Annabel's Nightclub: A String of Naked Lightbulbs

Yes, I mean, I think everything came together in a sort of magical way

because, obviously, it was a decade or a little bit more

since the war, there was a sense of renewal and rebirth to England.

The '60s was an extraordinary time to be in London.

And at the centre of that was Annabel's,

standing for the old world, but also representing the new.

Annabel's, I think, is like holding Mark Birley up to a mirror.

It was an expression of Mark Birley.

-ARCHIVE:

-When you see a picture like this,

you know at once that Eton is celebrating St Andrew's Day.

Well, we were at school together

and there was a tradition where all the boys messed together.

That meant that you had your tea together.

And that was during the war.

AIR RAID SIREN BLARES

I remember looking at London and seeing a sort of pink haze over it.

Yes, I mean, the interesting thing is that the people who

founded this club were people who had lived through

the Second World War as children.

They weren't quite old enough to serve.

They'd lived through a period of fear

and a period of actual physical deprivation of food.

We were friends from the moment we arrived to the moment we left.

So it was fun.

Mark was very, very thin in those...

Well, he always was pretty thin and tall, and rather self-effacing.

His parents were a pretty exciting couple.

I mean, she was a dashing beauty and he was a very sophisticated,

very elegant man.

You know, being a society painter, it all goes to entertaining people

and making them comfortable whilst they're sitting there.

I suppose Mark grew up in that atmosphere.

And being observant, which he was,

he had a great understanding of how things should look.

Because his mother was so overpowering and so was Maxime, his

sister, I think he felt rather cowed by their glamour and their presence.

But I think that's, in a kind of way,

why he married somebody like Annabel, who had such huge

glamour and fun about her that he sort of subsumed it.

Mark depended a lot on Annabel

throughout his life,

with all the changes that went on in both their lives,

and I think he really loved her and I think that it was true of her.

-ARCHIVE:

-Before his toast and tea,

give him a good big plate of Corn Flakes.

Delicious!

I am bound to feel a lot of empathy with Mark because I began my career

in advertising, and that's the first business that he worked in.

Advertising agencies -

one of their great skills is the art of presentation.

So you're always looking for the level of excellence that's

better than your competitors. I think he had that innate skill.

That's probably why he suited them and they suited him.

In those days, Mr Birley used to own

Hermes shop in Jermyn Street, in the Arcade.

ADVERT IN FRENCH

Yes, I found the shop. It wasn't suitable as a Hermes shop because

it had ties downstairs and there wasn't room to display stuff.

And people would come in and nick a tie and then bugger off!

I met him in Arlington Street.

I lived in Arlington Street, which was just round the corner,

and he said, "Have you got a minute? I want to show you something."

So we walked down to Berkeley Square

and into that beautiful house,

and down into the basement.

And I remember the light bulbs looped round into all those vaults,

which were just wine cellars.

And he said, "I'm going to start a nightclub."

CORK POPS

Annabel's was much more stylish than any club had ever been before.

I think that Mark saw that these rather dowdy,

long-established places were ripe for superseding.

400 was awful little pink lights...

lampshades on the table. You had to have...

The law said you had to eat something, so you had

a plate of sandwiches, you had your own bottle with your name on it.

You know, it wasn't very long after the war, the whole thing,

and I think people thought nothing would ever be nice again,

there would be no luxury,

no building wonderful rooms or gilding rooms or unique plasterwork

or anything like that and people thought it would never happen again.

My father's role was to convert the space into something usable,

commercially, for Mark Birley and John Aspinall.

John Aspinall was a buccaneering man who'd been running casino nights

one step ahead of the gambling legislation of the time.

Aspinall used to go and take, you know, an apartment or

somebody's flat or a country house and have a gambling evening.

I think that was the way you avoided getting into trouble with the law.

And it was fun cos it was illegal, you know,

like being gay was illegal. It was much more fun.

By 1961, the law had moved on and it was possible to look to

establish a permanent casino.

Aspinall knew the very good social context came from Mark,

and so, he thought for him to have the nightclub in the basement,

it would bring in exactly the kind of crowd that he wanted to

make the Clermont fashionable and good-looking.

When they first looked at the building, there was

a small narrow passageway through to the mew to the back,

and apparently, it was my father who said, "We must dig out

"the entire garden and get a really decent space out of this."

It became something twice as large, with a great deal more -

a restaurant, a dance floor, a complete nightclub,

as it were, something that really needed a proper name.

