Eugenie’s arty boss takes over at Soho’s louche Groucho Club

HOW about this for an unlikely transformation? I hear the Groucho Club, the louche Soho joint where hard-living artist Damien Hirst once put his £20,000 Turner Prize winnings behind the bar, is to be taken over by the Queen’s former grocer.

Ewan Venters, who regularly met the royals when he was chief executive of Fortnum & Mason, is behind the purchase of the Groucho, where founding member Stephen Fry once issued a mobile phone ban.

Venters, 49, now employs the Queen’s granddaughter, Princess Eugenie, in his role as chief executive of international art gallery Hauser & Wirth.

‘Ewan wants to make the Groucho the place for the London art crowd to meet,’ a source tells me. ‘Ewan’s background is in food, so he’s planning to improve significantly the quality of the menu. The club has lost its way in recent years.’

General manager Matt Hobbs left his position in 2018 after almost a decade, amid much speculation. The previous year the club had announced a 40 per cent increase in its membership fee. In 2016, 14 veteran members wrote Hobbs a blistering letter, listing numerous complaints.

They included an allegation of ‘an increase in open drugtaking’ by various members and their guests, and argued that the club had ‘lost its unique feel’, which had once so appealed to the likes of Queen’s Freddie Mercury and Liza Minnelli.

The rot deepened — so detractors allege — in early 2017 with the retirement, aged only 49, of the club’s inspired and extraordinary manager, Bernie Katz, after 27 years. Known as the Prince of Soho, Katz orchestrated hell-raising nights for Kate Moss and once deposited boozy writer Jeffrey Bernard back home in a wheelchair.

When Katz died unexpectedly in 2017, his devotees claimed that the Groucho’s spirit was extinguished with him. ‘He appeared crazy but actually was very professional — the consummate host,’ says one.

■ INTREPID Bear Grylls showed he had the survival skills to get through the pandemic after revealing a bumper £1million windfall. The 47-year-old TV adventurer and Eton-educated Chief Scout paid himself a salary of £417,871 through one company and a dividend of £564,889 from another enterprise.