The ten bells isn't quite whitechapel, more spitalfields but it's still going. Not sure about the frying pan, not heard of it! Whitechapel is ****e now, I used to drink in the blind beggar quite a lot when I was banging that Russian bird as she lived in a fancy flat nearby but aside from the BB there weren't too many options.
The Frying Pan was on Whitechapel High St. There was some belting pubs in the east end. The Bricklayers Arms just off Mile End Rd in Bow, The Jolly Angler in Limehouse & the Duke of Edinburgh near West Ham's ground. Topper pubs.
My closest place for a beer, and well equipped with big screen TVs although generally showing Villa, Baggies, or Blues games, and good comedy value just for the name: https://www.facebook.com/Lickey-End-Social-Club-135782709801224/ please log in to view this image A little further away, but worth the extra walk for a bit of live music: http://www.hop-pole.com/ please log in to view this image
Parents lived there from '02 until '13 and I used to go drinking there with my dad and brothers whenever we were home. Can't say I was a 'regular' as I'd moved out of home by then (already at uni by the time they moved to Cockerton) but used to go a couple of times a week in the summer when I worked in Darlo (usually data entry or medical records up at Lingfield Point). Spent a couple of New years in the Brown trout though (can't be certain which years but it will have been between '04 and '07. I had no idea it had closed down, we used to mostly be on the pool table - preferred it to the Travellers (though that wasn't a terrible pub by any means). Next you'll be telling the "the Godfather" pizzeria is no longer there!!
The local I had for years was the Aigburth Arms (as made "famous" by Dave Lister in a Red Dwarf episode saying he used to play pool there every Thursday night). It's now called "The Victoria" though and I've moved to somewhere where the local pubs are all a bit upmarket. There's a social club on the corner of my road I'll try one day soon by with a 2 year old and a 4 year old I usually just go to sleep once I've finished for the day! I'm so rock and roll.
Ah coolio. My parents still have their house in Cockerton but lease it out and moved to France instead a couple of years back, don't get up to Darlington much now but what I will say is that the town was better than I had expected it to be. I'd never been prior to my parents moving there (when I was about 19) and thought it was some pokey little hole in the middle of no-where but actually it's a nice sized town with decent people and places. Never got any trouble when I was out there. Though there was a guy stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver in Cockerton who died... about 2007ish I reckon.
Love it!! We walked in from the junction it is facing as our house was overlooking the cricket ground. I can also see "Scholars" there. My mum booked it once for my 29th birthday for no obvious reason?!?! It was... interesting... wouldn't recommend it but only been once so maybe unfair.
Judging from the Internet the FP has been a balti house since at least 2006. So way before my time in London. Been about the East End a bit, not that much. Can't say I like it to be honest mate and I'm fairly certain you wouldn't anymore either. Shoreditch, Hoxton, Mile End and Bethnal Green is just arty types and rich ****s who want to appear to be arty types. The rest is becoming more and more Asian, which is fine but it's just not really an area where I'd go out of my way to drink in. I can't really deal with eastenders/cockneys either. Mouthiest people on the planet and I'm quick tempered.
