011: 'Dempsey' - the Gentleman Behind the Bar

Back in the late seventies, my friends and I were regulars at a bar called the Ocean Breeze on Sandown seafront. Aptly named, it stood just across the road from the beach and the English Channel, where the salt air drifted in through the open doorway on warm summer evenings. In those days I worked a steady nine-to-five job with weekends free. Weekends meant drinking, socialising and, on very rare…