Bohemian Soho is dying. George Melly – who was once threatened with eviction on the charge of “having sexual intercourse with a fish” – has died; Norman Balon – the landlord of the Coach and Horses who once barred his own mother for being “bloody past it” – has retired; and The Colony – with its motto of “rush up, drink up, spend up, fuck off” – is about to close. All that’s left of louche and languid old Soho is The French House.

The French, as it’s known, has attracted all the great drinkers, from Francis Bacon to Peter O’Toole. Brendan Behan wrote large parts of The Quare Fellow at a corner table, and Jeffrey Bernard liked to drink there when he wasn’t unwell. It’s where Satanist Aleister Crowley asked his fellow drinkers to draw something while – on the other side of the bar – he was drawing exactly the same thing. A night at The French was always an adventure.

Dylan Thomas described his visits to Soho as explosions of alchohol “that scatter all my good intentions over the saloon bars of the tawdriest pubs in London.” And his visits would always start out at the French. After one particular night on the tiles, he ended up leaving his only manuscript of Under Milk Wood on the floor. The landlord kept it safe until, the next day, it was retrieved by the much-relieved Head of BBC Radio Drama.

The French isn’t a place for sitting down – it’s far too small. The French is for drinking. There are no fruit machines or juke boxes. And mobile phones are banned. So all that’s left to do is talk and drink. Which is why you’ll often hear regulars push open the door with a shout of “Is there anyone I should apologise to?” after something they said or did the night before.

The French was never a traditional boozer. It sold arak, pastis and absinthe. And beer in half-pint measures. The landlord introduced the half-pint rule after a group of rowdy, drunken sailors threw pint glasses through the window. Or so the story goes. The truth is actually more mundane – he didn’t have enough room behind the bar for pint glasses. But, at the French, they never let anything get in the way of a good story.

Soho was never a very English place – like the New World, it was built by immigrants. There were the Huguenots, who fled France after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. There were the Italians. And then there were the Jews, fleeing the pogroms in the East. But they all came to Soho – a place where they could lose themselves. Or find themselves, if that’s what they wanted.

Victor Berlemont came from Belgium, intent on making his fortune. And, when he bought The Wine House – a pub on the southern edge of Soho – he seemed well on his way. He changed the name (to Maison Berlemont, and then again to the York Minster) and gave the place a Gallic feel. French boxer Georges Carpentier, who fought Jack Dempsey in front of the first million-dollar gate in 1921, was a regular. So was Maurice Chevalier. It was like a little corner of France. Run by Belgians.

After the defeat of France in the Second World War, the Free French Army was formed in London. The York Minster was its unofficial HQ. It’s where General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French, wrote the speech urging his countrymen to keep alive “the flame of French resistance”. And the words, broadcast on BBC radio, still hang proudly on the wall.

In 1953, following his father's death, Gaston took over at the York Minster. Even though, after the war, everybody knew the York Minster as the French. When the real Minster, the Gothic Cathedral in York, was damaged by fire, donations for the repairs were sent to the pub. Which is when Gaston found out that the Minster had been receiving his claret. To save confusion, the York Minster changed its name to the French House. Finally, the French was the French. It was official.

Gaston was a wonderful landlord. An old-school charmer, he favoured the same style of handlebar moustache as his father. And he always wore a suit. “He would wear the same suit for weeks on end” says Stuart McMillan – a French regular, who was something big in advertising. “Then a guy would come into the pub with a suitcase, and Gaston’s measurements, and sell him a new one.”

One lunchtime, a drunken Scotsman decided to stop in at the French. But Gaston didn’t like his manner, and threw him out. The Scotsman hammered on the door for a while. Then nothing. A few seconds later, the Scotsman came in through the other door. He looked at Gaston and said, ‘Must you own all the fucking pubs round here?’ He thought he had come into another pub.

Soho was a different place in the 1950s. Drinking wasn’t frowned upon. And the French was about the best place in the world for a breakfast of pink champagne (it was the only place in London that served it by the half-bottle) and cigarettes. But before the change in the licensing laws, pubs shut between 3pm and 5.30pm, and drinkers would adjourn to Soho’s drinking clubs to while away the afternoon.

Clubs such as Muriel Belcher’s Colony Room, where everyone from Francis Bacon to Malcolm Arnold would be greeted by Muriel’s “hello, cunty”. Colin MacInnes summed up the Colony’s appeal when he wrote “To sit with the curtains drawn at 4pm on a sunny afternoon, sipping expensive poison and gossiping one’s life away, had the futile fascination of forbidden fruit.”

When the pubs opened up again for the evening session, it was time for a sharpener in the Coach and Horses. Norman Balon – immortalised in “Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell” – was the rudest landlord in London. His memoirs (“You're Barred, You Bastards”) said it all. He was happy to confiscate a well-known writer’s cottage pie and ban him just for being "fucking boring".

Then it was back to the French. Artists – including Francis Bacon – gravitated to the left side of the cash register, and architects to the right. Like the salt at grand dinner parties in the Middle Ages, your position in relation to the cash register confirmed your standing. In the middle of it all was Gaston, cashing cheques for those who needed it. The money was only going to end up in his till anyway…

After closing time, McMillan would pick Gaston up in his Jag. “And we would go off and play roulette at the White Elephant casino in Curzon Street” he says. “Gaston had his own set of chips – green they were. He loved to bet. He was always betting on the horses – at long odds, whenever possible. And I seem to remember he was always very lucky.”

