The Tokyo Diner at the corner of Newport Street now occupies the site of the laundrette featured in a television film, as far as I remember, about a search for accommodation by a young mother with two small children.
Back in the 1970s I had been sitting in my local Soho launderette watching our washing circulating when a film crew came in, ushered everyone else out, and asked me to remain to stay in shot for a particular sequence. On transmission evening we all sat in front of the telly eagerly awaiting my star performance. In the launderette scene it was momentarily possible, unless you blinked, to see an elbow which could just possibly have been mine.
Shortly afterwards, filling the screen, was my son Michael, with his dog Piper, striding down Dean Street with a huge grin on his face. I think you could say I had been upstaged.
