London memoirs

Sitting in the lounge of the Red Lion, a pub on the Shaftesbury Avenue corner. London, circa Spring 1983, sipping my lager pulled by a Dorian-Gray look-alike bar-tender who spoke with a tinge of Oxford dialect, a silhouette shadow fell on the tabloid I was reading, and without formally introducing himself, and without mincing his words, said to me: "You look like the nice good chap I have in mind to put on a blue job right over here in Soho." Before I managed to say a thing, he raised his index in a gesture indicating to me to hold on a minute and he went to a far end in the bar--you know, dear Ib, that typical traditional brick-built London bars are characterised by having considerably long counters--and came back with two girls, one English and the other Indian, telling me to start my career with them. He told me later that his name was Andrew--telling me to call him Andy--and that he had a heart condition and that his key worry was that he might find himself forced to make his 14-year old daughter a party in a blue job