The original membership list was fairly small and cost about £5.

Don't forget, they were all his friends.

This was strictly for the top-society, elegant people.

Well, when he first opened,

he was determined to open the best nightclub in London.

And to have the best nightclub in London,

he wanted to get the best staff.

And he didn't think for one moment that or

at any particular moment that he had all the best there was,

so he would quite selfishly go to other establishments

and if he saw somebody was really good, he'd hire him.

I think if you were a restaurant in those days and you saw

Mark Birley coming to lunch, you might have got slightly nervous!

He went to the Mirabelle club and got Louis Emanuelli,

Nando and Michael.

He went to Jules Bar in Jermyn Street and got

George and Sidney from there.

To be a member of staff on a Birley establishment

was like being in the Royal household.

He recruited Mabel, the ladies' toilet attendant, from Wilton's.

She'd been there for years.

Mabel - wonderful. Could be very strict.

Girls used to come and go and sit with Mabel and talk to her.

Mabel knew everything. She was just wonderful, though.

They'd tell her whether they were having abortions or

whether a divorce was coming up or whether they'd

lost their lover or whether their fur coat's hem was coming down.

I remember Mabel telling me that somebody had brought their baby in

and the baby had been squirreled away, underneath the coats.

And I don't think Mabel was ever seen by daylight!

I used to say to her, "Mabel, what do you do when you go home?

"Do you have a nice cup of tea or something like that?"

She said, "No way! Double whiskies! Double whiskies!

"The best you have, and you sleep like a log."

She used to say it to me, honestly!

I was at the very, very opening night of Annabel's.

I was working on Vogue in New York. I heard, I think,

from my brother or somebody that Mark was opening this club.

So I immediately called Diana Vreeland.

And she said, "Get it photographed!"

Annabel's was one of the first places to have a twin deck.

He had them flown over almost daily, I think,

from Sam Goody's, the great record shop on Broadway.

And the other genius about the whole place was the fact that you

went down two steps onto the dance floor.

You felt, therefore, much more contained and private.

I think he understood that dance floors were about sex

and that, like sex, most people don't want to be watched having it!

Everybody does, from the beginning, as far as I remember,

cos the miniskirt had just come in, so legs were around.

And he liked that.

And London suddenly became the centre of things musical.

But Mark got the message pretty quick and put it out there

and booked those extraordinary acts.

Ray Charles, I'm his man. You know, he called me "my man".

Ella, my favourite singer. Ella. Loved her, loved her!

Well, I remember Ike and Tina Turner coming. That was extraordinary.

His office upstairs became the changing rooms,

cos you could get up to his office upstairs.

Gossip was that she'd left it in a frightful mess. I don't know whether

that's true or not, but there was make-up artists

and goodness knows what going on upstairs.

The proximity of the performer -

it's like having the Beatles as close as you are to me.

I asked Mark once if it was true that the Beatles had been

turned away from Annabel's because they weren't wearing ties.

"Dear Sir, congratulations. How refreshing it was..."

"How refreshing, on the 2nd of Jan,

"to read in the Daily Express of your doorman's guts!"

And he said, "No, absolutely not. That's complete rubbish!

"It's cos they weren't wearing shoes."

Well, the Beatles were very regular attenders at Annabel's

because I think it was probably the only place they went to where

they were not mobbed.

And sometimes, we would smuggle them out of the back door.

SCREAMING

I'm not sure that chasing celebrities even existed then.

I think celebrities just came because they'd enjoyed it.

Certainly, Mark would woo them.

And I think he just thought The Beatles were

a scruffy lot of silly boys.

And the other thing that was so important was the fact that he

was so far-seeing, he brought in people like...

Well, he brought the Russians, so we had this wonderful Russian week.

Harry Hambledon, who was a great friend of Mark's,

had a table every night and dressed in Russian clothes.

I mean, he really got into the feel of it.

All the waiters had Russian shirts and that.

Yeah, I was dressed as a Russian Cossack.

I'll never forget - the menu was printed in Russian

and people would look knowledgeably at the menu

and then order the date, top of the menu!

I don't think Mark really ever feared or worried about anybody,

but he did mind desperately about his food

and that everything was perfect.

He thought that Elizabeth David was the acme of English food.

She was brilliant at what she did,

but didn't make a huge fuss about it. She was just the best.

"Dear Mark, herewith instalment a) of my notes on Annabel's menu...

