Number 45 Park Lane is a luxurious and refined hotel with an interesting and laudable focus on art. It has a collection of Damien Hirsts and other contemporary artists, it commissions original work and organises art trips for its more cultured guests.
All of which is perfectly lovely. But the management may have bitten off more than they can chew with its latest exciting idea — to temporarily recreate the late lamented Colony Room Club within the hotel, with a functioning bar and art works by some of the habitues. Though I don’t believe it includes the most famous of them, Francis Bacon, who hardly went anywhere else.
It’s a brave idea. But it founders on the reality that the Colony Room Club as was isn’t just very different from the elegant hotel, it was the opposite of it. And what you need to recreate the most famous of Soho’s louche triangle — the other two points being the Coach and Horses and the French House — is to resurrect an entire louche social set.
Alas, that generation is no more, including the fag-throated Queen of the Colony Room Club, Muriel Belcher. It’s quite hard to think how today’s sensitive young people might react if they were to be greeted with Muriel’s usual salute: “Hello c***y!” Because Soho in its fun days was fabulously rude. And drunk. And given to inappropriate sexual behaviour. And cigarettes. The world has changed and the social mores acceptable in those days aren’t acceptable any more — in lots of ways that’s a very good thing. Those changes matter for this revival.
I’m afraid a sanitised Colony Room Club just wouldn’t be much fun, just as Soho itself is now less fun than before.
Take this account by former Doctor Who actor Tom Baker of his typical foray into Muriel’s domain: “At teatime I arrived at the Colony Room Club and Francis Bacon bought me a large gin and tonic. The anxieties went away and the conviction grew that I had something to say on any subject. Kenny Clayton [jazz pianist] played the piano and a bunch of inebriates harmonised to Home on the Range.”
That atmosphere, that world, is gone from Soho and no amount of artistically battered upholstery and authentic gin is going to bring it back. We’re more polite and cleaner living now. But God, we’re much less amusing too.
