David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years

"This book is written by a former member of the Gargoyle Club. He was helped by a chap called Michael Law, a documentary filmmaker who was a well-known Soho face but is now mainly remembered for being Henrietta Moraes’ first husband. The book offers a sweeping view of the changing face of British society, from the privileged ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 1920s , as depicted in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies —rich hedonists living in the moment—through to the 1950s. When they opened the club in 1925 one of the chaps involved was related to Matisse, who told them about a chateau close to where he lived that was closing down. Its contents were being sold off. There were some 18th century floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Matisse advised that they buy them and have them all cut into hundreds of little circles and festoon the walls with them, which they did. So, Matisse actually came up with the concept for the famous interior of the club. There were also some paintings by Matisse hung there, including The Red Room , which is considered one of his great masterpieces. “One of the great difficulties of trying to write historical books about bohemia is getting to the bottom of all the barroom talk to find out who did what and whether it really happened or not” The Gargoyle was high-society but it wasn’t exclusive in the sense that you had to be rich to get in. It was full of titled people, but there were also plenty of people there who weren’t rich, like Dylan Thomas. It’s interesting because it straddles the pre-war and the post-war period. The club kept on going through the Blitz. People would arrive in uniform and stand on the roof of the club having a drink while watching London being bombed, having slightly surreal conversations—’Oh look, St Luke’s is on fire,’—while the city burned around them. During the day you might have members of Parliament or the House of Lords dining in the club’s restaurant. Then, in the evening, the club really kicked off and all the debauched people turned up, completely drunk, falling over in tuxedos and getting up to the most risqué things. Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British fascist movement, was a frequent visitor. He used to hold fencing classes there. Someone once took the mickey out of his fascist ideology and they ended up having a duel on the dance floor. The club attracted communist too—such as the Soviet spies Burgess and McLean. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . But what was interesting about the club was that it wasn’t just artists, writers and the landed gentry. A lot of philosophers drank there too. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir visited. Suburban dentists would come up for the weekend. It was a real melting pot. Bohemia could be cliquey and exclusive but it was also a tourist destination. One of the things I found interesting about writing my book, Tales from the Colony Room, was the number of people who have contacted me saying, ‘Yes, I went to the Colony Room once .” There was a whole swathe of people coming and going all the time who were essentially tourists wanting to clock the famous denizens of bohemia—rather like visitors to a zoo, or a freak show. It was the proprietor David Tennant’s attitude that made it such a bohemian club. Most people went there after the pubs had shut. To get into the Gargoyle you had to go in through a doorway, then you got into a lift that took you up to the top floor of the building and then you had to walk across the building and down into a sort of big studio. It wasn’t easy to access, so it wasn’t easy for the police to raid. You could only get there by lift. A lot of other clubs were raided by the police, it was virtually impossible to raid the Gargoyle. So, people could indulge in the most outrageous debauchery there. They could take drugs, have sex in the toilets—all kinds of things went. Also, it was on different floors. You could go there and have your own social set. The appeal for artists was that the rich who drank there didn’t mind buying other people drinks on their tab. You could literally sing for your supper. That attracted the talented poor, like Dylan Thomas, whose precarious existence was entirely funded by sponging off people. There was a pact between members that, no matter how bad or outrageous things got or how debauched they were, no one would talk about it outside the club. Eventually, when that that pact was broken, it killed the club. When David Tennant gave up his proprietorship in the mid-1950s, the new owner decided to get in a rock’n’roll band . He also invited in press photographers, paparazzi. None of the members knew this was going to happen. You had these rich people in tuxedos dancing, looking slightly ramshackle and drunk, suddenly blinded by these flashbulbs going off and their pictures appearing in the national press. It was considered completely underhand and the members felt their privacy had been compromised. That killed the club. He moved to Spain, near Torremolinos, which later became associated with the package tour industry of the early 1970s. But before that, it was a hippy hangout and people went there to smoke hash and have sex on the beach. A lot of very dodgy things went on there. This area became the playground of all these people that were originally part of the Chelsea and Soho set. Cyril Connolly, The Beatles, Brian Epstein, Elizabeth Taylor, even Timothy Leary ended up going out there. Quite a few people bought places there, even though this was Franco’s Spain, it was a fascist country and we’d just finished the war. People went there because they could be completely free—although that sounds bizarre. The prototype hippies started off in fascist Spain. “Once the Americans decided they wanted Picassos, he couldn’t produce enough work. He was making prints in the morning and then painting in the afternoon” David Tennant married a woman 40 years younger than him called Shelagh. He gave her a bar as a wedding present, Shelagh’s Bar in Torremolinos, which became the most popular club on the coastline. He’d drink five bottles of champagne before lunch. They would get up at about 6pm or 7pm for breakfast. They’d have lunch at about 11 o’clock or midnight. Dinner would be at 7am. They led a completely nocturnal existence. Young Shelagh’s insatiable partying drove David to a nervous breakdown and he had to be shipped back to London to convalesce. When he eventually returned to Spain, it was not a happy homecoming. Someone spiked Shelagh’s drink at her bar and, returning home as high as a kite, she launched herself out of their bedroom window, breaking her back. David, despite his doctor’s advice, continued to drink excessively and died of a heart attack. All three of his ex-wives attended the funeral, including Sheelagh, still encased in 40 kilos of plaster."