Jack Dyson
He’s rubbed shoulders with the stars, hosted parties for gangsters and even hired John Worboys as a stripper before he was unmasked as the black cab rapist and jailed. But nowlivesa quieter life a world away from the one which saw his cabaret club make na
Along a leafy Herne Bay street, towering Edwardian houses face a long-abandoned former Christian holiday camp. Among them is Cromwell Cottage Boarding Cattery, run by Ray Radmore and his wife Sue. The hush along the road is only interrupted by birdsong and the low rumblings from the train track at the end of their garden. The quiet evenings they now spend together are a world away from the wild, controversial and debauched nights Ray would host at Victoria’s Cabaret Club in Harrietsham more than 30 years ago. We’re sat at his dining room table. His 11-year-old dog, Alfie, who has an enormous tumour on his back, pokes his nose into my bag. Ray – rosy cheeked and strong-looking – is leafing through files of newspaper clippings and photographs, reminiscing.
“Kevin ‘Bloody’ Wilson – you know him?” the 71-year-old asks, grinning. “The Aussie comedian who swears – ‘Hey Santa Claus, where’s me bike?’ Brilliant he was.
“Michael Barrymore, Bobby Davro, Bernard Manning,
Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Rockin’ Berries .... they all appeared for me.”
Through his work at Victoria’s, Ray rubbed shoulders with the most famous comedians of the 1980s and 1990s. He booked many of them for gigs at the venue for fees ranging from a couple of hundred pounds to several thousand. He wears a broad smile as he shows me photographs of him posing with the likes of Lenny Henry, Freddie Starr and Brian Conley, recounting stories of
them backstage. Gary Wilmott and Stan Boardman, he says, would serenely wait to begin their sets, but others struggled to contain their nerves preshow.
“I’ve seen loads of drugs,” he adds. “Singers, dancers and comics would be snorting before they went on stage – it gave them the buzz to go out and do it night after night. Others wanted alcohol and Mike Reid would chain smoke; he was always on edge. But when he’d go on stage you wouldn’t think he was nervous at all.” Before he was appointed the manager of Victoria’s, Ray would travel to markets selling items like Bolex watches, knock-off perfumes and Elvis Presley mirrors. “I would sell swag gear – my mates used to