"I'm afraid the material I'm sending you is still in a rather rough form,

"and is based on personal taste...

"As I see it, a well-composed restaurant menu should,

"a) Arouse the customer's appetite at the very first glance...

"The first course dishes should be set out with the utmost precision and clarity...

"No need to go on about the melon or what kind it is.

"It should be understood that Annabel's provides the best of what's going."

When Elizabeth David helped initially with the menus

and things, it introduced a new way of dining.

Well, just think about how many lemons that you have been to

restaurants in your life now and seen wrapped in bits of muslin,

and you just wonder where that came from.

He was very good at finding that sort of new thing and,

as you say, mixing it with country house sort of puddings and...

I don't know, plum duff and the famous chocolate ice cream,

which is meant to be made with Bovril.

Mark didn't like fussy food.

I mean, his favourite thing would have been shepherd's pie,

chicken hash, delicious lamb cutlets.

It wasn't about sort of what I call cloche-lifting.

There was no moment when waiters would come

and lift things off and reveal this food.

It was all supposed to just be seamless,

it was supposed to be like, if you were lucky, you'd get at home.

And that's what most people like.

They didn't want all this fancy French stuff,

everything covered "en gelee". It wasn't of any interest to them.

They also wanted to drink fantastic wines - and he had a marvellous wine cellar -

and they wanted to drink lots of champagne.

If you wanted to take somebody out to dinner

and you wanted to impress some girl, you could say,

"Let's go to Annabel's," and there was an immediate

sort of change of gear.

It was hugely spoiling to be taken there,

because it was definitely a step up.

And if you were asked to Annabel's,

you put on pretty clothes or good clothes, or whatever.

I mean, that was...

You didn't sort of just go there after work with your knapsack.

To go to the 'Bel's, it was called the 'Bel's, all the sort of

smart debutants called it... "I'm going to the 'Bel's tonight!"

And they planned their outfits and had their hair done

and looked the best they possibly could.

You didn't go just, "Oh, I'm going to go to Annabel's tonight."

It was a real destination. It was a real excitement to be going.

"For one memorable night,

"Annabel's lovely British lustre was outshone by Italian fascinations.

"Under white tenting, the Roman designer Valentino

"showed his spring collection of floaty dresses, butterfly culottes

"and melting prints hung with chains.

"The Englishmen loved it, so did the Florentines.

"Annabel's had never been more gala."

All those different worlds were starting to collide -

hairdressers were suddenly equally as famous as duchesses

and, to the outside eye, Annabel's was where all those people went.

Well, I first met him...

My brother and sister-in-law gave a dinner and he was there.

And I said to him that I thought the alcoves either side of the bar

were actually not really very interesting.

And he just turned round to me and said, "Well, if you think you're

"so clever," perhaps he used an expletive there, "do it yourself!"

So I thought, "OK, I will!"

That's very much in Mark's character.

He was prepared to take advice only if he registered that

the person was absolutely top of what they did.

One year, Mark went to Barling in Mount Street and bought a Buddha.

And then he asked me what to do with it.

I must say, it was the most peaceful creature, you know, when it arrived.

There is something about a Buddha that is just simply amazing.

Anyway, we painted the room this fabulous-coloured red,

and Mark had a wonderful collection of Tchelitchew

and Russian pictures, which also went in there.

And I don't think anybody had thought of collecting those before.

I think he saw the world as a sort of bric-a-brac store where

you collected bits and pieces.

Say you'd found a piece of Indian material, Chinese material,

a very modern material, and he mixed and matched all sorts of things.

Every time he went off to Italy,

he bought a new tablecloth or a new set of this or that.

He adored shopping and loved... I mean, it's great fun, isn't it,

to shop for something which is making money?

And you continually improve it.

I mean, he got to travel everywhere.

You see him one day, he's in France, the next day, you see him in Italy,

the next day, you see him in America, New York, in LA.

And every time he'd go - martini, that's his favourite,

vodka martini, there was no gin.

He had a knowledge of paintings, wines, food, just like James Bond!

Mark adored skiing.

He wasn't a great skier, but he loved it,

he loved the whole atmosphere.

The British Olympic ski team - he had affection for them,

so he would arrange a wonderful raffle.

I mean, you know, the raffle prizes were typical Mark.

I knew a friend who won a Cadillac for the first prize

and the second prize was a Riva. Can you imagine?

People now think that Annabel's was an instant success, and it wasn't.

