As with anything iconic, The Groucho Club’s death has been foretold nearly as long as it’s been open. But with a revolving door of management, the past two years have seen younger members leaving in droves. Is the Dean Street grand dame finally on her last legs?
Speaking to more than 30 former and current members, and a host of former staff, a buffet trolley of complaints emerge. The astronomical membership fees, ever increasing with each year. The stringent new security measures. The inescapable presence of septuagenarian partyboy Philip Sallon, who can be found leading singalongs by the piano wearing nothing but a nappy. Ludicrous costs abound: a bottle of Champagne is £90 and the club claret is £60. Some former and current members feel the club is being run into the ground by its newish owners, Artfarm, the hospitality wing of the Hauser & Wirth (h&w) empire. Profits are down – the Groucho made a £1 million loss in 2024, according to publicly available accounts – and everyone, it seems, is elsewhere. As Piers Russell-Cobb, a long-standing member, says: ‘There are times when I’ve been in lately when it’s been empty.’
But are the issues more profound than footfall? Has the Groucho committed the ultimate sin, and become uncool? The writer Cosmo Landesman is typically forthright about why he quit his decades-long membership of The Groucho Club. ‘I was in there one night and there was no one I wanted to have sex with or engage in conversation.’
Like any institution – and the Groucho is certainly an institution – a vivid sense of loyalty is apparent among former members and ex-staff. But the Groucho they remember no longer exists.
How did the Groucho fall on hard times? It’s a story of highs and lows that involves the Albanian mafia, a trio of privately educated confectionery heirs, the influence of Stephen Fry, cocaine-addled peers, a cavalcade of legendary staff known by their first name (Aga, Bernie, Mary-Lou, Liam), priceless artworks, and allegations of behaviour that more than a few people hope to see swept under the carpet.
Those green vinyl strips above the door of the Groucho are almost as resonant a visual cliché of Cool Britannia as Geri Halliwell’s Union Jack minidress. But the club’s beginnings predate Damien Hirst, Alex James, et al. Founded in 1985, it was, for its first decade, a club dominated by the publishing and literary set. The American superagent Ed Victor, the imperious Carmen Callil and Bloomsbury honcho Liz Calder, who, as long-time member Fay Maschler tells us, came up with the name.
At the time, London’s private members’ clubs were either squalid Soho drinking clubs, like the Colony Room, where alcoholic writers and artists screamed abuse at each other, or the pompous palaces of St James’s, where veterans of the Battle of the Marne would sip pink gin and pick at roast partridge – clubs where women have been banned since Queen Anne was on the throne.
The publishing posse wanted a club where they, along with people from the worlds of TV, film and journalism, could talk late. Somewhere where women would, unlike at the gravy-splattered club table at The Garrick’s Coffee Room, never be turned away.
