大象传媒

Michele Wade is a Soho character - one of a fading milieu. She's worked at Maison Bertaux, the Greek Street patisserie founded in the 1870s by former Communards, since she was 15. There's something of Manet's barmaid at the Folies Berg猫re about her. Hanging behind her on the wall, a photograph of a younger Michele, dressed - not so much d茅collet茅 as bare-breasted - in a tableau in homage to Delacroix's Libert茅 Leading the People that was staged outside the shop one Quatorze Juillet. For props, Michele used pastries.

All sorts come to the shop: immigrants in search of work, locals who find it a home from home, tourists captivated by the shop's film-set quality, artists drawn by the exhibition space upstairs and young women, like Becks and Nancy, who work around the corner and have heard stories of the shop's risqu茅 past. There's something teasing, even transgressive, about the way Michele tempts customers with her varieties of shortcrust, filo, flaky, choux and puff.

With the voice of Sandra Jean Pierre
Produced by Hannah Dean and Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for 大象传媒 Radio 3.