Sex, drugs and scandal: The Groucho Club's most hedonistic moments

In the 4 decades since it opened, the Soho nine has ne'er been acold from the spotlight. While nowadays its estimation is simply a small much staid, The Groucho was erstwhile a nary holds barred spot for celebrities and media types to fto their hairsbreadth down and premix the atom with the grape.

Stephen Fry was a founding subordinate and drafted a abbreviated database of rules, which included nary phones, nary drawstring vests, and nary drugs. Members paid small respect to the 3rd rule, and the bathrooms person played big to copious chemoreceptor powdering implicit the years.

While determination is an unspoken codification of don’t ask, don’t archer among members, stories of hedonism person recovered their mode retired of the treble woody doors connected Dean Street.

When it opened successful 1985, the Groucho was seen arsenic an antidote to stuffy gentlemen’s clubs wherever besuited men sipped larboard and developed gout. The club’s sanction is simply a notation to Groucho Marx’s celebrated saying that helium wouldn’t privation to beryllium a subordinate of immoderate nine which would person him.

In the aboriginal days, journalists and publishing execs propped up the bar. Regulars included Jeffrey Bernard, the Spectator’s Low Life columnist who quaffed vodka sodas and ignored calls from his editor.

When helium did negociate to record copy, Bernard recalled waking up from a drink-induced slumber successful the Groucho and reasoning helium had gone blind. “It turned retired I’d been resting my caput connected a grilled turbot and I had tartare condiment each implicit my speechmaking glasses,” helium wrote. He was erstwhile truthful drunk that helium had to beryllium pushed location successful a wheelchair by the club’s legendary doorkeeper, Bernie Katz.

In the 90s the nine became the favourite watering spread of the Cool Britannia pack Britpop stars and YBAs. As the rumours go, Liam Gallagher was erstwhile thrown retired for reportedly smashing a model and successful 1995 Damien Hirst stuck his £20,000 Turner Prize wealth down the bar. Evenings often descended into chaos. Celebrity PR antheral Mark Borkowski erstwhile ended up successful ER aft Hirst doused him successful whisky and acceptable occurrence to his thorax hair, portion writer Toby Young was kicked retired of the nine for having enactment with a Princess Diana lookalike successful the bathroom.

According to writer Mark Edmonds, the upstairs snooker country was fondly known arsenic the “Peruvian Procurement Department”, specified was the acceptable availability of cocaine. In her memoir My Thoughts Exactly, Lily Allen recalls that her dada Keith would get “publicly loaded” with Hirst and Blur bassist Alex James astatine the Groucho. Allen and her member Alfie would beryllium successful a country upstairs “eating Toblerones from the minibar portion Dad got smashed successful the barroom downstairs with his mates.”

Allen’s puerility acquisition of the Groucho seems positively cutesy compared with what happened to Iris Law, the exemplary girl of Jude Law and Sadie Frost. When she was a toddler, Iris was astatine a children’s day enactment astatine The Groucho and swallowed fractional of an ecstasy pill which she recovered connected the floor. She was rushed to infirmary and suffered nary superior harm, but the nine astir mislaid its licence implicit the incident. At the time, Frost said that she and Jude were “the luckiest parents alive”.

Throughout the 2000s the nine counted Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Courtney Love among its regulars. Lily Allen followed successful her father’s footsteps and became a acquainted look astatine the club. She traded cocoa for charlie and says she was barred introduction for a period “after being caught doing drugs successful the loo”.

In the past fewer years the Groucho has mislaid its hedonistic reputation. The nine was bought for £40 cardinal successful 2022 by Hauser & Wirth founders Iwan and Manuela Wirth done their hospitality company, ArtFarm. At the time, ArtFarm’s CEO Ewan Venters promised to “create a semipermanent aboriginal for the Groucho that builds connected its eclectic entreaty and maverick ethos.” Yet according to The Times a missive titled “RIP Groucho” circulated among members this summer, which pronounced the nine “almost dead”, citing rising costs and a civilization of corporatism.

As the club’s aboriginal hangs successful the balance, 1 happening is for certain: the Groucho’s days of unbridled debauchery are agelong gone.