Why I called time on my Lillie’s days long ago

GOSH, I clearly don’t get out enough. When I heard about Lillie’s Bordello being due to shut its doors for good next month, I was taken aback. But my surprise was largely down to the fact that I had pretty much forgotten that it still even existed.

Funny how times change. There was a period in my life when I would have had a very strong case for claiming squatter’s rights on the Dublin nightspot.

Quite apart from being in attendance for its opening night back in the early Nineties, I was there several times a week over the following couple of years. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that the club’s membership cards – which were actually large, oval-shaped key fobs – achieved the same fabled status as Willy Wonka’s golden tickets had in a previous era.

Even at this remove, I can still picture many of the staff members in my mind’s eye. An attractive blonde called Amanda ran the front desk and, to the best of my recollection, the club’s so-called Library had a willowy waitress by the name of Barbara.

There was even a barman who ended up marrying one of the Kennedy clan (and, no, I’m not talking about RTÉ radio soap The Kennedys of Castleross).

But the thing about Lillie’s Bordello, of course, was that it became the country’s first real celebrity haunt.

Granted, the likes of Spandau Ballet and Def Leppard had been frequenting the nearby Pink Elephant since the Eighties. But Lillie’s was drawing in proper, top-of-the-range A-listers almost right from the beginning. Yes, I witnessed some of them at close quarters. There was the night Julia Roberts turned up with fellow Hollywood star Jason Patric, just days after she had cancelled her wedding to Kiefer Sutherland. If memory serves, the pair ended up drinking with U2’s preposterously behatted guitarist The Edge.

Meanwhile, Sutherland turned up a few months later to check out the place for himself during an apparently thirsty spree in Dublin. There was another occasion when Canadian rocker Bryan Adams jumped onto a ledge to open a window in the intimate Library bar. (The window wasn’t actually that high, as far as I can recall, but Bryan didn’t appear to be that tall.)

FOR the avoidance of doubt, I’d like to make it clear that I wasn’t actually hanging out with these people. All I did was keep a sneaky eye on them in case they, say, got sick on their shoes or made a clumsy pass at one of the staff. Nothing to report there, I’m afraid.

Come to that, I can’t really report much at all. I did exchange pleasantries with a couple of the Guildford Four on an occasion or two. Aside from that, I can only claim an encounter with the late Malcolm McLaren – the notorious manager of the Sex Pistols – that ended with a tour of various other nightspots. But the city seemed to be overrun with celebrities back in those days. No-one batted an eyelid as Lenny Henry (exceptionally tall, unlike the aforementioned Mr Adams) and the late Kirsty MacColl stood chatting at the bar of a Leeson Street club in Dublin in the early hours of a weekend morning.

Come to think of it, I apparently stood beside Kevin Costner at a gig in the old Rock Garden around the same time. I say ‘apparently’ because I didn’t recognise him and had to be told about it afterwards.

Which, given that I was writing a gossipy showbiz column at the time, was slightly remiss of me. The Rock Garden is long gone, most of the Leeson Street venues are a thing of the past, and now Lillie’s Bordello is going the same way. It is well over 20 years since I darkened the door of any of these places, though.

Frankly, I came to the conclusion that late nights are grossly overrated. There is much to be said in favour of having a couple of teatime pints and being home in time for Coronation Street. Particularly if you want to avoid ending up looking like a middle-aged, overweight and failed lounge lizard.