1 Wellington Terrace, Bayswater Road,
London,
W2 4LW
0872 148 6575
The ViewLondon Review
From the outside The Champion looks to be your standard, low-lit disarmingly drab local. However, step inside and you won’t find Mick moaning about the missus or Jim blankly salivating over Match of the Day, but instead an array of eclectically clashing styles that are so ingeniously put together that this establishment more than deserves its name.
Retro ironic touches and period features that are so naff they’re nice: think dodgy upholstery, Day-Glo orange ceramic lighting and those bold, chrome seventies fronded lampshades that look as though they’re a distant relative of the Dalek.
Those disposed to kitsch won’t be able to help themselves from falling a little bit in love with the gold wallpaper with its raised, amber velvet flowers or the ye olde horse and carriage street scene peephole sidelights.
The bar staff look like they’ve been up all night, every night, and boast tattoos and piercings aplenty in a kind of Wild at Heart, as opposed to Hound and Heart, way.
Downstairs is a smaller, smarter and more frou-frou affair, with black leather banquettes and bamboo walls. The real piece de resistance, however, is the outside terrace, its string of fairy lights above giving the effect of a twinkling ceiling.
Food is decent, homecooked and generously priced (don’t forget, this is an area where you’ll be hard pushed to find a packet of crisps for under a fiver), and the clientele – from laptop wielding creatives to English language students - are a refreshingly unselfconscious breed plucked from a famously pretentious community.