Tales from the Two Puddings: Stratford’s Most Notorious Pub Reveals All

Now that the dust has settled upon the London Olympics, and the costly site is locked up and mothballed for a year, the debate about Stratford’s future and the true legacy of the Games is now beginning to rage.
Eddie Johnson, octogenarian first time author, and one of East London’s most famous landlords, finally tells his tales from the Two Puddings, the notorious Stratford pub he was licensee of for nearly four decades. It was back in 1962, exactly fifty years before the Olympics rolled into East London, that the Johnson family took over the Two Puddings.
Known as one of London’s busiest and most fashionable pubs, its hugely popular music nights acted as a magnet for a large and colourful cast of disparate characters who would regularly descend upon the premises, including renowned actors, writers, singers, musicians, champion boxers, infamous gangsters, television personalities and World Cup winning footballers.
Tales from the Two Puddings is a poignant, at times hilarious, look back upon a lost world of East End eccentrics, local villainy, vindictive policemen, punch ups and practical jokes, all now lying buried beneath the concrete blocks and sterile shopping centres of the ‘new’ Stratford.

Eddie Johnson was born in Limehouse, East London and grew up in Bow. He took over the Two Puddings pub in 1962 and by the time the ‘Puddings’ closed its doors for the last time, nearly four decades later, he was the longest serving licensee in London.

Robert Elms is an award-wining writer and broadcaster. His popular daily radio show on BBC London celebrates every aspect of London.