Is the party over for the Groucho Club?
After the resignation of its managing director, Rosa Silverman asks whether the ‘cool people’s cool place’ is losing its appeal
‘In its glory days, it was absolutely the centre of the universe.” If this sounds hyperbolic, the sentiment expressed by one long-standing patron chimes entirely with how Groucho Club members recall the heyday of the legendary Soho institution.
This week it was reported that Matthew Hobbs, the club’s managing director, had quit. Word was he had simply “got to the end of his tether”, but was it, wondered some, indicative of how far the Groucho has fallen?
Almost a year ago, Bernie Katz, the club’s long-time front-of house greeter and manager, died at the age of 49. Known fondly as the “Prince of Soho”, his passing was mourned by a long list of celebrities. “Soho will never be the same again,” said Kate Moss. “It’s the end of an era.”
The feeling today is that the club has never quite recovered. The appeal it once had has since faded, so the chatter goes; its allure disappeared. And some are even giving up their memberships because it’s just “not the same”.
“Bernie was the heart and soul,” says one former regular. “The night the news of Bernie’s death broke I was sitting on the smoking terrace and Noel Fielding was there and he got so upset, he had to leave. Everyone else just sat there reminiscing about the glory days – and in that one moment you realised how much it had changed.” Now, she says, “you look around Soho, and not just the Groucho, and it’s just full of bankers and other corporate professionals; it doesn’t have the wildness of the era of the YBAS and Britpop. Then there were the Gallaghers, the Primrose Hill set, Damien Hirst... There’d be singalongs around the piano – the party could break out at any time. Today, it feels just much quieter and a bit boring.” The idea for the club had come from a group of publishers who sought somewhere to meet, work and socialise that felt like a café, bar, restaurant, office and sitting room all under one roof – and would, crucially, welcome women as equals.
Named after the Groucho Marx quip “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member”, it opened with a membership of 500, drawn from the arts and the media, and grew in size and reputation from there.
For author Maggie Alderson, who joined within a fortnight of the club opening its doors in 1985, it quickly became the cool people’s cool place. As part of the young media crowd that would congregate there, she rolled up almost every day after work with her peers. “You just made friends there,” says Alderson. “Everyone was interesting. Time moves on and it’s rare that places can maintain their mystique for decades.”
But, she believes, there’s every chance the Groucho could be revived. “I think it’s got life in it still. It just needs the right people running it.”