The Prince Alfred, 5A Formosa Street, W9

With Crocker’s Folly and the Warrington, this really does seem to be the area for dazzling pubs, and this one’s a real joy: glistening mahogany and sinuously curving etched glass windows.

The Prince Alfred, an irresistible draw to film makers, used to be slightly scruffy but it seems like all those location fees have been put to good use and the pub positively gleams. The rear has been opened up as the Formosa Dining Room restaurant. Don’t be put off by the ordinary public bar. There are, in fact, more private bars, which you reach by crawling through what are basically glorified catflaps (these openings were intended for use by cleaners). Go on, you know you want to try it.

Ralph (John Goodman) enjoys a game of darts with an African king in the Alfred in King Ralph. It's the London local in pretentious thriller B Monkey, with Asia Argento, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Rupert Everett, and crops up again in the ‘erotic thriller’ Killing Me Softly. It appears at its most polished and glittering as the bar in which Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) receives evidence of supposed ‘intimacy’ from private detective Parkis (Ian Hart) in Neil Jordan’s The End of the Affair.

King Ralph (1991, dir: David S Ward)
The End Of The Affair (1999, dir: Neil Jordan)
Killing Me Softly (2002, dir: Kaige Chen)
B Monkey (1998, dir: Michael Radford)