A Rainy Day in Soho with Drake's and Chubby and the Gang

There are some days when the best course of action is to head straight to the pub. It’s raining in Soho, the kind of deep-down-in-your-bones rain that feels endless and existential. “What is the sun?” “Will I ever be dry again?” Normally this would prove a minor inconvenience - London in winter - but on this dreary Saturday we have company: Chubby and the Gang aka Britain’s most exciting punk band aka a group that we want to show a good time. We hopefully and helplessly peak our heads into the Coach and Horses, that famous old literary boozer, on the lookout for a free table. No dice. Not even half a dice.

“Your body’s what… 90% water, right?” says the band’s frontman, the actually-not-chubby-at-all Charlie ‘Chubby’ Manning Walker, long-haired and broad-shouldered, a glint in his eye and clearly unperturbed by the fat droplets falling onto Greek Street as we head deeper into our search for a corner seat and a packet of pork scratchings. “This is great!” adds guitarist Ethan Stahl. “A proper London day. I think it suits the sort of band we are.”

Salvation arrives on the corner of Carlisle Street: The Toucan, a pub that hosted a young Hendrix back in the day. Dark, wood-panelled, low-ceilinged, dusty cabinets and peeling walls spilling out with Guinness and pub ephemera and, most importantly, aside from a slightly bewildered looking  young couple, empty. Guinness and Jack Daniels and Diet Coke, pork scratchings and a corner booth. The band hammering through anecdotes and inside jokes, tales of rowdy gigs, shady characters and catch phrases from late night cop chase TV shows, the Rolling Stones play on tinny speakers. "Proper music!” Tom says with a laugh. “I’m starving!’ says Charlie.

Last summer the band released their second album, The Mutts Nuts, to more critical acclaim. No sophomore slump here. Broadening their sound and storytelling. Rowdy music with threads of melancholy. In ‘Take Me Home To London’, Manning Walker sings, “The air whistles through the valley like it’s singing the blues. You thought I never loved you, please know I always would. I wanna go home, only if I could. The way the train tracks waltz through this lonely town, and just to sit here and watch the sun come tumbling down.” There are gigs at the Roundhouse and a European tour coming up. “The Roundhouse!" shouts Ethan.