Robert Bathurst will be appearing at the Coach and Horses

THE Coach and Horses is one of Soho’s great boozers, the sort of pub that doesn’t so much have stories as exhale them.

You’ve heard all the tales about what Peter O’Toole would get up to there, while the bar became famous again for having landlord Norman Balon behind the bar.

He presided with such glorious hostility that he became known as the rudest landlord in London.

Then there’s Jeffrey Bernard, the journalist who allegedly got locked in overnight after falling asleep in the loo. He seemed to drink instead of write and somehow became legendary for it.

All of this is now being revived as immersive theatre and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell is being staged in the pub itself this March.

Robert Bathurst plays Bernard, beginning at the point where the man is finally tired of his own excesses.

The actor ­– billed as the “actor the year” – calls it perfect: a play about being stuck in a Soho pub, watched by people stuck in a Soho pub.

In an era when the area’s nightlife sometimes feels like it may be being gently strangled by complaints and curfews – for good or for bad – this feels like a defiant, spirit-soaked love letter to the city’s messier instincts.