Clubland king who fell on hard times dies suddenly at 68
ALLAN Sartori, one of Birmingham’s biggest and most controversial clubland figures, has died suddenly.
For Birmingham’s Mr Clubland, a man as famous for his feuds as the fabulous nights he staged, life was pitted with incredible highs and numbing lows.
The 68-year-old, who died last Thursday at his Bearwood home, was a friend to the stars.
His clubs – Ronnie Scott’s and later the Rocket Club lapdancing bar – were crammed with the rich and famous.
He was an entrepreneur who was not prepared to back down when challenged. It meant that financially, the legal battles took their toll.
In the last year of his life, Sartori briefly stepped again into the spotlight, but it was an appearance colleagues will want to forget.
The businessman, once at the epicentre of the West Midlands’ entertainment industry, was the subject of a September 2017 episode of Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away.
In the show, he was confronted by High Court debt collectors, chasing £25,000 in alleged unpaid solicitors’ fees.
On camera, he told them: “I’ve not got £25,000. I live here in a rented room. I’ve got nothing. Look at my bank.
“My life collapsed about five or six years ago in a big court case. I’ve got no money left. I’m living on benefits.”
For a man who had rubbed shoulders with the great and good, it seemed an incongruous fall from grace.
Mr Sartori rose to prominence as one of the former owners of Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, in Broad lapse in 2002.
The venue attracted such musical heavyweights as Coldplay, Elbow, Nigel Kennedy and Tony Bennett.
He claimed to have lost £800,000 in the doomed venture, but later went on to front the Rocket Club, which once made headlines by offering cut-price lap dances to Tory MPs attending the nearby party conference.
Sartori was also publicly slated in 2006 for placing giant Remembrance Day poppies at the entrance of the strip club.
True to form, Sartori shrugged off the criticism. “We get service people here all the time,” he said. “I’ve paid £800 to the Legion and hope to raise thousands.”
He was famously embroiled in a fouryear battle over ownership of a small strip of land outside the Rocket Club – a battle taken all the way to the appeal court.
Sartori lost the legal saga and in 2014 his name was removed as registered proprietor of the section of pavement. Financially, that defeat proved very costly.
“This leaves me finished, out of it,” he said following the ruling. “I can’t do any more. I have got to retrench and think about how things are.”
There is no doubt Sartori left a lasting impression on many people privy to the private side of the public face.
Among the online tributes, Douglas Ellson posted: “A kind-hearted and loveable friend to many, who will be sadly missed.”
Rose Grace Hartigan wrote: “What a wonderful man, I will always have special memories.”
The businessman was divorced and leaves an ex-wife and three children. Street, until its col-