It didn't get really solidly based, financially,

until towards the end of the first decade.

The private dining room was created in 1970,

seven years after the founding of Annabel's.

And I think you can see it as an expression of confidence,

that the brand was working, the club was established,

they could actually, you know,

offer their members something substantive and different.

And although there were economic problems in the UK,

there were not economic problems at Annabel's.

-ARCHIVE:

-But I imagine Berkeley Square's famous nightingale

flew away weeks ago.

-ARCHIVE:

-So far, about 30 of Britain's 1,400 local authorities

have capitulated to the demands of the unions

and paid the 55 shilling rise.

Oh, the Labour MPs and Labour ministers

and trade union officials and the dyed-in-the-wool socialists who

we took out absolutely adored going to Annabel's for a drink.

They absolutely loved it!

But then, most socialists are champagne socialists(!)

The '70s was very, very tough, but Annabel's,

it kept everything as it was supposed to be.

It really was a club in a real sense of the word -

that the members enjoyed being together.

And celebrating the tenth anniversary

was something that everybody wanted to be involved in.

And by this stage, we had a position where we had

a significant waiting list for membership -

probably over 1,500, and sometimes, it was over 2,000.

What was great for me is that I felt very anonymous there,

and having embraced kind of fame in the early '70s

in quite a big way in England, I felt there were very few

places I could go where I could feel relaxed, you know?

I remember the first time that I walked into Annabel's.

It was 1970.

And I was making my second movie. And I'd never been to London.

And I just... I remember going into this club

and feeling like I was absolutely transported.

I remember when it was pointed out to me where it was, I thought

it was that wonderful Georgian house which was the Clermont, in fact.

So it was disappointing

when you suddenly realised that you were going down the basement.

But that was the remarkable thing about it,

because through the door,

you suddenly felt that it was

more of an Aladdin's cave, and it was a surprisingly luxurious space.

It was like an extraordinarily designed and conceived place,

where you never really wanted to leave.

It was warm - the colours, the reds.

It had this elegance to it,

and yet you felt like you could put your feet up.

It was a very sexy decor.

Brilliantly done.

Mark was very aware of the fact

that decor must make people look prettier, beyond anything else,

and his lighting and the light bouncing off the brass,

it's all kind of smoke and mirrors department,

which was brilliant, with these beautiful faces in it.

You saw reflections in it, slightly.

You weren't quite sure who was buried where,

so it became mysterious.

Really, the point of Annabel's was it was romantic

and I'll bet you'll find

that a great many marriages were proposed in that room.

This place, it's romance.

They have romances all the time going on here.

That's the whole point of a nightclub, isn't it?

I got engaged in Annabel's. I think thousands of people did.

So many people fall in love, they get married, then divorced,

they're coming back again together, then the children.

This is the place.

Sometimes they'd come in

and they weren't with their husbands, you know?

They would come in and they knew

that I knew they weren't with their husbands

when they walked through the door.

You made sure you didn't call them Mrs, their right name

when they went out, because they weren't always with their Mr.

Working-class people, if they divorce their wife,

they don't ever want to seem them again.

"Got rid of her, she's gone," or "Got rid of him, he's gone."

Society people have got a different way of life.

It's not the end of the world if you've divorced somebody.

They still respected each other.

Any club owner wants to inject a roguish glamour into it

from time to time, and Mark was no exception.

I didn't think he consciously peppered the membership in that way,

but there were certainly some fantastic Shakespearean figures

around the place.

One day, Tim Hanbury and all the crowd who used to come here,

they nicked a bus.

The bus driver had gone somewhere, I don't know where,

but Tim Hanbury got in the bus and drove the bus off

-round the West End.

-"Nando, Nando quick!" "What?"

"Take the bus!" "What bus?"

And a bus full of Chinese... or Japanese tourists.

So I came down to Tim Hanbury, I said,

"Mr Hanbury, West End Central are on the line

"and they'd like to have a word with you."

West End Central Police Station, that is.

"Who drove the bus up?" I said, "I drove the bus up."

"No, who drove it here?"

I said, "I dunno."

And he ran out of the club and we didn't see him for a week,

and word had it that he'd flown out the country.

-John Wayne came in one night.

-Oh, John Wayne was funny, wasn't he?

-John Wayne.

-John Wayne got very drunk.

He was in here in the bar

trying to light a cigar.

He broke three of them in the process,

that shows you how drunk he was.

