{"id":1618,"date":"2018-04-14T23:12:28","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T22:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timarnold.co.uk\/?p=1618"},"modified":"2018-04-15T13:18:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T12:18:31","slug":"eddi-mcpherson-a-soho-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timarnold.co.uk\/eddi-mcpherson-a-soho-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"Eddi McPherson \u2013 A Soho Hero"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Edwina McPherson (photo – Peter Clark)<\/p><\/div>\n

The news that Eddi passed came to me via my friend Steve Furst, who also told me the news last year that Bernie Katz had passed.\u00a0 I\u2019m staying at a friend\u2019s apartment in the east end of Toronto, looking out the window at the unwelcome cocktail of hail, ice and snow falling from the sky as I absorb the news. I feel further and further away from the Soho I love. And that is not a distance that may be measured in miles. I am further away from the Soho that I carry inside me at all times. The Soho that, like a royal crown, has just decreased in value with the loss of one of it\u2019s most valuable jewels: Eddi McPherson.<\/i><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s the people that makes the place.<\/em><\/h3>\n

It\u2019s something I always say whenever asked about the geography, the architecture, the atmosphere and the history of Soho. It isn\u2019t just your Karl Marx, John Logie Baird, Sara Bernhardt or any other denizen of Soho\u2019s blue plaque brigade.\u00a0 It is also the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers.\u00a0 Or in my case, during the course of the 20 years living in Soho, it was about the smiles<\/em> you crossed a street for, just to lose an hour of day or night, so you could continue your journey with more blood pumping through your heart than you had before you crossed that street.
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Eddi was a proprietor of one of those smiles.\u00a0 Leaving my flat on Frith Street, or making my way to it, the path up or down Dean St was more often than not punctuated by a stare from Eddi (usually sitting next to Lesley from The French).\u00a0 Like most Soho busy bodies, I\u2019d always look busy (whether I was or not) and Eddi would give me a look as if to say \u201cIt would be very rude if you didn\u2019t stop to say hello Tim.\u201d\u00a0 Naturally, no such look was necessary because I always loved to stop and chatter away with her.\u00a0 Similar to her extraordinary son Graham (aka Suggs), I also grew up with a mother who had sung in Soho nightclubs when I was just a young boy (coincidentally, in the Madness film Take It Or Leave It, my mother<\/a> had played Mark’s mother)<\/em>. \u00a0These images of entertainer mums stay with you as you grow up. \u00a0So, although strangers in Soho may have spotted Eddi in recent years and mistaken her for an elderly lady of no particular provenance, I knew she was a ruling Soho matriarch who had studied her craft and experienced the wonders, hardships and rewards of a life surrounded by music, performing arts and London\u2019s finest. I have a great respect and admiration for her, not least because of her work for charity, the Soho community, but also for the studious<\/em> attention she paid to music, her environment and her ability to articulate whatever she chose to talk about. \u00a0I will always respect her irreplaceable character.<\/i><\/h3>\n

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Although I did not know her well, we united over a local battle<\/a> to reinstate the local music venue Madame Jojo<\/strong>‘s as a performance space (it had been earmarked to become a 200 seat restaurant by the landlords in 2014). It was a battle that Eddi and I chuckled about at our last meeting. \u00a0We were both amused how much the media had rejoiced in covering the venue’s closure but were not, however, interested in covering the good news that between the pressure of\u00a0Save Soho<\/a> and the local community, we actually won the battle in the end. \u00a0We also bonded over the experience of many people telling us we should both write books about Soho, agreeing that unless someone was going to pay us, we were too busy living Soho to find time to write about it. \u00a0I remember our moments laughing together with great fondness. \u00a0But of all my Soho memories, I shall never forget her beaming up at me supportively and ever proudly at her son Suggs as we sang on stage in the middle of Frith Street at Bar Italia’s 65th Anniversary. It is particularly poignant now to watch this video where at 1 minute 20 seconds, Suggs acknowledges his mum from the stage.<\/h3>\n