The world ’s most exclusive and oh so discreetly) naughty nightclub
Diana as a sexy WPC, John Wayne blotto – and Jemima Khan kissing Kate Moss. An exquisitely waspish insider reveals what really goes on in the darkened corners of Annabel’s in Mayfair
THeY say that if you can remember the Sixties you probably weren’t there — and much the same can be said of the opening night of Annabel’s nightclub in June 1963. I know that I was there — there are photographs to prove it — but as for the night itself, it’s all a bit of a delightful blur, I’m afraid.
I was working for Vogue in New York, but was in London for a holiday. I was invited to the opening night because my elder brother, Michael, had been great friends at eton with Mark Birley, the man who founded Annabel’s and named it after his wife, Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, later married to billionaire Jimmy Goldsmith.
Somehow I just sensed something special was about to happen, so I telephoned Diana Vreeland, my legendary editor at American Vogue, suggesting she commission a photographer to document that first party.
And from the moment I walked into the club and marvelled at the beauty of the subterranean rooms, I knew I was right. I recall that Robin Douglas-Home, nephew of a PM and lover of Princess Margaret, was playing the piano.
A few weeks before, Annabel herself told me, the space had been little more than interlinked, derelict coal-cellars underneath John Aspinall’s Clermont Club casino at 44 Berkeley Square. They had been magically transformed in a way that was sophisticated, comfortable and quietly rather sexy.
Mark had always been surrounded by beauty — his mother, Rhoda; his sister, the model Maxime de la Falaise; his wife, Annabel, and her sister, Lady Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart, were all astonishingly beautiful.
AND now Mark had created a place where they — and everyone else who came — looked even better. I believe the point of good decoration is to make the people who live, work or play in that space look prettier. Mark, with instinctive good taste, knew that from the start.
The walls of Annabel’s were precisely hung with exactly the right sort of art (a mix of the exotic, the mildly erotic and the engagingly eccentric), and the lighting was simply perfect, a low golden glow making everyone there look younger and infinitely more attractive.
You can go in after the sort of day that has left you feeling no more than a five-out-of-ten, but after a couple of hours in ‘the Bel’s’ — as the debutants would nickname it — you were at least an eight.
But on that opening night, there seemed to be a lot of tens around, too; at least to my rather voracious 23-year-old eyes.
The best nightclub in the world had just opened for business, although I wasn’t alone in doubting how long it could last. I mean, Mark had to pay the outrageous rent of £8 a week. How was he going to afford that? Of course, my doubts were misplaced and, almost 53 years later, both Annabel’s and I are still going strong.
I no longer hit that famously intimate dance-floor — sunk by a few inches so people feel hidden — like I used to. I don’t mind too much, as all you can do to ‘modern’ music is shuffle, anyway, but I still love an evening there.
A new documentary, on BBC4 tonight, delves into why Annabel’s has enjoyed the success it has.
One key was timing. Mark was almost a decade older than me, which meant he’d been a frustrated teenager during World War II before spending his 20s amid the austerity of the Fifties.
By the Sixties, his generation were entering their 30s, pre-war family fortunes were recovering and what they wanted more than anything was to have some fun. To become a member, you had to be the right sort of person with the right connections. In 1963, that started with Mark and Annabel’s 500 closest friends being invited to become founder members — those alive now still pay a fixed annual membership of £5.25 a year.
The club has since hosted everyone from the Queen (apparently she likes a gin martini — no lemon) to Frank Sinatra (he tipped the cloakroom attendant £100 for helping him with his cufflinks), a drunken John Wayne (‘you can tell your buddies you hung out with John Wayne’, he slurred to a surprised man alongside him at the urinals) to, most famously of all, Princess Diana and the Duchess of York disguised as
giggling policewomen after failing to gatecrash Prince Andrew’s stag do.
When someone offered them a drink Diana replied, teasingly: ‘Sorry, we never drink on duty.’
I have fond memories of Diana, when she was young and happy, shoes off, dancing the night away at the club.
Lord Lucan — finally declared dead this week — was a regular, after a night at the gaming tables upstairs at the Clermont. And I once bumped into an unexpectedly charming Marlon Brando.
Today, thanks to film producer Charles Finch’s pre-Bafta awards parties, its nooks and crannies have played host to A-listers such as Tom Cruise, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman.
It’s also had its fair share of offbeat moments. In 2006, f or instance, Topshop owner Sir Philip Green paid £60,000 to charity for Jemima Khan, Lady Annabel’s daughter, and Kate Moss to kiss.
People often ask what is the secret of Annabel’s? How did the son of society portrait painter Sir Oswald Birley create a club that has endured for more than half a century?
I believe that somehow — magically — Mark got everything right. While Elizabeth David, the doyenne of 20th-century food writing, helped create the menu, designer Nina Campbell ensured the look of the whole club was faultless.
Even the men’s loos are the most beautifully appointed I’ve seen. Mark installed a ticker-tape, so businessmen could check their share prices after taking a pee.
And in the early days, he insisted on having the latest American dance music sent over every week from Sam Goody’s record-store in New York.
There was superb live music, too — Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald and Ike and Tina Turner played there, ane more recently, Lady Gaga played an acoustic set to enthralled members. ‘Hello rich people,’ is how she insightfully began. I was there, at a table that included Tracey Emin, Bjorn Borg and comedian Michael McIntyre.
The combination of good food (the bitter chocolate ice- cream is a personal favourite, with a secret ingredient rumoured to be Bovril) delicious wine and that wonderful lighting has made Annabel’s very romantic. I’m sure hundreds of nervous young men have gone there to ask pretty young girls to marry them.
I’m equally confident those darkened corners have been put to more nefarious purposes too — if a chap was trying to tempt someone else’s wife into an affair, a romantic night at Annabel’s might be the way to swing it.
HOWEvER, in t he event a member or guest embarrassed themselves in some way — getting horribly drunk or kissing someone they weren’t supposed to — it would never be in the papers the next day. Cameras were rarely allowed, and telling tales would have seen you thrown out of the club for ever.
Mind you, if you did want to catch up on gossip, half an hour with Mabel, of the ladies’ cloakroom, was never wasted. Oh, how gloriously juicy her memoirs would have been!
I’ve always thought of the club as more louche than decadent, and certainly never debauched; the sort of place where exciting things are initiated rather than actually take place.
It did become rather racier, beginning with Mark’s decision to run special events — fashion and jewellery shows — and themed occasions such as Russian week and Brazil nights. Suddenly, the club was full of beautiful models wearing very little, which many of the club’s older regulars thought absolutely splendid.
Men no longer have to sport ties (legend has it The Beatles were turned away for not wearing shoes), the membership is perhaps more meritocratic than aristocratic, and you’re now as likely to bump into Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell as some game dowager duchess or past-it playboy.
But, nine years after Mark’s death and the acquisition of the club by Richard Caring in a deal said to be worth £90 million, the club continues to dazzle — and he’s determined for it to be bigger and brighter still.
Provided planning applications are signed off, it will move two doors down and gain a new a health club and restaurant terrace. It’s a bold step, because the whole point of Annabel’s is its intimacy.
But the club, I am confident, will endure. As long as there are beautiful people with good manners as well as good fortunes, the party goes on. Thank goodness for that.
AnnAbel’s nightclub: A string of naked lightbulbs is on bbc4 tonight at 10.45pm.