The Colony Room Club, the infamous Soho drinking den revived in 2023, has closed its doors once again. Artist Darren Coffield, who led the revival, said the owners shut it down this year, giving eight days' notice before changing the locks.
"It's gone. They shut it down. They gave us eight days notice," Darren said. "And then they changed the locks on the doors so we couldn't go in and get the artworks out. But we'll rebuild again."
A living history of Soho's highlife and lowlife
Opened in 1948, the Colony Room Club survived decades of debauchery and scandal before closing in 2008, then reopening in 2023. Darren, author of Tales from the Colony Room: Soho's Lost Bohemia, first climbed the stairs in 1988 as an art student. "What fascinated me was it was living history," he said.
The tiny, cramped, smoky room at the top of a dingy staircase attracted artists, actors, royalty and gangsters. "You'd sit in there and you'd start chatting to a journalist who worked on the Profumo affair with Christine Keeler. Or, another afternoon, Francis Bacon might walk in, or John Hurt," Darren recalled.
Muriel Belcher's de facto mothering
The club's spirit flowed from owner Muriel Belcher, once described as 'the rudest person in England.' Comedian Barry Humphries said: "It provided an atmosphere of delectable depravity for the select company of alcoholics and would-be artists who managed to win the reluctant approval of Muriel Belcher, the gorgon-like proprietrix."
Jazz singer George Melly was fonder: "Muriel was a benevolent witch, who managed to draw in all London's talent up those filthy stairs." Darren added: "A lot of people who drank in Soho went there because they were orphans, or they had been orphaned by their families, who turned their backs on them, because they were gay or left wing or communist. And so she became this sort of de facto mother and looked after them."
Tales of Francis Bacon, burglars and a fake gun
Inside the famous green walls, the normal rules did not apply. David Edwards remembered the afternoon Francis Bacon stormed in, fuming from a shopping trip at Harrods. "He'd bought a lot of clothes, but when he got home he'd decided he didn't like any of them. I bought so many suits and shirts and threw the lot in the dustbin. You'd never seen the club empty so quickly. The next day everyone was up the club parading around in their new suits and shirts from Francis' dustbin," David said.
Another member, known as Brian the Burglar, would take orders from regulars at Christmas. He claimed to have burgled Margaret Thatcher's home in Chelsea, but wasn't fussy. Drinking with a stranger one afternoon, he said he needed the toilet. Instead, he left, burgled the man's flat, then returned and carried on drinking with him.
Muriel kept her nerve the day a man burst in claiming to be armed. "A man came barging in the door one day, shouting, 'hands up I've got a gun!' Someone called the police while I kept him talking. Within five minutes the whole of Dean Street was blocked off," Muriel said. "But when they searched the man, the only offensive weapon they could find on him was a pencil. I didn't press charges and later that night he came back and asked me if I would give him a job playing the piano for a pound a week."
Stars behind the bar and a 2023 revival
Behind the bar, the help was as starry as the drinkers. Tracey Emin, Kate Moss and a young Daniel Craig all did unpaid stints pulling pints, long before he became James Bond. Peter O'Toole did a shift the night before he took on the play Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. "At that stage he wasn't drinking any more," Darren said. "He was just pouring drinks for everyone."
By 2008 the money had run out, and the doors shut. But in 2023, Darren rebuilt it in a basement just off Regent Street, tracking down the original fittings a former owner had sold to an American dealer. The green walls returned, along with the ban on phones and the 2008 drink prices. "People came from all over the world to come and see it," Darren said. "Lisa Stansfield came back and drank there. Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream came down. Even half of Blondie turned up one night." This year, the owners shut it down and changed the locks.
