London

The real Angie Watts
Sandra Esqulant
Age 59, landlady of the Golden Heart pub, Commercial Street, E1
‘We get lovely people in here. My neighbours come in, the market traders and the residents. It’s a proper community. If we don’t see someone, we check up on them. Me and my husband live upstairs… been here 29 years. My husband worked at the Truman Brewery and he said he wanted this pub. I didn’t want it, I was scared. But he brought me in one lunchtime and I fell in love with it. Everyone said “Den [yes, really!], you’ll be terrific, but Sandra… we don’t know [if you’ll enjoy it].” Turns out I liked it better than he did. Feature continues

‘We had hard times here for about eight years when everything closed around us: the brewery, Spitalfields Market, all these companies. It was derelict. My husband said “Let’s leave”, but I said “No, I’m not going.” We only survived because we’ve got a 6am licence. My mum was a florist and I saw what happened to Covent Garden and I wouldn’t like this to be like that. I grew up around here and so did my husband. The shops were beautiful, especially the Jewish ones down Whitechapel.

‘People get the wrong idea about the East End. My customers haven’t really changed. The jobs they do are different but the people are the same. Some work in the City and the market traders still come in on a Sunday. A lot of the old people are no longer here – I miss them. It used to be a pleasure to go over the market, but you can’t get in there on a Sunday now, it’s too packed. I’ve had ten landlords since Truman’s, but it’s never been the same since they gave it up. I hope the area won’t change much more, that the City won’t come any nearer. I’m not going to leave, I want to be laid out in here when I die.’

Motor mouth: Jon Bolton waits for the next customer at Rude Mercs

The real Frank Butcher
Jon Bolton
Age 50, owner of Rude Mercs, Cambridge Heath Road, E2
‘I’ve been running Rude Mercs for 35 years. When I started I had one end of the Cambridge Heath Road to the other, full of cars. It was the ’80s, the rude days, all the Greeks and Turks and Jamaican boys were in buying their rude cars. It’s where we got the name from. When I was doing up the Mercs for people, I felt like a creator, but to be selling normal cars like I do now, I don’t want to be doing it at all. Car sales is finished really. Nowadays, this area is much more cosmopolitan, with all the artists coming in. Everything is moving so fast and I think it’s great.

‘Lenny McLean, the street fighter who was in “Lock, Stock…”, was a customer who used to look after us if we had any problems. He picked up one of my sales advisors by his neck once. He could have come in and beaten the living hell out of all of us, but he never did. He always paid his way and we done his cars and it worked.’