Rod Stewart: The Familiar Face

THROUGH THE colonnades they come, along freezing passage-ways. Girls look like ventriloquist-dolls, in black plush and rouge, puffing as dolls do on big cigarettes; boys and girls alike wear coats, mufflers with which they lassoo each other, waistcoats, sashes, bow-ties, everything in Hunting Stewart tartan, though this is Kilburn, North London. Far away the balconies fill up, and far away the stalls, beneath the strangely-lit heavens of the old State cinema.