Wag makes way for theme pub

In its Eighties heyday it was the coolest club in town. Now the Wag is to suffer a fate even worse than going out of fashion - it is to become an Irish theme pub.

Taking its name from the late-night dive bar it used to be - the Whiskey A Go-Go - the Wag once had hundreds of clubbers queueing along Wardour Street.

Opened in the early Eighties, it pioneered a new sophistication in London nightclubs after the back-to-basics revolution of punk and the outrageous fancy-dress of the New Romantics.

Once inside (if they made it) clubbers could rub shoulders with rock stars like Madonna and Mick Jagger and movie icons like Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. David Bowie even filmed a pop video there, for his hit Blue Jean.

Now the Wag's director Chris Sullivan, faced with a tripling in the cost of his lease, says he cannot afford to keep it going in the "corporate landscape" of Soho today. "It's too hard to make it work because of the rates and the rent," he said. "It isn't viable any more."

After 17 years, the club will close next month, when Bass Leisure Retail moves in to start a £4.3 million conversion which will create the biggest in its chain of 82 O'Neill's Irish theme pubs.

During the Wag's heyday, designer suits became a fashion statement, dancing came back into style and jazz and funk enjoyed a revival.

The disappearance of the Wag marks not only the end of an era, but adds to the ever-growing list of London rock venues and clubs that are gone for ever, replaced by trendy bars and restaurants, or forced out by cost or urban "regeneration" schemes.

Last week the Evening Standard reported how the Electric Ballroom in Camden is now being threatened with closure by London Underground's plans to expand and renovate Camden Town Tube station.

The most famous club of the Sixties was the Marquee, also on Wardour Street, now swallowed up by the Mezzo restaurant. It played host to all the rising bands, from The Who to The Rolling Stones to Cream, and introduced Londoners to many big names from America during the mid-Sixties blues boom.