The Groucho Club: a home for hellraisers

Why does The Groucho Club never go out of fashion? How, on its 25th birthday, does it still manage to lure Lily Allen, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, Bono, Anna Friel, Jude Law, Tracey Emin, Jools Holland and Stephen Fry through the opaque glass doors of 45 Dean Street?

The club itself is not much to write home about, but the very understatement of The Groucho's brownish décor, confusing corridors, its lack of flash, and uncompromisingly good art collection, are all part of the identity. 'There is some special magic that no one can put their finger on,' says the artist Gavin Turk. 'Of course it's elitist, but once you're through the door it's a level playing field; you've arrived.'

The Groucho was dreamed up by a group of 15
publishers, writers and agents who were sick of having nowhere to meet in London. The only members' club with a literary and thespian profile, The Garrick, had voted against female members, and half of this group were women, including Bloomsbury's Liz Calder and Virago's Carmen Callil. Other founders included the literary agents Ed Victor and Michael Sissons. They took their plan to Tony Mackintosh, co-founder of the Camden music venue Dingwalls, Notting Hill restaurant 192 and Covent Garden club Zanzibar. Mackintosh and his business partners, the wine merchant John Armit and the architect Tchaik Chassey, found the building and raised the money to buy and refurbish it by getting all the founders to ask their friends to invest. The minimum subscription was £500. They reached their target sum of £850,000 on the morning the deal had to close.

Even before the doors opened, in May 1985, membership was the holy grail of the London scene. The artist Peter Blake, a Soho habitué, says The Groucho may not have been looking for bohemian artists but it got them anyway: 'The Groucho brought sophistication to rather a seedy scene.' Film producer Bradley Adams remembers coming in for a drink with Robbie Coltrane: 'Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard and Dan Farson were sitting at the bar and Coltrane
sent a glass of brandy down to Bacon. Bernard stood up and said, "You f***ing c***. You don't send a glass to one person, you send one to all three." He threw the glass, it flew past my nose and hit Robbie on the side of the head. I thought, "This is the club for me." '

Mary-Lou Sturridge arrived at The Groucho as manager in 1987, the same time as the late Liam Carson, previously maître d' at Langan's, was brought in as general manager. 'We had a piano player, so you never felt like you were in a nightclub, and we were very careful about membership. Because it built up organically, beginning with friends of the founders and committee, you had such a small degree of separation between people. You still do. Secretly, people like not having to be the coolest person in the room. It's the same with fame. People want to be treated kindly, not be stared at.'

There are numerous stories about celebrities being overlooked, not least the tale of Al Pacino being mistaken for a tramp at the front door. Or just absorbed, like the time there was a Dean Street power cut – no one was allowed in but those already inside with full glasses were allowed to stay. Jools Holland had just arrived with Tom Jones, and Paul McGuinness, U2's manager, was hosting a dinner in a private room. Tea lights were lit and suddenly there was Jools on the piano, Tom Jones singing 'Sex Bomb' and Bono duetting with Tom. Chris Evans was in with his pals and they and the staff gathered around the piano for an impromptu knees-up.

It was Carson who embodied The Groucho's idiosyncratic ambience. He made honorary life members of the entertaining old Sohoites Jeffrey Bernard and Dan Farson (later banned for urinating out of a Groucho bedroom window), Francis Bacon and Peter Blake, as well as Wayne Sleep (who brought Princess Diana to lunch) and Oliver Reed (who infuriated Sleep by calling him 'little sausage'). Carson brought in a gaggle of sociable chefs including Mark Hix, Simon Hopkinson, Fergus Henderson and Rowley Leigh. He offered actor Keith Allen honorary membership on the grounds that Allen had been imprisoned for smashing up Zanzibar. Allen spent the next decade joined at the hip to Damien Hirst and Blur's bass guitarist Alex James, forming The Groucho trium-virate whose revelry was notorious: they drank absinthe, slept it off under the snooker table and scaled the roofs between The Colony Room and The Groucho. Hirst was eventually banned for exposing himself.

Tracey Emin recalls 'wild drunken nights around the piano and meowing on karaoke nights. When I was single it was a haven of safety. I could let my hair down.' The artists are the wildest bunch and their defining presence at The Groucho, as well as the art on its walls, is down to the longest serving member of staff, Nicky Carter. 'Often, I'm held responsible for the behaviour of the entire art crowd,' she sighs. As a student at Goldsmiths a couple of years below Hirst, Carter began waitressing at The Groucho in 1989 and Liam asked if she had any friends who'd like to put up some work. She asked established artists such as Bacon and Blake, as well as emerging talents Marc Quinn, Angus Fairhurst, Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Turk, Emin, Hirst and the rest. They were all given membership in return. 'The quality
of the work they have given is astonishing because they know it will be seen by so many
people,' says Nicky, who is an artist herself, working with her husband as Rob & Nick Carter.

There are roughly 150 pieces in The Groucho collection, one of the most poignant of which is Angus Fairhurst's photographic work of a young man holding a yellow square (Fairhurst committed suicide in March 2008). It is called When I woke up in the morning, the feeling was still there. This was one of Nicky's first acquisitions, which was bought 18 years ago for £400 and is now worth thousands. 'We were at Goldsmiths together. I remember carrying Damien's original medicine cabinet with him and we dropped it on the floor. We couldn't stop laughing.' Hirst has been 'incredibly generous', she says, lending spot and spin paintings, designing a wine label and buying young artists' work having seen it here. But then he has a lot to be thankful for: Hirst's mother met the accountant Frank Dunphy at The Groucho and said, 'My son could do with a bit of help with the figures' The Irishman became Hirst's business manager and
is credited with helping him become a millionaire. Younger artists' works include a vast, graffiti-inspired piece by Conor Harrington, donated by the Lazarides Gallery after one of its employees flooded a bedroom, and Alastair Mackie's sphere made of mouse skulls found in barn owls' nests. Nicky bought it at his degree show for £100; it is now valued by Sotheby's at £6,000. Apart from the story of a Dan Chadwick mobile being pulled down and bitten during a Babyshambles set, the art is in safe hands.

In 2000, Mackintosh sold the club to the chocolate heir Joel Cadbury and PR Matthew Freud, after refusing an offer for the club of £9 million from the entrepreneur Benji Fry. They then sold it on to the current owners, Graphite Capital. The club did seem to fill with suits and Sloanes for a couple of years after these handovers, but they went away, and ultimately the club hasn't changed. The real members never leave. There are now 4,000 and a waiting list of two years (the cost is £695 a year plus a joining fee of £695). Entry is as elusive as ever, though, and it is the committee's practice to call an applicant's friends for information, as well as asking for examples of their work. Writer Jay Landesman says, 'Membership is still difficult. Several people I signed up for as an asset to the club were rejected, including the Country and Western singer Tex Beaumont, who became so depressed by the humiliation that he left the country.'

Everyone has their Groucho moment; mine was being introduced to Bill Clinton by the art dealer James Birch. From our table in the brasserie, we spied Clinton sitting on a sofa. James grabbed my hand and pulled me on to the seat next to Clinton and presented me to him with such conviction that Clinton held out his hand and said, 'Pleased to meet you.' The charisma! He had been giving a talk and Mariella Frostrup and Bono had brought him to The Groucho for a bit of R&R.

Stella Vine's portrait of Groucho Marx hangs by the door to the main bar. One of his quips runs in the background: 'I've had a perfectly wonderful evening but this wasn't it.' It's quite hard to leave The Groucho without a smile on your face.