• This article took a lot of resources to put together but must be free to gain a wide readership in order to celebrate South Asian culture. Please donate as much as you can to my Ko-Fi here to support it! But most of all please share widely. Clicking like on the article means more people see it!

• My last post was on gambling addiction, this one is more of an enjoyable ride.

• Details and quotes are drawn from a preview copy of Pubs for the People: The fight for the pint and the nation by Sivamohan Valluvan and Amit Singh, with thanks to Amit Singh. It is out in November

Today, an old decaying sign with the words ‘Glassy’ and ‘Junction’ casts a shadow over the newly laid pavement by Southall’s shiny Elizabeth Line station.

A reminder that a different Southall once existed long before security guards employed by the dystopian housing estate, the Green Quarter, would harass the public for sitting on the grass with their lunches. “What is the charge? A succulent samosa?”

The sign is the only remnant of what was once the UK’s greatest desi pub, but a pub, though, that has long been dead. 14 years of hurt. “Nothing beside remains round the decay of that colossal wreck.”

Replaced by an alcohol-free vegetarian restaurant with only the shape of the building hinting at where the bar was. The sacrilegious replacing the sacrilegious. No more Guinness, grills and Glassy jubilation gnawing the Gurdwara.

West London’s Glassy Junction has been mourned, lauded and mythologised by Uncles at bars many times since but actually what went on in the pub and who set it up isn’t that well known. The Uncles all tell one staccato story that ends with a hard stop.

But then I was gifted this opportunity to tell its tale definitively after I met Amit Singh, son of Glassy founder, Amarjit, one winter day in Balham, south London. Amarjit was born in Tanzania in 1955, came to the UK and wanted to build an empire of desi pubs. He may have failed to build a chain that enriched him but this was a spectacular endeavour.

Our story starts in 1950s Dar es Salaam, in a bar called Majestic.

Amarjit’s grandad had arrived in East Africa in the 1900s from Punjab, India, to work on the railways and according to Amarjit’s first bold (and, of course, unverifiable) claim, he was the first Indian to be given a liquor licence by the British.

His grandfather was not only a big boozer but apparently had an opium addiction and squandered his money—according to his family—on women and wine. The rowdy but beloved saloon-style bar could be said to be the world’s first-ever desi pub—if I could be permitted my own bold (and, of course, unverifiable) claim.

Majestic was the forerunner to Glassy Junction in that it was chaotic but loved by its locals, who were a mix of Tanzanians as well as displaced Punjabis, and Gujjus.

The family lived upstairs, and this is where Amarjit got his first taste of pub life with Friday nights—payday—being particularly lively.

“The jukebox would be blaring, lots of dancing and fights,” Amarjit says in Pubs for the People. “We used to watch people being flung out through the saloon doors from upstairs [and] we had to clear the broken furniture and glass on Saturday mornings.”

When Amarjit’s father was sacked from the local saw mill, he ended up taking over the licence when grandfather fell into money troubles. Sadly, he then also lost the licence due to a mixture of politics and jealousy from a nearby landlord—Tanzania was starting to become hostile to South Asians.

“My Dad grew up seeing the pub as somewhere familiar, homely even, despite the occasional ruckus,” Amit says. “His proud sense of his publican family pedigree, combined with a fondness for pints of Guinness and London Pride also meant that he had always nursed a hope to become a ‘third-generation’ publican.”

Amit believes that one of myths surrounding Southall is that Punjabis flocked to this West London enclave because of its proximity to Heathrow. It was, he says, actually because the R Woolf Rubber Factory had a general manager who commandeered a Sikh regiment in the Second World War and believed them to be compliant.

Conditions in the factory were unbearable.

Amarjit’s brother was already employed at R Woolf and the two shared a bed in the 1960s, with Amarjit working nights, while his brother was on days. During these months, there were some Southall pubs that served brown drinkers, such as White Swan, now a Gurdwara, and the Featherstone Arms, run by a Fijian-Indian. The Victory pub had a desi landlord in the 1970s, pictured below.

