Groucho
Club
-June
2000-
When
a small circle of literati were drilling for a Soho water hole in 1984,
one of them - the cats-loving Carmen Cahill reminded her publishing
mates
of the Groucho Marx paradox: "I don't care to belong to any club that
would
accept me as a member." The concept was The Groucho Club. Finding the
premises
and most of the money came from chairman Tony Mackintosh of the
chocolate
fortune who despite his gangling, bespectacled middlebrow appearance
had
managed a string of successful clubs in London. He located the rambling
Dean Street property and from such beginnings The Groucho Club was
born.
If
Groucho came back and visited his eponymous club, he would defnitely
according
to the time of day it was register contradictory reactions. Afternoons
is for respectables. On one table Lord Bragg might be sampling the
saffron
cous-cous, on the next one a portly Sir Terrence Conran might be
inviting
a much thinner, younger, poorer lady to run his next restaurant, while
across the elegant dining room with its Georgian skylight might be
Antonio
Byatt sampling the rosemary lamb. There might be the delicate fragrance
of a Monte Cristo but even if Groucho searched each of the club's
en-suite
bedrooms he would not find anyone using the cigar tube to Monica a
young
model. Apart from the cigar smoke, Groucho would be appalled at this
spectacle
of arty toffs feeding off each other's status. He would smell people
disappearing
up their own arses. This would definitely not be a club that could get
his imprimatur for its posthumous appropriation of his name.
But
if he came back in the evening - the later the better - he would get an
agreeable surprise. the fragrance would be the sweet, acrid odour of
good
skunk and there would be so much white powder in the air he would
remind
himself to bring ski goggles on his next visit. The late Geoffrey
Bernard
used to curse the druggies from his wheelchair in the corner because,
according
to him, they weren't real club drinkers but "drugged up suits".
Nowadays,
though, the druggies are into eco-combat not Saville Row. The curious
cavernous
nasal sound of the hubbub might puzzle him until someone explained that
snorting cocaine often holes the septum making the voice echo around
places
it normally can't go. However, the young sluts with their skimpy tops
eroticising
their pieced navels would definitely make Groucho light up. This would
lure him up the staircases to the snooker room on the fourth floor
where
he would no longer have to smell the decadence but could see it.
It
was here that in November 1996 an already coked-up Liam Gallagher of
Oasis
went on the rampage with snooker cue and caused £5,000 worth of
damage
to the room's snooker table, 26" TV and lighting. He was banned.
Thankfully
for life. The snooker table was donated by Janet Street Porter in
memory
of her late husband, Frank Czivanovitch. In the crazed But she might be
up their snorting a line of charlie with Stephen Fry and Keith Allen,
one
of her later lovers, while each of the lads take turns to blast balls
into
the pockets. But in the corner Damien Hurst and Ginger Evans might have
their flaccid willies out settling a bet on whose was the smallest.
Then
watching the snooker might be John Sessions fondling two rent boys who
had been mobiled up from Piccadilly Circus for a session in one of the
club's bedrooms. And under the table a little worse for the dacaquiris
might be Robbie Williams chatting up some ligging sluts on the delights
of thug sex. Groucho would defnitely approve of this Groucho Club.
The
Groucho is schizo. One of it ex-manager, Maria Alvarez, who is now a
journalist,
once said: "Friday night is the worst. The phrase on everyone's lips is
'who brought this lot in?' During the time I worked there I felt I was
in two different worlds. By day the club is an up-market emporium, full
of soberly distant media types, doing mineral water and networking. By
night it's a cabaret and I've known it to reduce staff to tears." Maria
is a close friend of Will Self and Julie Burchill, both white powder
enthusiasts,
and she has a reputation for possessing a nose like sniffer dog for
smelling
out people with a wrap in their pockets.
The
night-time Groucho is like this but how does the respectable afternoon
Groucho get away with its unrespectable nightmarish counterpart? How
come
the drug squad in nearby West End Central have not raided the place?
They
raid other West End clubs, but never the Groucho. Why hasn't there been
an expose of the place by one of the tabloids or even Private Eye?
Editor
Ian Hislop is a member but rarely goes there because he disapproves of
its white powder ambience, yet despite the Eye's many snide references
over the years to the place it has never gone for the club's jugular.
And,
despite all the tabloid smears to the bad behaviour, no newspaper has
ever
targeted the club for an undercover investigation. Why, given the
violence
that also occurs there, hasn't questions been asked about its licence?
The point, as well, about the Groucho is that its respectable
membership
knows about its unrespectable side and, although many of these are
media
hotshots, the club continues to prosper in its risqué but never
publicised decadent reality.
