Read Suggs and the City: Journeys Through Disappearing London for Free Online Page A

won’t be what it used to be. But, perhaps, as Ian Board once said in typically dyspeptic fashion, ‘It never was what it f*****g used to be!’
    The Colony’s future had come under threat in the past of course but they had somehow managed to keep the spirit alive and flowing at the bar. After Soho began to shed its sleazy image in the mid-1980s, a new generation of restaurants and members’ clubs appeared and the district became the favoured haunt of the media and arts brigade. The swankiest new club on the block was the Groucho which opened in 1985 next door but one to the Colony. Although close in proximity, the two clubs couldn’t have been further apart in terms of style, size and comfort. If you ordered a vodka and tonic at the Groucho, not only was it served with ice and a slice, it would also be delivered to you on a tray while you perused the menu sitting on a comfy sofa. The Colony didn’t do ice until the new millennium, and as for a slice, not a hope in hell. Such sophisticated delicacies were reserved for the manager only. Furthermore, if you had the audacity to ask for crisps you’d be told to bugger off to London Zoo! Nevertheless, the club survived the onslaught from its new rivals and also the introduction of all-day drinking in pubs, which began in the late 1980s. I didn’t officially become a member of the Groucho until a few years ago, but that trifling matter didn’t stop me from giving the place the benefit of my company from time to time, until I quite literally landed myself in the shit.
    You could see the back of the Groucho, including the windows to the ladies’, gents’ and snooker room, through the green frame of the small window in the toilet of the Colony. I think it was my mum who put the idea in my head. She noted, during a long, hot summer, that one or more of the Groucho’s windows were left ajar of an evening. Fired with a certain feeling of discontent at not having been invited as an inaugural member and a natural inquisitiveness about what they were getting up to in this flash new kid on the block, I decided that an exploration in the greatest British tradition of these things was a matter of some urgency. A delegation led by myself and Anne, my wife, sallied forth. After much scrambling over duct pipes and air-conditioning units and up and down various flat roofs adorned by single plimsoles and bicycle frames - the universal furniture of flat roofs - we reached our destination: the open window of the ladies’.
    This was all done, I hasten to add, without ropes or crampons and with the help only of a broken school chair. Being the chivalrous chap I am, I gave Anne a leg up, so she went in first. A few seconds passed before she popped her head out and gave me the all clear. I scrambled up the short drainpipe after her, into the Groucho’s plush, red ladies’ powder room.
    Somewhat dishevelled and covered in smut, we stood brushing ourselves down and getting our breath back. Ha ha! We made it! What jolly japes!
    Now the only issue was how to get a drink. In the Groucho only members can buy refreshments, so a spurious celebrity would have to be invoked at the bar, with a ‘Yeah, we’re with Neil Tennant/Janet Street-Porter/Stephen Fry . . .’. Leaving the others to their own devices, we both took a deep breath and strode boldly to the door, ready to enter the fray, only to bump straight into one of our daughters’ teachers coming the other way. Miss Terry. Here she was, faced with Mr and Mrs McPherson emerging from the ladies’ lavatory together, red-faced and slightly out of breath. My mind raced. Even the most plausible explanation was implausible, including the truth. There was absolutely no way round this Ayckbourn-esque scenario. So we simply smiled positively and strode off with our noses in the air. Now where is that Keith Allen?
    By 2001 my Groucho trick had become something of a party piece. But in that long, hot summer, as I celebrated my fortieth year, it became