Bar Italia
Bar Italia is a café located in Frith Street in Soho Central London.
On 26 January 1926, John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of television at 22 Frith Street, the building where Bar Italia is located. The blue plaque above the front door commemorates this event. There is also a little-known film about this event.
Bar Italia in its present form was opened as a cafe in 1949 by the Polledri family, and is still owned by Veronica and Anthony Polledri today: http://intercreditreport.com/company/caffe-bar-limited-03797214.
In popular culture
Bar Italia inspired the song of the same name by the band Pulp, which is the last track of their 1995 album Different Class. The song describes the cafe as "round the corner in Soho" and "where other broken people go."
In November 2010, it was announced that Dave Stewart and Ian La Frenais were writing a stage musical about the cafe which will be called Bar Italia. Stewart was quoted as saying, "This coffee shop is very small but what goes on in there is as big as the world."
Podcasts:
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by Pulp
Bar Italia
by: PulpNow if you can stand I would like to take you by the hand, yeah
And go for a walk past people as they go to work.
Oh, let's get out of this place before they tell us that we've just died.
Move, move quick, you've gotta move.
Come on it's through, come on it's time.
Oh look at you, you,you're looking so confused just what did you lose?
If you can make an order could you get me one.
Two sugars would be great 'cos I'm fading fast and it's nearly dawn.
If they knocked down this place, this place, it'd still look much better than you.
Move, move quick, you've gotta move.
Come on it's through, come on it's time.
Oh look at you, you, you're looking so confused, what did you lose?
Oh, it's ok it's just your mind.
If we get through this alive I'll meet you next week, same place, same time.
Oh move, move quick you've gotta move.
Come on it's through, come on it's time.
Oh look at you, you, you're looking so confused, what did you lose?
That's what you get from clubbing it.
You can't go home and go to bed because it hasn't worn off yet
And now it's morning there's only one place we can go.