One
sophisticated coke-clubber explained to Punch how the Groucho's coke
scene
works: "Charlie is a funny drug. In small amounts it is OK but it's SO
good in small amounts most people wanna take more than is OK for 'em.
Now
most of the Grouch has to get up in the morning and deliver something
that
needs a head which can think. advertising, media, dot-commers. They
can't
afford to get too strung out, otherwise they soon lose the jobs that
pays
for the nosefeed. They're not stupid; they find ways of rationing
themselves.
"They
have the money to buy in bulk, which works out cheaper, but with
charlie
what you have you use. If it is there, you nose away until its gone.
Like
dieters who won't have food in the fridge, coke users don't stock up.
What
recreational snorters wanna do, and this is the scene, is go out and if
they are up for a line hit a dealer for a sixty-quid gram wrap while
they
are out. This means they have got to get the cash, find the dealer and
pick up. which slows down access, helps regulate the habit, checks the
tendency to over-indulge.
"But
any club who wants to keep the kind of membership that the Grouch has
has
to take choose: either let the dealers work the premises as members or
have them do a delivery service, which means letting them in and out of
the club. The Grouch goes for in-house dealers, which is the low-risk
strategy
as far as getting busted is concerned. They have two permanent dealers
and some of the staff peddle gear too."
The
Groucho's two dealers are Tim and Spike but they also have some staff
aid
and abet the discrete delivery of wraps, the checking of buyers out and
the funnelling of new punters into the deal. Tim and Spike are
reputedly
the club's most boring members but on the back-slapping count its most
popular ones. They both play a mean game of snooker, as well, because
the
den of iniquity on the fourth floor is predictably their favourite hang
out.
Management
must know what is going on. In fact, one of the club's most popular
managers,
Liam Carson, had a major coke problem in the early-90s and was
pensioned
off because of it. However, the intriguing question is whether or not
Chairman
Tony Mackintosh knows what is going on. He always vehemently denies
that
drugs are taken in any significant amount on the premises and threatens
to go legal at any suggestion that staff collude in the traffic. He is
rarely around after 7pm, so he could claim to be unaware of the
night-time
Groucho. Yet, Mackintosh's proclaimed ignorance sits uneasy with the
staggering
numbers of members who are publicly known to be users and spend time in
the club. Does he really think that the likes of Burchill or the
Gallaghers
or Robbie Williams have a policy of not using only when they are in the
Groucho! Mackintosh may drone for England about his choral singing and
his wife's "problems" but he is not stupid.
In
fact, he is remarkably astute in the way he keeps the Groucho image the
risqué side of sordid, which is evident in his admit-nothing
policy
in relation to any violence that occurs on the premises. As with any
late-night
drinking club where there are a lot of drug users, the Groucho has its
share of trouble-making members and guests. The club does not employ
any
bouncers but there is a nucleus of staff members who help out if
violent
incidents occur. These laddsih, in-the-know guys tend to overlap with
the
ones involved in the drug trafficking.
Novelist
Paul Pickering caused an incident in the club in 1997 and was
restrained
by two of them one of whom punched him in the left eye while holding a
open corkscrew. The metal screw sticking between the fingers of the
waiter's
clenched fist went through his eye and penetrated to within a few
centimetres
of his brain. The police were called but as is the pattern with violent
incidents in the Groucho they did not find anyone to prosecute.
Pickering
was certainly a seasoned trouble maker and just before the corkscrew
incident
had lashed out at barman, which precipitated his removal to the lobby.
There are different version of what occurred at the bar. Francis Wheen
in the Eye states that Pickering glassed a barman and inflicting a
wound
that needed "several stitches". Pickering says that he was merely drunk
and aggressive but even the club's manageress that evening, Gordano,
claimed
that the drunken novelist did no more than lunge at the barman with a
glass
and was punched back for his pains.
Wheen
goes beyond his embellishment of the barman requiring several stitches
by describing the eye-gorging incident so: ". the demented novelist was
held in a bear hug by a courageous barman. It was in the ensuring
struggle
that Raging Bull [the Eye's own tag for Pickering] was accidentally
speared
in the eye with a corkscrew." As anyone who picks up on the club
grapevine,
this was not an accident but done deliberately; although not with the
intent
of leaving Pickering with a glass eye. Wheen obviously thinks
differently
but then he likes the Groucho and dislikes Pickering.
Eventually,
three years later, Groucho's insurers ruled that it was insupportable
to
reject Pickering's claim for damages and he was paid a six figure sum
in
compensation. Two other violent incidents inside the club also bear the
same hallmark of the staff seeing nothing, the police finding nothing
and
the press reporting nothing against the club.
