Tales of the city

Dirty White Boy

How on earth did Clayton Littlewood go from running a clothes shop below a Soho brothel to being invited to dinner with Elton John?

Why, through thelondonpaper. Well, sort of. We can't claim full credit - after all, it was Littlewood who wrote the book, Dirty White Boy: Tales of Soho, that so impressed Elt he called to ask the author to tea ("Can you believe it? God, it was amazing. He said he loved the book and he'd really like for me to go over when his tour's finished").

But we did help bring his writing to a wider audience by giving him his own column, Soho Stories.

Dirty White Boy expands on these: a collection of witty and piquant vignettes about the eccentrics, drag queens, tourists, prostitutes, artists and lowlifes of Soho, as seen from the window of Dirty White Boy, a designer clothes shop that Littlewood ran for three years with his partner Jorge Betancourt.

The shop was situated on one of Soho's most iconic spots, at the junction of Dean Street and Old Compton Street, giving the 45-year-old a ringside view of the Hogarthian scenes outside.

"I thought, this is a time I'll look back on lying in my nursing home, so I should write it down," he said.

As well as tales of colourful customers, including Janice Dickinson and Graham Norton, Littlewood draws portraits of local characters, such as homeless Pam the Fag Lady. His view of Soho is not limited to daylight hours - as well as working in the shop, he and Betancourt lived in the basement below.

"Everyone said, 'ooh, living on Old Compton Street, that's glamorous!'", says Littlewood. "To which I said, 'you try washing your genitals in a sink!'" There was no bathroom, no lights, rats, water dripped down the walls, and it was connected to a series of underground caves that everyone said were haunted. Every night, all we could hear were punters going to the brothel upstairs."

The upstairs neighbours are the source of many anecdotes, mostly affectionate. The establishment was decently run, says Littlewood, "and we all got on very well."

The main cause of grief, however, was thieving. The shop was burgled 10 times, with too few police on duty.

He worries about the fate of Soho's unique character, with rents pushing out independent shops. "Covent Garden is great," he says, "but we don't need another one."

Dirty White Boy was itself forced to close due to spiralling rents two months ago; the couple live in Holland Park, and Littlewood is writing another book. Before leaving the shop, he buried a copy of Dirty White Boy.

"It's a time capsule," he says. "I like the idea of someone in 50 years doing a study of Soho, finding my book and thinking, 'so this is what it was like.'"

Lottie Moggach