To coincide with The Pheasantry’s tenth anniversary as a seven-day-a-week cabaret venue, Joanna Strand, a performer there herself, has written a lavishly illustrated book tracing the history of the Chelsea nightspot right back to its 1865 roots when Jacko the ring-tailed monkey lived there.
Way back in the last century ballet royalty Alicia Markova and Margot Fonteyn rehearsed and taught there and musical theatre buffs will be interested to read it was where Andrew Lloyd Webber, then only 20, found his first Mary Magdalene for Jesus Christ Superstar. The singer who so impressed him was 17-year-old Yvonne Elliman.
Royal painter Pietro Annigoni, famed for his 1955 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, held court there in the 1950s and lived upstairs with owner Rene de Meo. He “donated” many of his works of art to cover his Pheasantry Club bills.
Later, Eric Clapton lived in the top-floor flat of the Grade II Listed building at 152 Kings Road and shared with artist Martin Sharp and Australian film director Philippe Mora for a while. Fellow legend George Harrison would drop in for a jamming session. Clapton left after a failed drugs bust and when others followed, the place went downhill fast, becoming “tatty inside and out”.
Derelict and abandoned, it was heading for demolition until prominent local citizens, not least Sir John Betjeman, fought for its survival. Thank goodness sanity prevailed.
When it reopened in the early 1980s, the new owners changed the name to Toad Hall and painted the pillars every colour of the rainbow. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction! But Toad Hall and the new colour scheme were quickly seen as aberrations.
Germaine Greer also had a flat there while she was writing her best-seller The Female Eunuch and played the part of a chanteuse in Mora’s first movie Trouble in Molopolis. Greer used to sing there and well enough, it was said, to have made a career at that or as a comedy actress if the cards had fallen differently.
Queen did a showcase at “The Phes” in 1972, hoping the gig would get them a record deal, but the A&R people failed to show up. A few weeks later EMI did sign them up and we know what happened after that. Co-founder and lead guitarist Brian May still makes an occasional appearance there.
In its days as a private members’ club, the “perverted palace” enjoyed the patronage of Hollywood stars like Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov and Anthony Hopkins.
All that name-dropping, what a buzz there must have been. The author has unearthed so much more, plus many rare old photos, making The Untold Story a must-have for anyone interested in showbiz history.
Sorry not to see pictures or mention of current top-liners Janie Dee, Amanda McBroom, Steve Ross, Marti Webb, Lee Mead or Christine Andreas who regularly grace the cabaret room and have added immeasurably to its lustre in the past decade.
And such a shame about the literals, too many of them. In the last chapter alone, Brian May, Cleo Laine and Ann Hampton Callaway are wrong – and poor Michele Brourman doubly wrong with both first and second names of the formidable American songwriter-pianist mis-spelt in a caption. But it is still a book to savour.
Jeremy Chapman
- The Pheasantry – The Untold Story by Joanna Strand (NMP Publishing £16.95)
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