On Bastille Day, 1989, Gaston retired. It was one hell of a retirement party – the police had to close off the street, and the French ran out of champagne. But it wasn’t a happy day for Gaston. He had been offered the chance of renewing the tenure of the French, but couldn’t afford it. His luck had ran out. Gaston never went back to the French. Not even for a drink.

After Gaston, Lesley Lewis and Noel Botham became co-owners at the French. Botham was a journalist who had been drinking in the pub since 1960. He was known for founding Anti-Alcoholics Anonymous, which gave permission to any of his friends to ring from anywhere in the world should they ever be in danger of seriously considering giving up drink; his promise was that he would dissuade them. Botham was perfect for the French.

“When Gaston retired” says Botham, “the press said ‘That’s the end of an era. Francis Bacon will never drink in the French again’. But people didn’t realise I knew him from The Colony. On the first day Lesley and I opened, Francis threw open the door with ‘Noel my darling!’ and ordered champagne. And where he led, others followed. At the end, the only bouquet of flowers on his coffin was from Lesley, myself, and all the regulars at the French.”

Lewis, who is co-owner and landlady, used to make clothes for the dancers in an Old Compton Street strip club. “It was £1.50 to get in” she says. “A lot of the men would bring their own sandwiches, and leave a Mars bar for their favourite girl. But it didn’t feel sleazy. Terribly old fashioned actually. Then the girls started getting beaten up. I would have to try and cover up the bruises with make-up. It was around the time that the Maltese were in Soho, and it was ‘suggested’ that I left….”

But she didn’t go too far. When she took over at the French, Lewis vowed to make a few changes. For a start, she got a fridge. “Gaston didn’t have one” she says. “He just used to buy a block of ice, and sit the champagne on that. I also put stools at the bar. And a sink in the gents loo.” The only change that didn’t go down well with the male regulars was the wall she built round the staircase to the ladies upstairs. It made it harder for them to eye up their ankles.

The Chicago Kid didn’t like the alterations. This one-time professional boxer epitomised the French. As one regular, Sandy Fawkes, put it, “He had been world champion and a hero for a while, and his fame still clung to him. He was acknowledged and respected for what he had achieved, never derided when his luck ran out, certainly never regarded as a bum, because he had made his effort, taken a chance on life.”

At the other end of the bar from Chicago’s old stool is what Lewis calls ‘Tony Harris corner’. “He sat there for 50 years” she says. “And drank retsina.” Hanging on the wall is a framed photograph of him when he was a major in the Royal Artillery in 1941. “But the others always used to scribble funny faces on the glass. Over the years, Tony was turned into everyone from Sadaam Hussein to Hitler and Kitchener. But he always found it funny.”

Hughie Green, who created and presented the television talent show Opportunity Knocks, was a regular. And a friend of Botham’s. In fact, it was Botham who named Green as Paula Yates’s father, following Green’s death from cancer. “Robert Plant named us as his favourite bar in the world” says Botham. “And it was at the French I met Guns N Roses for the first time. They were at the bar for two hours. I had no idea who they were……”

On the bookshelf at the French are two copies of Killing Time by Sandy Fawkes. It tells the true story of her road trip across America with her boyfriend, a serial killer. Fawkes eventually found out that, the day before they met, he had killed two people. And he was wearing the clothes that belonged to his victims. But she found happiness at the French. In her later years, the staff at the French would go and fetch her prescriptions. And her Daily Telegraph. The French made her feel safe.

Molly Parkin received several proposals of marriage in The French. But she hasn’t drunk there for 21 years – too many temptations. Her daughter Sophie, however, still likes to drink there when she can. “I went away to Hong Kong and Australia” she says. “I came back after a year, and went straight from the airport to the French. I threw open the door, and somebody said, ‘Haven’t seen you for a couple of weeks’. That’s how time lapses in the French. Plus ca change I suppose.”

The French is a free house, and free of brewery ties. “So we can serve whatever we want however we want” says Botham. But Soho is increasingly populated by tied houses, owned by the big brewery chains. “And they can serve their cheap drinks. There’s nothing we can do about that. People will always go for those cheap, sickly, brightly-coloured drinks. But we’re catering for a different market. That’s what we hope will save Soho – people have still got taste.”

The photographer John Claridge wanted to capture that atmosphere before it was too late. Soho is in Claridge’s blood. He used to share the lease of Ronnie Scotts – his photographic studio was on the top two floors, and he went to bed listening to jazz every night. “But areas do change” he says. “And I just thought I should document these people before it all goes.”

So Claridge set up his studio (a Hasselblad and one light) in an upstairs room at the French. And started to photograph. Milly the reflexologist was delighted with the result. “She said ‘I’ve heard you shot the Pirelli calendar’ says Claridge. ‘Is that right?’ I said ‘Yes’. ‘Well do me then’ she said. And took her top off.” She wanted her photographs up in the bar when she came to the French to celebrate her birthday.

The French still sells more Ricard than anywhere else in the country. And the beer still comes in half-pint glasses. “It’s alienating” says Lewis. “But that’s the idea. It discourages a certain element.” Lewis doesn’t want the conformists, the accountants and the bottom-liners. “We want the next generation of hooligans. Nice hooligans. So we’re training our customers to fit in…”