The Pillar, The Met (Short for the Metropole) and the Royal were three Dublin cinemas. Actually the Theatre Royal was more than a cinema and is fondly remembered by many Dublin people as the best night out in Town during the 1940s and 50s, where you got a live show including music and Question Time or Quiz followed by a movie all for one admission charge. It was pulled down sometime in the early sixties to make way for a horrible office block called Hawkins House.

I was too young to have ever been in the Pillar or the Royal, but I was in the Metropole a few times before it too was pulled down in the early 1970s. The pillar could also be a reference to Nelson's Pillar in Dublin which was blown up in 1966, but I'm told by those in the know that all three were references to cinemas.