But it’s the Railway Tavern that Amarjit truly loved. And when he left his job at R Woolf to become a dentist he took on the ownership of the surgery next door.

Bill and Brenda were the custodians of the Railway Tavern and they appeared to be a classic mid-century pub partnership with Bill taking on the lease of the pub using his military pension.

But they weren’t prejudiced (like this soldier-like contemporary) and they forged a close bond with the Asian community and especially Amarjit, who began drinking there in 1979.

Most nights, Bill was Mr Hospitality, chatting warmly to his diverse clientele and was more than happy for the Indian Workers’ Association to hold Saturday meetings, where Amarjit’s father would visit from the late 1960s to discuss the conditions at R Woolf.

Life inside the Tavern might have been bliss, but Asian customers would get attacked when leaving and, in 1977, Yog Raj was set upon outside the pub by six men who jumped out of a car and kicked, punched and spat on him before driving off.

But as Amit says: “The very fact that Bill and Brenda welcomed an assortment of black, Asian and white customers, at a time when just down the road the Hambrough Tavern were inviting racist bands to play, is in itself striking.”

Back to Amarjit. He began to become such a Railway Taverner with his dad that he was emboldened to put a bell up on the back of the beer garden (by his next door dentist surgery’s car park) that he would ring whenever he wanted a Guinness—“By the end of the night I used to forget how many times I had pressed the bell.”

This love of the black stuff led to him establishing the Sikh Guinness Club, which organised annual trips to Ireland and in 1983 he even gained a photograph with the then-president Patrick Hillery.

Bill and Amarjit soon became the best of friends, and Amarjit gave the couple free dental care and invited them to family BBQs where they would bring fresh pours of Guinness. In 1986, the couple’s lease came up for renewal and they were told they had to move to a smaller pub as their beer sales were poor. This sounds like a sad moment for Amarjit and for Southall’s Asians but the Railway Tavern was about to turn Glassy.

“Although he was well-versed in drinking, he had absolutely no idea how to actually run a pub,” Amit says.

Luckily, Bill was still on hand. He taught him the ins and outs of the cellar and then convinced the brewery that an Asian man could take over the leasehold when Amarjit completed his innkeeping courses and joined the relevant institutions. On 21 August, 1986 he became the first non-white tenant of a Bass-Charrington pub (bold claim) and the first person licensed to pull pints and teeth (bold claim).

Like this story I wrote here on Wychwood, radical businesses were allowed to thrive by the 1989 Beer Orders which broke up the monopoly the big six breweries were operating. This allowed Amarjit to buy the freehold in 1991, after tolerating a previous contract that demanded high beer sales without permission to implement any of his changes to the pub.

Then came 1994. “My Dad came up with the grand idea to run a pub that reminded him of the year he spent in Punjab as a child before he came to Southall from Tanzania,” he says. Or to quote the man himself: “I’d organise the odd tabla night [South Asian drumming] and people really enjoyed it. Even white and black people seemed to like it.”

These tabla nights gave him them the confidence to lean heavily into turning it into a ‘Punjabi’ pub and the name was a play on Punjabi slang for drink as in “let’s go for a glassy” but the retention of the word ‘Junction’ was the masterstroke and is it showed that it was still at heart a British pub. For all.

Amarjit even retained the Railway’s workers, such as Donna Steward and two other white bar staff, who somehow agreed to wear Punjabi attire on shifts.

Not everyone was happy, though, and one radio phone-in caller complained that “an Indian had taken over and converted an old Victorian pub in Southall and to make matters worse he is also accepting rupees! Whatever will they let happen next?”

The pearl clutching had begun. And then the signs, in English and Gurmukhi, went up alongside huge images of Punjabi folk dancers sent on a boat from India.

Cobra, Kingfisher and Lal Toofan (Glassy) were poured alongside Boddingtons, Holstein and Heineken (Junction). Your pound (or rupee) could buy kebabs from the tandoor from the open-plan kitchen.