Last
October, Punch's own John McVicar was attacked in the club by two
barman,
one of whom headbutted him in front of other staff but none of them saw
anything untoward and the police failed to uncover any evidence to
warrant
prosecution. McVicar, even by his own account, was being obnoxious to
two
barmen in a club room that was hosting a private party. One of the
barman
became exasperated at his behaviour and frogmarched him out of the
room.
A
Mr Kozlikin who witnessed the incident says: "McVicar was bewildered at
being grabbed and pushed out of the room but he turned, grabbed the
barman
and started shaking him. Next another barman grabbed at McVicar's left
arm and pulled it away from his friend who then butted McVicar in the
face.
McVicar was outraged and again shook and shouted at the waiter who had
butted him, but he didn't hit him. Then a load more of the staff piled
in and tried to wrestle McVicar to the floor. Gradually everything
calmed
down and I saw blood dripping from McVicar's mouth. No one else was
injured
as far as I could see."
McVicar
did not particularly want to discuss it but admitted being rude.
However,
his problem is that his criminal past means that because of the "two
strikes
and you're out" law if he injures anyone in a fight he is liable on
conviction
to life imprisonment. This is compounded by the fact that any fight in
which he is involved tends to be investigated by the police with a view
to prosecuting him not finding out the truth.
He
claims: "I was assaulted, I could not fight back, a mangers just lied
to
my face saying that I had struck the first blow, I called the police in
case counter-accusations were made later, they spent an hour
questioning
me and ten minutes with the waiters. Later the police informed me that
they would prosecute me. Then some Groucho coke-head wrote up the piece
in the Indie to suggest I had caused the trouble! I have sold all
rights
to my story to Khafka."
A
similar pattern of events occurred in October 1996, when TV critic
Victor
Lewis-Smith and comedian Jack Dee clashed in the club. Lewis-Smith has
often attacked Dee in his Evening Standard column and was not surprised
when Dee's thuggy agent, Addison Cresswell, and Dee spotted him the
Groucho
bar and waved him over for a dressing down. As he walked over
Lewis-Smith
switched on the miniature tape recorder he had in his pocket. They
began
telling him that he was entitled to his opinions but "you get too
personal.
go too far". Lewis-Smith looking for tomorrow's story told them that
really
he never went far enough, which led to the two to invoking their "Sarf
London" connections and how Lewis-Smith might well find himself
interred
inside an unconsecrated square tube of steel after the car crusher has
done its job.
Lewis-Smith
could not contain himself any more, so he pulled out his tape recorder
and holding it aloft thanked them for the great copy they had given
him.
He recalls his moment of triumph: "Minimum effort, maximum effect.
Tyson
could not made their jaws drop lower." However, half an hour later as
he
as he was in the lobby Lewis-Smith again taunted Cresswell and Dee
raising
his tape recorder and saying: "It'll make great copy." They pounced on
him grabbed the tape recorder and broke it open to get at the tape.
Blows
were exchanged and the manageress, Sophie, intervened. Dee scuttled out
of the club clutching the tape recorder but before he could make his
getaway
with the prize two police officers came on the scene. Dee handed back
Lewis-Smith
the tape recorder minus the tape and was off. Meanwhile Lewis-Smith
went
back into the lobby and complained to the staff about being assaulted
and
robbed of his tape. One of the managers retorted: "You should not have
been tape recording another member inside the club."
The
next day the Sun reported the incident in an Exclusive, describing how
"Dee flattened TV critic in an amazing street brawl". There was no
mention
of the tape recorder or that the brawl really occurred in the club's
lobby.
Instead the Sun had it that before the fracas "the pair were spotted
angrily
shouting at each other in the bar of the trendy Groucho club". The
police
took no action and when Lewis-Smith complained to Mackintosh about the
incident, even though they have forged a friendship over their common
musical
background, he was greeted with an icy blank stare.
If
people and institutions can become corrupt, so can private drinking
clubs.
There is tired and sordid air about The Groucho Club, which a
resurrected
Groucho Marx would eventually pick up on despite his initial enthusiasm
for its night-time bad behaviour. Groucho loved articulate alcoholics
but
he would detest inarticulate coke-heads as much as he did braindead
drunks.
And Mackintosh? Finding out that he was a chorister, liked hunting and
fishing and had inherited his money from a toffee dynasty would, unless
he did something about it, put Groucho back in his grave. The vitriolic
ink would flow and all the members club's board would get a letter:
"You
can only run a club in my name if you write a letter of resignation
that
I must accept."