For your experienced London drinker, this is an extremely vexed question. I am sure everyone has their favourite Soho boozer. These are some that we have loved over the years.

The John Snow - thanks to Ewan Munro from that there Flickr

• The John Snow – the first place I ever went to that had an electronic darts board. It was the 21st Century come early, I tell you. NB: Man in box: booze of death.
• The Blue Posts (Berwick St) – Orange, very orange. Pleasingly spongy seats. I spoke to Ewan McGregor about trampolines in here, many moons ago.
• The Blue Posts (Rupert St) – wins my ‘friendliest pub in Soho’ award. Upstairs room often deserted (hooray!), leaving you with all the time in the world to gaze down at the canaille scurrying up and down Wardour St, whilst listening to the landlord’s favourite, jazz FM. Hmmmm.
• Glasshouse Stores – Its downstairs room is a wonderful spot to go on a summer’s day (if it’s open). Sit there with the other misanthropes disavowing sandals, Bar Italia, crop-tops, sunglasses and anything else containing summery joie de vivre. NB: serves Ayinger death potion.
• The Falcon (RIP) – the meeting point du jour in my teenage years. Functional, yet formative. Sadly missed. Or maybe it was just time to move on.
• The Pillars of Hercules – the deep banquettes at the back mean your legs don’t touch the floor, making you feel really tiny. Maybe this is just me.
• The Red Lion – heroically smoky; the atmosphere is sometimes quite spikey, sometimes jocular. Pleasingly retrograde, given its surroundings and vile, vulgar nightclub neighbours. NB Ayingerbrau served. If you haven’t got the message already… this stuff is the evil Nazi from the Commando! comics of the lager world.

Anyway, moving on from that most tortuous of metaphors, the point is: all the above pubs, despite being vaguely characterful and happily unreconstructed, are in the main overly expensive, except for the Sam Smith’s pubs, but then if lager is your choice of drink, this choice is restricted to Munich madman moonjuice. Also, they become horribly busy at the times you might normally be meeting in Soho – after work, weekends, that sort of thing.

In this part of town, you want your pub to be a calm refuge from all the West End flim-flam. Sadly, these places tend not to offer this; instead, you buy unimaginative beer from uninterested staff, and take up your spot standing next to the loo door. The answer these days, if you’re having to deal with this part of town, is to do what you must, then skedaddle, and save your pennies for nicer drinking holes in other parts of town.

Please let us know if you feel this is unduly harsh, or if there is a new shining star in your Soho fundam… sorry, firmament.