Every Londoner knows the white-faced restaurant almost next door to the Alhambra in Leicester Square. It is one of the few restaurants that still retains a bar, though it is nowadays called a buffet, and the three-and-six dinner which is served in the restaurant is still as it used to be, a most excellent meal, unstinted, well cooked, and all its material of excellent quality. The bar of the buffet has always been a favourite resort of actors, and it was there that I first heard Arthur Roberts tell the story of "The Old Iron Pot," a tale the success of which led to the invention of the game of "Spoof," that masterly feat of bamboozling the guileless which gave amusement in the eighties to all Bohemia and added a new word to the English language. The Old Iron Pot figured largely in a tale which Arthur Roberts never wearied of telling to "Long Jack" Jarvis, another actor. No one ever heard the beginning of the tale, for it was always well in progress when the victim of the harmless pleasantry came on the scene. Arthur was so intent on the story, the other conspirator so immensely interested, that the new-comer was at once interested also, dispensed with all greetings, and tried vainly to understand all the ramifications of the story into which new characters seemed constantly to come, and which all revolved round an old iron pot. Jack Jarvis apparently thoroughly understood the story, occasionally asked questions, and now and then corrected Arthur Roberts as to the relationship of the various characters, and the other listener very soon found himself pretending that he too comprehended all the twists and turns. Somehow or another, in those days the spirit of harmless practical joking seemed to be in the atmosphere of the Cavour bar. Perhaps it was, because in the days when Leicester Square was a waste ground with the damaged equestrian statue of George the Third in its midst some practical jokers sallied out one night from the little restaurant which occupied the site of the bar, to play the best practical joke of the last century. They painted the statue's horse with red spots, put a fool's cap on the statue's head, and a long birch broom in the hand which should have held a field-marshal's baton. Philippe was the one and only waiter in those days at the little restaurant which was kept by a Frenchman and his wife. Next door, and extending behind the restaurant, was a tin shanty, where judge and jury entertainment was held and _poses plastiques_ were exhibited. It was a disreputable place, for Brookes, who was its proprietor, and who had been associated with "Baron" Nicholson at the Coal Hole, had not the Baron's wit, though he had the same flow of doubtful oratory.