-down rain…

Even at the height of summer with the sun blazing and temperatures rising, Kentish Town can look a grubby and slightly threatening place. Its local newspapers carry regular front-page leads detailing shootings and muggings, and this particular stop on the Northern Line has neither the bohemian reputation nor the much-visited market of its trendy neighbour Camden, nor the desirable property or high-class chic of nearby Highgate. A former church converted into a branch of Pizza Express is about as upmarket as Kentish Town gets, and the local branches of Iceland and Woolworths, or the fruit and veg stall outside the Tube, are more in keeping with its down-at-heel charm than the high street's Owl Bookshop with its sizeable sections of poetry and feminist literature.

To pool players up and down the land, however, Kentish Town does boast one major attraction, namely the home of eightball pool in the capital.

Kentish Town Pool And Snooker Club, or Kentish as the eightball fraternity knows it, looks a largely unassuming place. Its entrance is hidden away down a side road next to McDonalds on the High Street and access is gained by a buzzer and monitor system, which means the bar staff can check out potentially dodgy customers before refusing or, more often than not, granting them access. On negotiating the front door, there's a steep flight of stairs leading to a picture-filled noticeboard with various league tables and adverts for pool competitions, and then another door before punters reach the venue proper.

Once inside, the layout of the club spreads across the first floor of a large building, which in total floor space is about half the size of a football pitch. The bar runs along the wall to the right of the main doorway and the fruit machines run along another wall opposite the stair entrance. The latter joins together with a bank of seating opposite the bar to form three sides of a makeshift amphitheatre around the main match pool table, while the club's other nine 7ftx4ft pool tables are spread around away from this area to form the club's main pool room.

A separate snooker area is partitioned off from the pool room with yet-to-be painted glass and plywood divides, and this has seven 12ftx6ft snooker tables and one 9ftx5ft snooker table. The sight of the latter is a little bizarre in a place dominated by so many cue purists as it's neither a full-size snooker table nor a matchplay pool table. The younger kids mainly use it to knock around on now, but local legend has it that several eightball punters with no great aptitude for snooker have played on the 9ftx5ft table after a few too many beers and compiled sizeable breaks, uttering cries of 'This game's easy!' or 'Hendry. Who is he?' without realising they were on the smaller of the venue's snooker tables.

The less worldly-wise punter walking into Kentish for the first time could think the bar staff at the club haven't been watching the buzzer monitor quite as closely as they should have. All sorts of people usually mingle here and the regular punters fall into various groups, including teenage boys of school age and the girls they'd like to know better, their slightly older blinged-up peers with their girlfriends, and a few students. Then there are die-hard gamblers perched on the fruit machines or following the racing results on Ceefax, seasoned drinkers, a petty criminal or two, chain-smoking businessmen, not-so-seasoned drinkers who have obviously necked too many pints, plus a smattering of local hard men boasting an impressive collection of tattoos and muscles as well as the club's older patrons.

It's potentially an incendiary mix with so many different interest and age groups together. Three factors, however, unite many of the regulars at Kentish and ensure this unusual selection remain on respectful if not particularly friendly terms.

For a start, Kentish, like many other similar clubs I'd ventured into over the years, is sometimes a den of escape and unreality and, as such, normal rules of peer group division simply don't apply. It’s a place outside the norm with its own rules and own etiquette, which all the regulars know and observe. Daylight also rarely graces the place as the windows are blacked out to ensure no outside rays of sunshine interfere with the pool and snooker table lighting, so another usual compass of normality, light and darkness, can easily become a non-factor here and add to the feeling of unreality.

Consequently, quick drinks at Kentish can descend into late-night sessions without those involved even realising it, and more than one friendly pool or card game has seen the combatants leave the following morning as the milk delivery arrives not realising that the hours 'just slipped away' - usually somewhere between their self-restraint, the last of their money and any hope of making it to work that day.

It's hardly surprising, though, as there is something strangely soothing about Kentish and its rhythms are quite seductive to those used to their familiar sounds. The cadences of money disappearing down a bandit coin slot, potted balls rhythmically dropping down a pool table pocket to come to rest on the ball tray mechanism in the table, and the ringing of the cash register are just noises to the unconverted. But to the Kentish regulars and the many like them who inhabit these baize-based nether-worlds, they are the recognisable sounds of a home away from home, where punters escape their real families of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters to visit their 'other' families of boozing chums and pool-playing pals.

It's an odd home away from home so it's no surprise that the latest generation of teenage hustlers and would-be hard men will chat up local girls and try to prove their street-cred and machismo - and then revert to domestic type by sitting down to watch EastEnders and discuss the latest travails of Sonia Jackson or Dot Cotton.

The second factor uniting the locals and ensuring the different groups at Kentish rarely clash is a respect for Ron Deugnen, the larger-than-life Irish governor of Kentish Town Pool and Snooker Club.

Ron, or 'Big' Ron as he is affectionately known by pool players up and down the land, is several inches over six feet tall and his portly figure is of generous proportions to put it politely. But 'Big' Ron exudes generosity and his usual demeanour is that of the merry uncle at the family wedding who's keen to ensure everyone has a drink. 'Big' Ron's hospitality is the stuff of legend in pool circles and his chicken curries has fed entire generations of would-be cuemen from hardened money players to teenage prodigies, and almost everyone at the club has a story of a personal kindness Ron has performed or a favour they owe the big man with the clipped Irish accent, the spectacles and the contagious laugh.