(When it came to accepting rupees it was actually a gimmick and the cash was often given away to charities in the Punjab, something which continues today at the near-ish Scotsman.)

Amarjit aimed the pub at everyone, absorbing the already diverse clientele of the previous incarnation of the Railway Tavern, but making multiculturalism even more visible. It wasn’t intended to be an anti-racism space and Amarjit never used the term desi pub but it worked and lived long in the memory for all punters.

The decline of Glassy Junction, Amit believes, started long before it shuttered in 2012, but when it became a very male space. It often had a family-friendly vibe helped by its beer garden until the early 2000s but when the likes of Saptarshi, who worked nearby, visited it was an Uncle-dominated bar.

Sadly, by then Amarjit had become an alcoholic and his plan to create a chain of Glassy Junctions around the country was nothing more than a pipe dream. He outsourced the management and although fights weren’t common, once you get a bad rep it was hard to shake it off. The parents no longer wanted to feed their kids mixed grills. (Sadly, due to his condition details like family members’ names and a few important dates couldn’t be confirmed)

But if you want to see a glimpse of it in its heyday then visit the BFI Archive on London’s Southbank. In it there’s a video from August 1995 when presenters of Big City, Carolyn Marshall and Paul Ross, visited what they called ‘London’s first Indian pub’. In this video you see how multicultural the space was with black, Irish, Asian and white customers enjoying the entertainment—although Carolyn points out that there weren’t many women present.

One customer says ‘it’s just like the Punjab. The friendliest place in the world’. While bar manager, Tarsem Kalyan, explains the concept: “We thought we’d bring the original India to London in a pub. The theme is the village from the Punjab. Many, many years ago when lots of Asians came to this country they would say to their mates: ‘let’s go for a glassy’.

And maybe that chain of Glassy Junctions did happen with many pubs up and down the country being inspired by its village Punjab feel—certainly the Prince of Wales in West Bromwich was. You can also see its name in other desi pubs from Glasgow to Wolverhampton. British tourists in India would always hear locals say: “You’re from London? Glassy Junction!”

Its biggest legacy was to briefly show the world what desis really like best: including everyone in their joy.

• Pubs for the people: The fight for the pint and the nation by

  Sivamohan Valluvan and Amit Singh is out in November 2026

• This article took a lot of resources to put together but must be free for it to gain a wide readership. Please donate as much as you can to my Ko-Fi here to support it! But most of all please share widely

Harj Gahley’s lucky streak began one clear night 17 years ago. He was with friends who took him to a casino offering free drinks; intrigued, he sat down while they explained the rules. He then played the hand he was dealt.

Pints from the pub became chips at the Blackjack table. £20 became £60. He returned. Once a fortnight. Weekly. Daily. No need to bring friends.

Three-card poker. Roulette. The bookies. The horses. The dogs. The football. Blackjack started to piss him off. 19 beaten by 20. 20 beaten by 21. The house was always one better.

His friend tried to explain accumulators but it was too complicated—you’re giving me a headache. But a horse, you can see it run and its odds. £100. £200. On the nose.

Need a system. Racing Post. Speed ratings. Trainers. Stocks. Soft. Hard. Calculated bets.

Then the Vegas skyline gently melted into view. Rushing to the toilets at work to check his bet on his phone. £200. £400 to replace the £200. £600 to replace the £400.

Vegas is now in Harj’s pocket. Psychological war dressed up as entertainment—plenty of hairspray and a big cigar. When the fun stops, he’ll stop—but no one likes losing. Harj has a 100k-a-year job but he wants what he’s been promised, the lifestyle he’s now been opened up to.

Bills. Mortgages. He doesn’t give a shit: his sole focus is now recoup losses and hit the jackpot. Why work like a dog when a few bets could pay off? Why save for years only to cash in your fears?

