That old hoary fucker Arthur Smith has been banging on about Balham for what seems like an eternity. So it would be rude not to get him involved with the Comedians' Guide to London

Now that Balham has become the most fashionable place on in the world, it is hard to imagine its tawdry reputation in 1984, when I first moved here, a reputation that dated back to the eighteenth-century when it was known as ‘a brothel on the way to Brighton’. The prostitutes who once lined Bedford Hill have now moved on to Streatham and beyond, while the Bedford Arms is no longer a place of murky couplings, but home to the Banana Cabaret, one of London’s longest-running comedy clubs.

I played the opening night of the Bedford (and if that’s not true it nearly is) in the double act I was then in with Phil Nice called Fiasco Job Job. We went down very well indeed thank you for asking and were followed by a triple act featuring Hugh Grant (honestly, they were called the Jockeys of Norfolk and were rather good in an actory kind of way). The venue’s circular shape and its gallery mean that you can pack a fair few in yet it has an intimacy you only normally find in a much smaller place. No member of the audience is more than about six metres from the stage. Obviously I have estimated this distance – but perhaps I could invite an enterprising reader of London is Funny, who has no normal life might life of their own, to go to the Bedford with a tape measure and check this for me.

Upstairs at the Bedford there is a also a bar and another large room, inhabited normally by amateur lindy hop/ballroom/line dancers, but which, at weekends, also becomes a comedy venue, with the same comics as in the main venue but in a different order. If you stalk a comedian and buy tickets for both spaces this is a good opportunity to see them twice in an hour.

MURDER

Balham has always had been a good joke. The most famous of these was a sketch written by Frank Muir and Dennis Norden, which became a short film narrated by Peter Sellars called "Balham – Gateway to the South". This remains an epithet beloved of taxi-drivers and makes my manor the only one in Britain with its own catchphrase.

"With its broad boulevards and its pulsating night-life, Balham is like a cross between Paris and Rio de Janeiro," someone once wrote in the London Evening Standard. It was me. In the same article I also proclaimed myself the mayor ("night mayor – I don’t do days"*). I continue to bat for Balham which, despite its recent gentrification, still retains a certain comical identity. As does the whole of south London for the lardies of the north. George Melly, a vigorous north London man referred to we in the south as "transpontines". My own joke runs thus: "In north London they have little blue plaques commemorating famous people. In south London we have big yellow signs saying: 'Did you see this murder?'"

So here is my advice. Stop reading this, go and pack up your stuff and move to Balham immediately.

*A joke stolen a few years later by William "14 pints" Hague, a long-forgotten Tory boy leader of the Tory party.

NB Some of this article has been lifted from a book – My Name Is Daphne Fairfax. It is my memoir and, depending on when you are reading this, it is out very soon or now or it is no longer in print or it is on eBay for 40p.

www.arthursmith.co.uk