The Groucho, legendary hangout of London's trendy media types, is under threat. Current member Tom Hodgkinson celebrates a place where men and women can behave very, very badly

Tom Hodgkinson
Friday April 21, 2000
The Guardian

The news that the Groucho Club is the subject of a hostile takeover bid by a cocky, fresh-faced young Sloane called Benjamin Fry has had Soho's finest drunks choking on their sea breezes.

"Benji" Fry is, it is probably fair to say, not quite their sort. He once tried to make it in films in LA; he has had a hand in running the Fulham Hooray Henrys' club, Kabaret; he wears horrible ties; he has a Prince Andrew haircut; and he is not even a member of the Groucho, the place Blur's Alex James calls "the best club in the world".

Yesterday it was reported that he wants to establish the Groucho as a worldwide brand, opening one up in Los Angeles and merging it with his two boring London hotels.

The Groucho's chairman, Tony Mackintosh, has rejected the offer of £9m to buy him out, and now Benji is writing to the club's shareholders, appealing to their greed by offering them £2.30 per share. With the possible exception of poor Jeffrey Archer, I personally find it hard to imagine any of the others - people such as Salman Rushdie, Liz Calder of Bloomsbury and Steve Martin - agreeing to sell.

I'm a relatively recent member - I started hanging out there in 1994 and joined two years later - so I can't claim any great Groucho's pedigree, but I do share in the anger of many members at the potential destruction by a bottom-line-obsessed corporation of this magical place.

Actor Keith Allen, who is a fixture there and loves it, is appalled by the idea of Benji Fry taking over. "For me it would be like losing my family home, no matter how many redecorators they brought in. I first joined 15 years ago, because they felt so guilty that I went to prison for smashing up the Zanzibar [the Groucho's forerunner]. Like anything worthwhile it took me time to get into it, but when I did, I was of the opinion that there was no reason why I shouldn't fill it with like-minded people. And I did."

Another long-time member livid with rage at the possibility of losing the Groucho Club as it is is Dick Bradsell. Dick is well-known as London's foremost "cocktail mixologist". He's a Groucho's member, and used to run the bar at the Zanzibar. "Benji Fry is the kind of person who would make an excellent dinner for Groucho members," he says. "I hate him already."

Why such passion? And what is the secret of the Groucho Club's phenomenal success?

The club opened its doors in 1984. The idea behind the enterprise was to start a congenial members' hangout for non-clubby people. The name, famously, comes from Groucho Marx's quip: "I don't care to belong to any club that would accept me as a member."

Its subsequent public image as an exclusive media watering hole belies the reality that it really is full of brilliant wastrels who would be banned from anywhere else.

Knowing little of the Groucho's early days, I called the journalist Roy Greenslade, who was in there at the start. "When Fleet Street suddenly split up in the 80s, the Groucho provided a congenial refuge where Fleet Street's more literate, articulate drunks could misbehave," is how he characterises its appeal in the early days. "Of course, it also had female staff, a great boon to men who had been used to drinking in pubs with barmen," he adds. "Richard Ingrams carried off the greatest prize when he pulled Big Debbie."

In the late 80s and early 90s, it was colonised by Julie Burchill and her young gang of bright Modern Review contributors. She would sit in the corner and intimidate people. I personally always found them all rather scary, but Groucho's welcomed them and the minor media revolution they created there.

For Dick Bradsell, who worked there during this era, it was wonderful. "It's not about money," he enthuses. "It's a place to go where people feel comfortable. Stars can go and there and be treated as normal human beings. It's a family place, and the staff like working there."

Julie Burchill's reign was followed by the Damien years, and it was during Damien Hirst's tenure that I started hanging out there. Damien has now been banned for getting his dick out once too often. That is a great shame as not only has he contributed enormously to the club's atmosphere, he would also spend a sum roughly equivalent to my annual earnings there every year.

In contrast to Julie Burchill's steely, nervy elitism, Damien would come over to your table, grin, do cigarette tricks and make you feel glad to be alive. The fantastic staff would observe the depraved antics with a pitying resignation, like your older sister.

On a good night, you might also find Jeffrey Bernard there, shouting at American bankers whom he overheard talking business. "If you want to talk about fucking business," he'd snort, "there are some private fucking rooms upstairs."

"And it's got a snooker table," says Alex James, who has slept under it more than once, and knows how to climb across the Soho roofs from the Colony Room down the road into the snooker room's window. "And," says Roy Greenslade, "where else can you go up for a game of snooker and find yourself playing Stephen Fry? The standard of snooker may not have been high but the wit was."

It was after a snooker game and one too many tequilas one night that I joined the élite club of 9,000 people who have been snogged by Keith Allen.

The Groucho Club is the kind of place where Things Happen. I have a dim memory of John Cooper Clarke and myself being thrown out after seven too many vodka martinis - by Damien Hirst. On another occasion, I was with the celebrated ex rock star Zodiac Mindwarp when he insulted the American feminist Naomi Wolf by commenting on the size of her rear.

On other evenings, you could find yourself talking about smells with Vic Reeves, or having your bag scrawled with uncool 70s band names by the Fast Show's John Thompson.

"And there's absinthe, of course," says Alex James, referring to an enterprise started by myself and some friends to bring absinthe back into the country. That's another reason why I love Groucho's: it was the first London club to stock absinthe, and the sight of Bez and other ex-members of the Happy Mondays swaying about holding green glasses while reciting Spinal Tap word for word is a memory I shall treasure.

Newspaper reports suggest that members of the fledgling digital economy are choosing other clubs such as Soho House and Home House. To the Groucho's members, Soho House was somewhere you went because Groucho's had closed, in the same way that you went to ever more desperate and dank Soho dives as the evening and morning wore on. In any case, who wants to hang out with teetotal dot.com twentysomethings with a slavish adherence to the work ethic?

For me, the great thing about the Groucho Club is the sense of liberation you feel in there. It's actually a meritocratic place. It's packed with people who have suddenly found that someone is paying them for doing something they enjoy, that there is a late bar and no parents in sight. You feel like a teenager: cool!

The Groucho Club attracts the disturbed, the deranged, the drunk and the brilliant. It would be a disaster if it was taken over by mediocre money men. However, we'll leave the last, uplifting words, to Dick Bradsell. "Benji hasn't got a hope in hell."

• Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler and joined the Groucho Club in 1996.