John Wayne, he went inside the Buddha Room

trying to take the nipples of a lady,

you know, playing with her nipples there and I had to stop him.

I said, "What are you doing?!"

Then he said, "All right, we'll go to the dance floor."

-Then he came out into the cloakroom.

-You ran in there, didn't you?

I went in there to look after him, make sure he was all right.

He went up to the stand-ups

and he looked round to this guy next to him and he said,

"You can tell your buddies you hung out with John Wayne."

One of the things Mark was virulent about

was having really beautiful men's loos.

They are the best men's loos anywhere.

And the one in Annabel's was particularly good.

It had lots of cartoons among other things, great cartoons.

But there was also a ticker tape machine

that brought the stock market news from Tokyo and New York.

It'd be going "Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick"

all the time, "Tick-tick-tick-tick."

People would go in and read it

and either kill themselves or order more champagne.

SIRENS WAIL

-REPORTER:

-This was a carbon copy of the attack

on another London restaurant just six days ago.

There was no warning and the bomb,

a three-pounder packed with ball bearings and nuts and bolts,

was hurled through a window.

There was a period during the Irish Troubles

when the IRA were clearly going to bomb places in London and did so.

Well, after Scott's was blown up in Mount Street,

we had to take precautions

and Mr Birley had sandbags put up outside the club.

Discreet sandbags, but sandbags nevertheless.

We used to get a few phone calls, the IRA saying,

"Better empty Annabel's, cos we're going to blow it up."

I think he would have been deeply offended if he wasn't on the list

and I think people who went there probably would be offended by it.

But he was unquestionably on the list.

The police said lock the doors, no coats to be given out,

everybody to go at once

and said the girls had to go out without their minks on

and freeze up there for a while.

The police came down here with dogs, sniffer dogs,

went through the place, cleared out.

Nice and calm, like nothing happened.

I mean, this is the stiff British upper lip

and all those things that, sadly, have gone out of our life.

The reason people went to Annabel's was because it was

a mark of your status, a mark of your being part of society,

and because it was regarded

by the people that I liked and wanted to mix with

as THE best nightclub in the world.

Mark was a Conservative, as am I,

and the club had a Conservative atmosphere.

He celebrated election nights when we won,

because he was a dyed-in-the-wool Tory

and he wanted us to win the elections.

CHEERING

Absolutely, I was here when Margaret Thatcher won,

and I was serving here big magnums of champagne.

While he was an elitist, he was perfectly happy

for people from different environments to join the elite,

but that was the rule - you had to join the elite, not kill it.

Not try and attack it or change it, or make it into something it wasn't.

I think the '80s, that was the most fantastic years

in my life.

Everybody enjoying themselves,

everybody making so much money everywhere.

It's true, in the '80s, the City was doing very well

and so, presumably, everyone was doing well,

because everyone that came in had plenty of money to spend.

They used to come and say, "Nando, can I have my Bentley?"

I used to say, "Yes, sir, which one?"

"The grey one." I'd say, "Well, I've got three grey ones."

I was here for about three or four months,

kind of getting my feet in, feeling good, and all of a sudden,

one waiter comes and says, "Hey, Cass, you know what?

"That's Prince Andrew here." I said, "Oh, my God, I feel so proud.

"I'm actually playing music for royalty and stuff like this."

So I went over.

"How are you doing, Your Highness?"

He looked at me and said,

"I'm doing well, thank you very much."

I said, "Are you digging the sounds?"

He said, "I think the music is quite good, actually."

I said, "Hang in there, I'll be right back."

So I brought him a couple of cassettes, you know,

and he stood up.

He shook my hand like a brother, he said,

IN PLUMMY VOICE: "Thank you awfully."

I said, "Right on!"

So many titled people came in, it was unbelievable.

In fact, one night, we had three kings in Annabel's at one time.

I served the King of Morocco and I served the Shah of Iran.

Maktoum used to come in. He was quite a regular customer.

And on his way, he came out to the toilet, he always had a minder

showing him the way, leading him the way to the toilet.

I said, "Your Highness,

"could you tell me who's going to win the race tomorrow?"

And he said, "I'm not going to say the favourite,

"I'm going to give you this name, and you put this £50 on it,"

and it was a 14-1 winner I got.

I'll never forget that, and he was an actual lovely, lovely man,

but he looked so miserable, didn't he? Always looked miserable,

but he wasn't, he was so lovely.