Harj’s lucky streak ended one clear night six years ago. 16 June, 2020. His wife was pregnant with their second child and holidays kept being cancelled with final demand letters appearing. She gained access to his Monzo account; Harj was £250,000 in debt.

“There’s only so much drugs or alcohol you can take before it gets too much,” Harj says. “Gambling keeps you conscious with cliff-hangers all the time and rather than spending £100 [on booze] you can spend £100 in seconds.”

“Gambling was causing me pain and drink became the thing to numb the pain,” Harj tells me.

Harj isn’t a one-off. There’s thousands like him who have been exploited by betting companies and have lost everything. Some have committed suicide because of their addictions, while many have hurt their loved ones by their actions; Harj tried to kill himself in August, 2020 by driving his car into a road’s central reserve.

I say thousands of addicts but it’s probably much more than we realise because—guess what—betting companies won’t provide data that could lead to us being shocked into calling for radical reform. They won’t even release information on how much revenue they gain from the highest volume gamblers.

Harj now works as a speaker, helping people (especially those of South Asian origin) with addiction, and is regularly contacted by high-stakes gamblers. One man recently told him he lost £70,000 in a few hours, which shows there’s little due diligence taking place in this growth—and self-regulated—tax-avoiding industry.

Worst still, the dangers of drinking while gambling never seem to be discussed which is something quite alarming if you consider how alcohol affects your rationale. I don’t think, therefore, it’s an exaggeration to say that the connection with betting machines and pubs is bleak.

“The reasons why pubs have them is because it keeps the punters in and they drink more,” Harj says.

He then goes on to explain that he’s never heard of instances where publicans or managers have stopped problematic gamblers—you may get an “are you ok to gamble this amount” very occasionally, he tells me. In fact, in establishments where alcohol and betting take place it’s often the opposite.

“I’ve been told by people in the industry that they’ve been told to not actively intervene with people who have a problem,” Harj tells me.

When it comes to the logistics of the gambling industry, facts are purposely hard to obtain, but Harj tells me that unless a betting terminal is in a large chain pub then most don’t even take a small cut of the profits. It simply is a way of keeping gamblers in a boozer. And a lot of these players who you’ll see in the pub all day are addicts—a severe disorder being indulged by those who who normally value community.

But would you drink in a pub that was serving well-known alcoholics? No. But gamblers? I have regularly. The issue, perhaps, is that a lot of people don’t culturally see gambling addiction as a systemic problem or one that’s as harmful as other compulsions. Or perhaps it’s become interwoven into some people’s daily lives that we just accept it.

Which is obtuse considering that medical practitioners, such as the NHS, consider it to be like a substance addiction because it constantly stimulates the brain’s reward system and the fallout heaps pain on everyone concerned.

“If a publican has a child or family member that commits suicide because of gambling do you think they would have a betting machine in their pub?” Harj says.

But we’re not talking about fruit machines that pay out jackpots of £20 (AKA arcade machines) but fixed-odd betting terminals, which are endemic in discount chains (Spoons etc) and—worryingly for South Asians—places I mention in my book, Desi Pubs.

Anyone can lose big on fixed-odd betting terminals—like this man in Gateshead, who squandered £100K—and they’re ubiquitous in the most deprived areas, according to the BBC, with each terminal taking an average of over £48K a year.

And if you walk into the pubs where desis drink and you’d see the uncles and the younger crowd playing these machines. In fact, they’re in a lot of the photos in my book, so it may surprise you that white people are more likely to be gamblers.

“We don’t gamble as much as white ethnicities but the [South Asian] ones that do are five times more likely to suffer severe gambling-related harms,” Harj says.

In other words South Asians might not gamble as much but we do have huge problems when it comes to gambling addiction.

Harj’s family—like mine—were massive football fans and betting firms target us; the first-ever sponsor of the Kabaddi World Cup was Paddy Power and potential role models, such as Punjabi singer Karan Aujla (13.8m+ Instagram followers), are sponsored by the likes of Stake.

