Popping down to Peckham: Lovely Jubbly!

PECKHAM was recently named London’s coolest neighbourhood by the fun-things-to-do magazine Time Out. Some even talk of it as the Shoreditch of the South. Shoreditch!?

Strange how some of the most grimy bits of London have become the most sought after. I call it grungetrification.

Growing up as kids down the road in post-war New Cross with its tangle of railway tracks and smog-shrouded bombsites, our one consolation was that at least it wasn’t Peckham.

We always thought Peckham was a bit dodgy, long before the emergence of violent gangs such as the Peckham Boys from the 1970s.

The lighter side of the area’s shiftiness was immortalised in the TV comedy sitcom Only Fools and Horses that ran for a decade from 1981. David Jason’s character “Del Boy” Trotter runs his mainly harmless get-rich-quick scams from his council flat in Peckham.

Del Boy’s upbeat catch phrase “lovely jubbly” has since entered the vocabulary of every taxi driver and trinket-seller from Manila to Marrakesh who encounters British tourists.

There was an attempt to smarten the place up in the ‘90s, with the European Union helping to fund a swish new library. That’s when the artists and musicians and cool young professionals started moving in, swiftly followed by the cafés, wine bars and studios.

The area now has one of the most scenic rooftop bars in London on the top of a derelict multi-storey car park, a magnet for hip millennials.

Today the main shopping street, Rye Lane, was heaving. I didn’t spot too many likely web developers or graphic artists. Most of the shoppers were from the local African, Caribbean and minority communities who make up a majority of the population of central Peckham.

There was a huge Black Lives Matter poster on the side of the award-winning library. But most of the actual black people were on the street, with long queues at the money transfer shops and the greengrocers. A fiver a pop for a yam seemed a lot to me. But what do I know? Lockdown prices?

Peckham has earned a bad rep over the years for drug-related knife crime, a phenomenon routinely associated with young black kids in the minds of those who forget the white razor-gangs of an earlier generation who fought for turf across South London.

In one of Britain’s most high-profile killings, 10-year-old Nigerian-born Damilola Taylor bled to death in the stairwell of the North Peckham Estate in 2000. Two local youths were eventually found guilty of manslaughter.

None of the above should put you off. As a TripAdviser contributor wrote in response to a tourist’s inquiry about whether it was safe: “I live in Peckham and it’s absolutely fine, yes it used to be rough but now it’s a gentrified, hipster haven with tonnes of cafes, breweries and arty rooftop bars.”

Truth to tell, there hasn’t been too much bad action in Peckham since the 2011 riots, although I do question the wisdom of Time Out’s reference to it being “a mere stone’s throw away” from Camberwell.

Let’s hope it recovers from our present difficulties and that the cool trendsetters stay on. I’ve heard whispers that some new urbanites are planning a post-Covid return to the country – work from home, plant some veg, raise some goats (just for the milk, of course).

Whatever happens though, and for good or ill, there will always be a Peckham.

But you’ll be dying now to know more about New Cross. So here’s a link to ITLW’s very first column to give you the full monty.