Mike Donovan is famed for dishing up some of the best ham, egg and chips in London. The man who cooked up the idea for Bermondsey Community Kitchen continues to reinvent himself.
Mike is one of eight children, born to hard-working Tom and Flo Donovan in Wilson Grove. His parents won the house in a council lottery for large families and Mike spent his childhood there, plus the first two years of married life until he and wife Susan were given their own place. Since then they have always lived locally, and their three daughters, Alexis, Ashleigh and Shannon.
Michael had a conventional Catholic upbringing: St Joseph’s School, Paradise Street, with Latin Mass under the beady eye of Father McKenna, and the Procession around Rotherhithe once a year, followed by St Michael’s Secondary School.
“All me brothers went there except Tommy, who won a scholarship and went across the river to school, and Kevin who said he wasn’t Catholic and went to a Protestant school… There was murders over it!”
St Peter’s Church, adjoining the school, looms large in Mike’s life: he and his siblings were christened there, he attended mass there every Sunday, his daughters were all christened and confirmed there, and his father played the piano for church functions. “The Old Man was a great piano player,” reminisces Michael. “He used to play in the old picture houses – The Trocette in Tower Bridge Road – And he couldn’t read a word of music!” claimed the proud son, who also told of his dad playing in local pubs: “It was a bit of bunce for him, weren’t it?”
A big part of life was the annual trip to pick hops. The Donovans always went to the Guinness hop farm. “One of my earliest memories,” he starts, “is getting in a lorry to go hopping – It was such an adventure, a real family affair with aunts and uncles… I’ve got hundreds of hopping stories, and some I shouldn’t tell…”
Besides the adventures to be had hopping, Mike remembers an early holiday on the Isle of Wight, “a caravan in Whitecliff Bay Holiday Park,” he recalls. “Neither mum or dad drove so we got there by train, then ferry, and then we walked. I always remember that walk – it was like a thousand miles!”
Having a garden, the Donovans kept chickens and rabbits, and many times their livestock provided Christmas dinner to less fortunate family members. Michael heard tales of how his parents helped those in need, even one of his mum buying extra drink for a cousin’s wedding when the young couple found themselves short.
Mike’s childhood was spent playing Tin Tan Tommy and getting up to no good on old bombsites that scarred the area in the years after the war “Also,” he remembers, “as I was within walking distance of several youth clubs, I went to the Rydal Boys’ Club in the Bermondsey Settlement, and they used to take us camping every year, usually two weeks in Lyme Regis. For some that was the only holiday they got… The workers there also got a couple of my mates on apprenticeships at Enid Garage.”
With eight children life was never going to be easy. “I always remember my mum having at least three jobs,” says Michael. “She worked at Guy’s, cleaning from four in the morning, come home and get everyone ready for school, then worked in the kitchens of St Michael’s School. About 3 o’clock she’d come home, get the dinner ready and then go back out cleaning again, in offices.” He paused to let that sink in.
“I queued up all night for our first house Downtown. I slept on the pavement in Shipwright Road.”
Living just yards away from the Thames the river was a big employer in the Donovan household: “Dad was a docker, Terry was a lighterman, brother-in-laws were crane drivers, Uncle Charlie was a Union Rep… My brother Tommy was also in the docks but fell down the hull of a ship, got seriously injured and was invalided out; a charity paid for him to do The Knowledge, so he became a black cab driver. By the time it came to my turn to go in the docks they were closing down and I didn’t fancy going all the way to Tilbury!”
At 14, Mike’s first job was in a mail-shot firm near Victoria, where a big sister was supervisor and got him a shift there: “I used to run home from school, change, then run to Rotherhithe Station, get two trains to St James’s and then run to the office. I was never late,” he says proudly. At 15 he was offered a job as a motor mechanic in a Volvo dealership in Ealing, which he accepted. But when he handed in his notice his boss counter-offered with a job in the mail-shot printshop and three times more money than Volvo was willing to pay. “I nearly fainted!” he says, looking as shocked as he must have 50 years ago. That happy employee was sent to printing college and had five good years at the firm, even meeting his wife there.
“I queued up all night for our first house Downtown,” he declares. “I slept on the pavement in Shipwright Road, and in the morning I went in the office and bought the plot where they built the house for us.”
After those early years in the print, Mike, changed career to cleaning, then got into security and on to waste disposal until the congestion zone arrived, which meant he would have to find thousands of pounds “just to collect a bin at the Elephant for six quid!” It was time to move on.
There was then a few years making a go of The Old Justice pub, by the Bermondsey riverside, which he says was just a hobby, a sideline to other work. “We did a great Sunday lunch, which would be fully booked three weeks in advance,” he begins “but you wouldn’t see a soul from Monday to Friday… As good as the Sundays were at paying all the bills, it wasn’t enough.”
After that came Dun’s Deli, which many people say served the best ham, egg and chips in London. Michael calls it a “semi-retirement plan because I liked cooking, but it was the hardest I ever f**king worked!” Open six days a week from 7 o’clock in the morning, then Sundays spent at the cash & carry; the long hours meant a lack of quality family time.
But while Mike was cooking in the deli he would see the bored young people in the square outside and thought of how to utilise the empty space above the deli. Along with a big developer, he got local charities to support his idea, and soon that space was fitted out with 8 work stations to create the Bermondsey Community Kitchen where the young could be trained up to Level 2 City & Guilds in cooking. With deserved pride he lists restaurants where former BCK students are working: “Tate Modern, Marco Pierre White’s, Tower of London, Pont de la Tour, and one in the new Dixon Hotel.” Michael’s reward is when the families of these young chefs thank him for turning their children’s lives around. “It’s not just me,” he stresses, “it’s the trainers, the funders, and the young people themselves who make it happen.”
For the Donovans there doesn’t seem to be a day for rest. “I like to fish but I ain’t been for ages now; we’re always on the go, always have something to do with the charities we work with or some catering to organise…”
Michael and Susan Donovan don’t look like they are going to slow down any time soon. I asked what kept them motivated. “There’s a lot going on now and our 22 year old Shannon’s enabled us to embrace the changes in Bermondsey and move with the times.”
This article is brought to you by our sister publication The Bermondsey Biscuit and Rotherhithe Docker
