Our Depository of Written Erudition. As observed on the Membership page. Turn by one of the Members. These can. take many forms, but often manifest themselves as addresses on diverse esoteric.

It struck me that it might be nice to preserve these lectures in. I’ve added this page. Some of these first appear. Newsletter—just one of the many benefits of Membership. Conventional. wisdom has it that no one goes to the Internet for a long read, in which case. I’m wasting my time.

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But for the sake of flying in the face of convention, here. Before long we’ll have a body of learning to rival the British Library. The Colony Room. A Farewell to Egon Ronay. A History of the. Rolls- Royce Aero Engine. A History of Gentleman’s Clubs in.

London. Duelling For Dummies. Inspector Maigret: Smoke and. Mirrors. Fitzrovia Pubs.

Never let it be said that I'm an impressionable twenty-something-gaming-media prick. If I reviewed every bloody game people told me to I wouldn't even have the free.

As observed on the Membership page, our monthly meetings usually feature a Turn by one of the Members. These can take many forms, but often manifest themselves as.

Famous Typewriters. The T- Team. Breaking the Rules.

The Military Life of. Duke of Wellington. The Faeries of Kensington.

Woolworth’s: The Rise and Decline of a. Five- and- Dime Dynasty“We Didn’t Have a Uniform As. Such…”: Fashion in the British Army During the Second World War.

The French Invasion of. Pembrokeshire in 1. The Drones Club. Voyaging Through the Strange. Seas of Thought: Travel, Nostalgia and the Triumph of the Imagination. Important. Penny- Farthing News.

Over The Line (a short story)Primordial Hat Lore Discovered. In the Land of the Long White. Cloud, Part 1. You Mean They Can Make Wine in. America? The Sayings of Noël Coward. Count Carl Gustaf von. Rosen. Flight Lieutenant Gordon Brettel.

DFCThe Silver Bullet: A Monograph on. Martini. The Eight Kinds of.

Drunkennesse. The Assassination of. Georgi Markov. In Search of Sheri- Dan. Obituary Euphemisms. The Adelphi Theatre Murder. A Letter From the Colonies. The New Sheridan Guide to Hangovers. A Journey to Vienna’s Coffee Houses.

Some Interesting Discourses on Strong. Drink. Life Without Butter. Satanism: Separating Fact from Myth. A Weekend Invitation. Nina Hamnett, the Queen of Bohemia. Suits You, Sir. Back to top. The Colony Room. By Torquil Arbuthnot.

First appeared in Newsletter No. In 1. 94. 8 a Jewish lesbian called Muriel Belcher got. In those dismal days (and indeed up to the late 1. Muriel Belcher came from a well- to- do. Jewish family and had run a nightclub in Leicester Square, the Music Box. The Colony Room was so named after Muriel Belcher’s then.

Jamaican called Carmel, and decorated, in a rather desultory. Francis Bacon happened upon the. Muriel Belcher that. The club soon became a haunt of louche Soho, with members such as. Dylan Thomas, Lucien Freud, John Minton, the two Roberts, Colin Mac. Innes. Jeffrey Bernard, George Melly, Noel Coward, John Deakin and many others. For. many celebs, such as Dennis Hopper, David Bowie and Tennessee Williams, the.

Colony Room was the place they wanted to drink in when in London. Even Princess. Margaret and Lord Snowdon used to pop in. Muriel Belcher was not exactly. All members, whatever their sex. Mary”. Those she disliked were “cunts” but those she. Cunty”. (Indeed, the word “CUNTY” was. I used to frequent the club.) Apparently.

John Braine lurched in there in the 1. Muriel Belcher took.

Miss Hitler”. He never. Cunt” remained a common unit of. Colony Room. Recently I was chatting to a member. What’s he like?” I asked. Michael said. sonorously, “He’s a cunt.

He’d heard I’d described him as a cunt and came up to. Frith Street the other day and said, oh so plaintively, ‘Why did you. Michael?’ I said, ‘Because you are a cunt.’ He went away…”The MP and possible Communist. Tom Driberg was a member. A “confirmed bachelor” of the Joe Orton cottaging.