“They are cynically and systematically targeting people of South Asian origin because they understand how our minds work,” Harj says. “They don’t give a shit about you, your family or your well-being—they’re after your money at all costs.”

This makes betting inescapable—whatever your ethnicity is—especially if you’re planning to go to the pub to watch football.

Not only are a majority of domestic teams sponsored by gambling firms but the in-play bets (say, when you are told the odds of a bet on the next goalscorer) are ubiquitous. It’s all a way of getting the viewer’s eyes from the TV screen to their devices. And it works.

Just ask the family of Inder Daggar. The former captain for the Slough men’s hockey team was jailed for six years after swindling about £3m from loved ones, friends and investors to fund his addiction.

“South Asians don’t think it’s a problem but there’s a massive amount of secrecy, more so than in alcohol or drugs,” Harj says. “It’s sharam [a widely used Asian term for shame] because they fear being ostracised or being shunned. It happens a lot more than you think.”

Harj’s wife discovering his gambling was actually the beginning of his winning streak. He was living with his in-laws and when his wife’s father found out he said: “he has a problem, let’s help him”.

They urged him to get professional help, so he reached out to his local Gurdwara (temple) and was infuriated by how they judged him instead of showing some empathy—“they made me feel like a piece of shit”. He gained a therapist from the NHS, who gave him Zoom sessions as it was during the Pandemic, but this didn’t work as they didn’t understand or realise the weight of his cultural baggage.

Then he tried to kill himself, which he admits was so botched that he escaped injury.

But his next therapist changed his fate. “She made me realise that people with addicts have a superpower,” Harj says. She said that he should harness the energy he used to gambling to get himself out of debt and Harj offered his services as a commission-only salesperson at his friend’s failing security firm.

£30K in revenue became £1.25m (it’s now £7m-£8m a year in revenue). It then gave him the platform to help others.

Harj’s story is almost the reverse of mine—I did not have progressive, understanding parents.

My father had substance abuse issues, especially with alcohol, and he gambled and exposed it to me at a young age. He joined a casino in Luton, blagging it to my mum by saying it was so he could use the car park when we went to the football.

This meant matchdays as a 10-year-old started at midday watching him gamble and drink (and then drive) in one of the least glamourous places imaginable.

In late 1980s Bedfordshire, life often was slow-paced but those casino hours were stupefyingly boring to the point where they actually provided a decent service. The best advert for not gambling. Actually his anger and problematic drinking when he lost is always a traumatic reminder of how much gambling was a wrecking ball in our family life.

All this is wrapped up in shame—sharam is a shroud that enwraps my childhood memories.

I was shown how pathetic the gambling world is and that hasn’t changed in 2026. I do gamble very occasionally but because I know I have issues with adrenaline—any serious reporter will tell you the job is all about the thrill of the chase—I only place bets that take a long time to be realised (a team to win the league; the next Prime Minister).

I also believed that if I won I was beating these gambling companies that I truly despise. But once I get that adrenaline rush I want it more and more and the house— corrupt as it is—always wins.

So after hearing about Harj, I deleted all the betting apps and have even thought about giving watching the World Cup a miss—go to a nice freehouse without TVs instead, while everyone else watches the latest sham in the sun.

And I hope Harj’s story makes anyone affected by gambling reach out for help. The shame you may feel is nothing compared to the sharam we all should feel for creating a society where the highest-grossing salary is handed to a founder of a betting firm.

Until we force legislators to do the right thing, we can only hope that publicans see these machines for what they really are. The stuff of nightmares.

But just imagine a world where one of these virtual casinos is replaced by a jukebox: it’s easy if you try.

Harj’s charity Soch Care provides free, confidential and non-judgmental support to South Asians that are struggling with gambling, drugs, substance abuse and mental health, offering support in Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Arabic and English.

The national gambling helpline is on 0808 802 0133

Apologies to Louise Wener (Sleeper: Vegas), Shirley Jackson (The Lottery) and John Lennon (Imagine) for providing some of the phrases and imagery I’ve pinched.