My first meeting with 'Big' Ron had been at a pool event on a caravan site in Great Yarmouth several years ago when he'd recognised me from a county pool match the previous season where my team, Surrey, had played Ron's all-star London side. It was late at night and myself and a friend were on our way to get some food so he dragged us to the nearest chip shop and proceeded to buy us, several of our friends and the 15 members of the youth pool team he was then looking after at the tournament a fish and chip supper with the cry of 'You Surrey boys all need feeding up, so you do!' At the time my friend and I were sporting stomachs that would have shamed most sumo wrestlers.

The biggest uniting factor for the majority of people who are Kentish regulars, though, is an aptitude or interest in eightball pool.

The club is the home venue of both the highly successful EPA (English Pool Association) and ECPF (English Counties Pool Federation) London county squads and it also houses events for the EPA Region Seven Tour, the PPPO (Professional Pool Players Organisation) Tour, the South-East Tour, the EPPP (English Professional Pool Players) Tour and the London interleague, as well as various money matches, individual leagues and local pool leagues.

So it's no surprise to see seasoned professionals knocking around with schoolkid prodigies, junior internationals playing students, and suited and booted business types swapping stories with old-school hustlers. Less gifted league journeymen are found on the same table as several of the game's brightest young prospects as they prepare for the night's league match at Kentish, while several women, some sporting cropped haircuts and jeans and others looking like they'd be more at home in a local Women's Institute making jam, take out clearances.

Needless to say, all the tables are usually in use on most nights of the week and it's clear the club derives a decent amount of its income from the 50p pieces precariously stacked on the sides of the various tables. Players do discuss other matters but pool is the main topic of conversation and the casual interloper could be forgiven for thinking that the only reality that matters at Kentish is the potting of balls in a pocket.

On this particular January night in question the club is pretty busy. It's one week into the New Year and the Imperial League, one of the capital's most famous and long-running pool leagues, has restarted again after its Yuletide break. The tables are still rammed to capacity with league players preparing for a match or non-league players eager to grab an extra few hours of practice, even though it's several weeks before any of the major series of competitions or Tours kick off.

Holding court at the bar is the club's long-time professional Pat O'Kane and a combination of the weather and the restart of the Imperial League ensure that he has a larger audience than usual.

O'Kane is nicknamed 'the Chat' and what the 5.7 Londoner with the dark hair and impish looks lacks in stature he more than makes up for in ebullience and chutzpah. O'Kane stories are legend in the pool world and they could probably fill up a book on their own and tonight the vodka and Red Bulls perched beside him ensure he’s in full flow.

The most recent addition to his repertoire happened just before Christmas when a white goods supplier dropped into the club for a last drink and challenged O'Kane to a few friendly frames. Two hours on and several bizarre bets later and O'Kane was the proud owner of a luxury fridge freezer, an item which was delivered to his flat the following morning.

O'Kane has been a fixture on the London pool scene for some 20 years and at one time was one of the most feared money players in the UK. He began playing pool in the late 1970s when he attended a dinner-time youth club at school.

'There were a few pool tables and we used to play for our dinner money,' recalls Pat. 'It was soon obvious I was a bit better than everyone else so I couldn't get a game - until some of the workers who ran the club and fancied themselves as players cottoned on to what was happening and started to play me, too! It was a lucrative sideline for a boy of 13!'

After Pat left school, he started work in the Post Office as a messenger boy and, as his works social club also had a pool table, his baize-based education also continued. By his own admission, though, he never really got serious about the game until he was reading The Daily Mirror one night in the early Eighties.

'It ran a piece on a pub called The Cock Tavern where a lot of the top players in London used to hang out. I saved up and went there and played a scruffy guy for £2 a game and lost all my money, which was a grand total of £24. But I kept going back and within a year I'd beaten the likes of 'Maltese' Joe Barba, Andy 'The Greek' Lopez and Roger Blank. I also beat the scruffy guy I'd met on my first outing, who was actually a top money player called 'Scotch' Alex Shennon.'

Pat left the Post Office in 1985 to become a full-time pool professional and he joined the ranks of the Professional Pool Players Organisation (PPPO), of which he was chairman from 1999-2002, after going on a run of money matches against all their brightest stars which saw him unbeaten for six months. His biggest money game, though, came three years later in 1988 when he played a match over 31 frames for £12,000 against a player from Essex called Mark 'The Ginger Ninja' Hewitson.

'I was 6-12 down and being totally outplayed,' recalls Pat. 'My opponent was smashing into the pack and potting balls and clearing up from nowhere and my backer was about to start counting the money out. I looked dead and buried. Then my opponent suddenly decided to just tap the break and play safe instead of potting everything in sight as he had been doing. I knew I'd got him then...'

Several hours and several drinks later, Pat and his backer emerged victorious with Pat winning the match 16-14. 'It was quite a night,' he says in typical O’Kane understatement.

But Pat admits that living on his wits was also a precarious way to make a living.

'I did a TV show about hustling in London and myself and my brother were in an East End pub playing the locals for a few quid and having a good crack. They obviously didn't know who I was and we were making a nice little bundle, too.'

'But then a guy who I'd taken for a few hundred quid a week before walked into the place - and, worse still, he'd seen the TV show so I knew we were well rumbled. It really was a matter of handing all their money back and also giving them my stake money so they could get a few drinks - and getting out of there as quickly as possible!'

These days Pat makes his living from exhibition matches and he still thinks the game can develop beyond its present state.

'We need TV and there are a few tournaments on Sky and the Shetlands event will be on Eurosport, but we badly need terrestrial TV coverage to take the game forward,' believes Pat. 'Pool used to be on World Of Sport and I remember it getting 6.7 million viewers – and that's when it was up against darts in its prime on the BBC!'

'The game has millions of players in the UK and whole networks of unpaid officials who support those local or county networks. Yet we struggle to get the same TV space and column inches as sports that are much more outside the mainstream than we are.'