Driberg used to turn up at the club with a different young man in tow. Breezily describing the youngster as “one of my constituents” he. The membership was always small. It has been described as the most exclusive club in London.

One couldn’t. apply for membership: one had to be asked. The only criterion for membership.

There was also no attention given to. One Evening Standard journalist who used to meet Francis Bacon there said.

It is hard to see now, as the West End hums with salubrious. Colony. It certainly wasn’t to meet.

I drank there with Bacon, no one could have. Well, yes, that was precisely the point. The membership. was always eclectic: when I used to drink there one could be chatting to a.

There was no distinction. Muriel Belcher ran the place. She bequeathed the place to her barman, Ian Board. Ida”), who was if anything even ruder than her, and who sported a. When Ian Board. pegged out in 1. Michael Wojas. Ian.

Board’s ashes were kept in a bust of the old josser himself, on top of the. Wojas was educated at Haberdasher’s Aske’s school and then. Nottingham University. In 1. 98. 1 he came down to London and.

Colony as a stop- gap measure. Initially Ian Board. Wojas that he used to hide the day’s takings in the club. As he was pissed at the end of the night he could never. Watch Pappu Can`T Dance Saala Online Hollywoodtake more.

Wojas and he would spend the first hour. In the 1. 98. 0s and 1. Fortunately there was no shortage of. Soho and the club was soon home to the YBAs such as. Damian Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin and others.

Wojas also started music. Billy Bragg and Suggs would play, and also “celebrity. Kate Moss and Sam Taylor- Wood took a turn behind the.

Wojas was always to be found sitting on the barstool closest to the. He once said of his role in the club, “I am the proprietor, bar. I first went to the Colony Room. I think, 2. 00. 4. I’d been drinking with Happy Gatwick (chairman of the old.

Sheridan Club) and Fran Colomb in Trisha’s, a drinking dive on Greek Street. We. got chatting to a chanteuse called La Celine who dresses as a guardsman and. She was having a birthday party in. Colony and invited us along, presumably because we were good little.

Anyway, we rolled up at the club in Dean Street, pressed the. The Colony Room was. The artwork, I noticed.

Bacon, Freud, Michael Andrews, Hirst, Auerbach, Emin. Sebastian Horsley and various others. There was a drawing of Prince Charles. There was also a gold- plated Kalashnikov AK4.

There was some grubby bankette seating to the side and a couple of barstools. The room was crammed with 4.

I went to the bar and. Diet Coke would be met with an amiable invitation to go.

I proceeded to do what was. Colony Room, i. e. I remember (vaguely) chatting to the bloke who played Spider in Coronation.

Street and having a chat about pistol. A Glaswegian redhead called Karen (now a New. Sheridan member) came over to me and asked if I wrote for The Chap, and we then talked of the Modern Times parties. Not long afterwards two Colony Room stalwarts came up. London at. that time) “You’re the sort of person we want in the Col. D’you want to join?”. Obviously I’d never been so insulted in my life and told them to fuck off.

I. later found out this was the correct (instinctual) response. Had I shown eager. For various reasons I never ended. I finally started reaching for my wallet and the.

The Colony Room closed in 2. Minna and I used to pop in there regularly as the guests of. The company was always entertaining and always eclectic. As Sebastian Horsley said, “The Club reminded me of an alcoholic tardis. It was. minute on the outside but huge on the inside and you went there for love, which. At one time or another I chatted to Stephen Fry’s. French mirror designer who had.

Dick Bradsell; two heavily- bearded gents in three- piece tweed suits and. ZZ Top beards called “The Rubbishmen of Soho”; and numerous amiable drunks. The. first time I met Michael Wojas, the owner, we were both so drunk we shook hands.

Wojas, towards the end of his. I was in there one evening with. Minna and Karen and I got chatting to some dark- haired woman with a Lancashire. She commented on my skin problem and opined it was the result of eating.

Ever the gentleman, I told her that, come to that, she had. We then got on famously and she ended up sitting on my knee, to.

Minna’s obvious amusement. The Lancashire lass went off to powder her nose and. Minna and Karen asked, giggling furiously, if I knew who I’d been talking to.