The fact that the royal family, well, members of it,

used the club so much was because they felt comfortable.

I liked Fergie.

Fergie was cool.

It was good fun. They were like the young lads that used to come in.

They were a laugh.

Oh, she was a lovely lady, Diana.

I remember Diana. She used to come in,

"Oh, Cass, would you play my music?"

Whenever she's dancing, she always takes her shoes off.

And she likes to pirouette

and spin around, and he was doing all the business.

She used to love dancing with Prince Charles here.

They felt able to be themselves,

they weren't in the glare of publicity,

they felt that they were discreet,

they felt that people who'd been there would be discreet,

and they were amongst people who knew how to behave.

You know, for Annabel's, everybody would be treated the same.

There's no sort of... Doesn't matter whether it's a big tip,

a big shot or a small shot, it doesn't matter.

I brought a lot of movie stars to Annabel's over the years

because there wasn't another place for them

to feel really comfortable at the time,

and I like it.

The stars were unbelievable that came into me.

Diana Ross would walk in the club.

She'd walk straight into the club, straight onto the dance floor.

Loved dancing - "Tu-tu-tu-tu-tu," chipping on the floor.

Tony Curtis,

Gregory Peck.

I thought to myself, "I'm in a dream."

Annabel's was great because no paparazzi,

no journalists were in there.

Save for Nigel Dempster, of course!

You know, in the unusual circumstances when somebody

might have behaved badly at Annabel's, and I'm sure they did,

you wouldn't expect to see it in the Daily Mail the next day,

or on the morning news.

Joan Collins was in here one night, dancing with someone or other,

I don't know who.

But someone had managed to get in the club,

a guest of a member, presumably,

with a camera in his pocket

and he took a photograph of Joan Collins on the dance floor

-and rushed out.

-All of a sudden,

one of the receptionists said,

"Quick, Nando, that's a photographer running up."

I snatched the camera off of him,

he's grabbed me round the neck

and I just gave him a dig,

and the photographer's on the floor

and they're looking for the camera, found his camera,

tore the film out

and just walked back slowly, you know?

A couple of days later, there was a big article in the paper

saying, "The gorillas from Annabel's."

People felt safe when they went there.

They knew that they were going to be taken care of.

Frank Sinatra, when he's in London,

this is his club.

His agent or whoever phoned up from the Royal Albert Hall

where he'd been performing and said,

"Can Mr Sinatra come down and change when he gets down there?

"He's coming off of stage in a limo, coming straight here."

I said, "Yes, of course there's somewhere he can change,

"out the back in the cloakroom," so he came. And Sinatra -

Frank Sinatra - was my idol, since I was a young lad.

He came down, took his shirt off,

put a clean shirt on, I did his cuff links up for him,

he gave me a 100 tip,

which was very nice.

Frank Sinatra, he said to Louis,

-"Luigi..."

-HE SPEAKS ITALIAN

That's just Italian.

He said, "What do you think of me?"

"Mr Sinatra, you are the greatest...

"..Italian since Mussolini."

"Oh, that's what you think of me?"

I said, "Yes."

As far as Annabel's is concerned,

Louis would be the name that I remember the most.

Everybody remembers Louis.

Shirley Bassey was banned from Annabel's for many, many years.

-You know that, do you?

-Because she kicked Louis Emanuelli up the arse.

Like all the great maitre d's of the world,

he had a wonderful palm,

which recognised exactly the denomination of note

that you had palmed off to him.

He ruled the restaurant with a rod of iron,

all the staff were scared of him,

but he was very, very good.

The John Ward triptych of Annabel's was commissioned

to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the club.

And it's an interesting picture, cos all the founder members are there.

They were all friends, which was a significant point.

Each one knew each other.

James Hanson, Harry Hambleden,

George Galitzine.

If you look at Annabel,

she's looking across the room, past everybody,

and Mark is just recognising her, but not doing it too positively.

That was a sort of, I suppose,

acknowledgment of their relationship.

BRAZILIAN CARNIVAL MUSIC

The Brazil nights were out of sight.

-The dancers...

-HE CHUCKLES

I have another story. They were beautiful!

Practically naked. I mean, people loved it.

They always used to come in every night through the front.

The only trouble with that is their headgear was so high

that they had a job getting in the door.

And this guy did some things with a football, it was something else.

The people, they just sat there, they all sort of...

I mean, the members used to love...

every minute.

