Pizza boss buys Palace

The man who made his fortune from Pizza Express and Punch Taverns has bought Camden Palace, intending to transform the rock venue into one of the capital's trendiest hot spots.

Hugh Osmond's investment firm Sun Capital Partners is paying nightclub operator Luminar more than £4million for the club once run by millionaire Visage star Steve Strange.

Osmond has brought in clubland entrepreneurs Alex Rutherford and Oliver Bengough to operate the venue on a long lease and they plan a renovation programme, due to start at the end of the month.

The Palace, which is closing to reopen in September, had its heyday in the early Eighties when London's trendiest clubbers donned eyeliner and hair gel to emulate their heroes Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Human League. It was Prince's venue of choice for his extravagant after-show parties. Eurythmics, then a little-known band on the underground circuit, played their first gigs there. But the New Romantics evaporated as quickly as they arrived.

The Palace struggled to reinvent itself with the kind of prestige and cachet that once earned it the title Europe's Best Nightclub.

The Nineties saw its huge auditorium and balconies turn into a haven for ravers, whose websites have recently been full of rumours of the club's demise. Although Rutherford and Bengough were declining to comment on their plans, Camden historians will be relieved that it will remain as a place of pleasure - as it has been since it opened as a theatre in the 1920s. In the 1940s, the BBC took over the Palace as a full-time comedy venue, with stars including the Goons making some of their most famous recordings there.

It enjoyed a new life as a cabaret spot in the Fifties and Sixties but then, in the Seventies, punk arrived. The Palace changed its name to the Music Machine and shook the pop world. The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers, The Skids and The Boomtown Rats played high-octane gigs on its bizarre aerial stage.

Rutherford and Bengough's Mint Group operates the trendy Infernos club in Clapham and Fulham's Elk Bar. Infernos' Seventies kitsch brings in 2000 partygoers on club nights but also has a growing name for corporate events, having hosted parties for Sainsbury's, Goldman Sachs and MTV among others.