I HAVEN’T stepped through the doors of 97-99 Wardour Street for at least a decade and a half, so I reserve judgment on what the Moo steakhouse has done to the old ship.

This address, of course, was once The Intrepid Fox, a raucous and unashamed mess of blasting rock history.

Moo has dedicated a cocktail lounge to its memory – although perhaps it’s only me that finds it hard to imagine, say Motorhead’s late hellraiser Lemmy, peacing out in there.

Time races on, things change, perhaps the only wonder should be that it has not been turned into a branch of Pret A Manger.

If those walls could talk, however, they would tell you much more than how rare people like their meat, and let us remember its last boss, Patrick Begent, who valiantly tried to save it from being erased from the Soho map.

His picture, above, taken back in the 2000s, captures the Fox perfectly in fingers.

“I saw a guy in a leather jacket and asked where he was going – and ended up here,” Mr Begent said when I was once asked him how he had ended up behind this bar of bars.

Lemmy had not been the only famous customer. Slash from Guns N Roses liked to drop in, while everybody also likes the legend that this was where Ronnie Wood agreed to join the Rolling Stones.

Back in 2006, landlords Mitchells & Butlers agreed a deal with a new operator, with a plan for flats upstairs and a transformation of the ground and lower floors.

This meant less beat, more beef – it was a Byron burger before Moo’s arrival.

It was Mr Begent who had largely plastered the place with rock band posters and models, having gone from being a customer in the 1980s to its manager in 1992.

And he was right when he said: “It is part of rock history around here.”

Before its days as a hedonistic hangout, the building had been a pub dating back to the mid 1700s.

Look away now guitar thrashers, it got its name from politics rather than metal kerrangs, honouring Whig statesman Charles James Fox, who was friends with the publican of the day.

When the eviction order came, there were attempts to reincarnate the rock atmosphere with new intrepid foxes first at a place near Centre Point and then the Archway Tavern in Islington, but it was never going to work once it had left its spiritual home.

Full credit to Mr Begent, though– he had done all he could to keep the party going.