The Brazil week was really the last of the Birley-type events,

where he did what he wanted to do

and they got more and more ambitious,

more and more spectacular,

and inevitably, more expensive.

I think every decade was a success for the club,

but the '80s did of course have one huge dark spot in it,

which was the collapse of Lloyds,

which cut a massive swathe through a lot of people

who regarded membership of Lloyds as being school fees and fund money.

Lloyds has indeed had terrible losses in the last four years,

but it does demonstrate the strength of the Lloyds system.

We are very much still here.

We do pass all the necessary solvency tests.

It has indeed been very painful for our members, but we will

trade forward as certainly tomorrow as we have for

the last 300-odd years.

The Lloyd's crash in the early '90s was significant because a lot of

our members lost serious amounts of cash.

And it impacted, I think,

on Mark, in a way.

And he had, actually, a lot of personal friends who suffered

serious financial loss.

And it made him more cautious.

He suddenly had an sudden attack of credit consciousness

and he decided everybody should pay their bills on time.

Rather than waiting for the bills to go to the office and then wait

three months for the account department to pay it,

he banned credit.

So you could no longer just sign the bill, which is what most of

us did, just sign the bill in his

establishments and pay them later on.

And of course at the end of the month, when the bill came,

it was an absolute shocker.

So we were a bit reckless at times,

but occasionally we got chased up by the accounts department.

I, myself, I was panicked.

I said, "My God, what am I going to do?"

Because I cannot make money to pay the meter.

How are you going to pay the mortgage? God help us.

You know, I don't know how, but we went through.

We went through that miserable time.

Annabel's, for me and my sisters and my family, was folklore.

My grandfather, who was a wonderful man called Major Bruce Shand,

whose actual offices were Harry's Bar,

you know, a stone's through from 44 Berkeley Square,

used to read my cousin and I, Tom Parker Bowles,

bedtime stories and the stories were

always about these two boys called Bom and Ten

who'd have these, you know, rumbustious adventures.

They'd always end up in London,

and they'd always end up in this mythical place called Annabel's.

So as a five-year-old boy,

I knew but didn't know about this place called Annabel's.

It was this land where, with him,

Tizer flowed from every fountain.

It was, like, kind of... Willy Wonka's paradise.

I'd walked past this sentry box on Berkeley Square several times,

wondering what it was.

I remember being taken to Annabel's for the first time

at the age of 18, and it had that sort of Narnia-like feel to it.

What lay behind the sentry box?

Walking into it the first time and unlocking

this almost secret world.

And it was incredibly exciting and had that sense of a speakeasy.

That's something we've developed with our own business.

Certainly young people were encouraged to join.

We were always very interested in them

because they were the lifeblood,

they were the future of the club.

I'd work for Mr Birley for all those years

and then I recommended my son.

You know, he took that as read.

You know, if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for him.

No, he wouldn't take you on just

because you were related family.

He had to make sure you were top of your game.

Of course you had to have new blood.

There's no point fossilising with a whole lot of people of the same age,

who would then die off and you'll be left with nothing.

The dress code is an example of Mark feeling that we needed to keep up

with the times. It was an experiment. It also was a disaster.

The British are very good with uniforms.

The minute you say to them,

"You're on your own, do what you want,"

it's not always successful.

Men of course struggled with how to look cool and didn't succeed.

I think it ran for two or three months and then went back to

where it was for some time.

That's the international way that everything is going.

You can suddenly turn up in shorts and sneakers,

everywhere but here.

The dress code now is a shirt with a collar

and a blazer or suit jacket.

Wow! You don't have to wear a tie now!

I'm not the best person to support that.

My grandfather used to say to me,

and it's probably deeply inappropriate to me

and he was an army man,

that one should always wear a tie because you

never know when your services might be called upon

by Her Royal Majesty.

It is true that it is the only nightclub that the Queen has

ever been to.

She drank gin martini, no lemon.

I've served everybody round the world, all the film stars,

the Royal families from all different countries,

but to serve Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth,

I think it was one of the greatest honours I've ever had.

The 40th was fantastic. Barry Humphries

wrote a really, really good song.

It must have taken ages to do it, but he did it brilliantly.

Of the 125 living founder members,

I think all those that could walk and stand were there.

I mean, I think over 90 came.

You did sit there thinking, "Where have all the years gone?"

I mean, it all seems like yesterday.

Mark understood that perhaps he was getting older and wanted

in some shape or form

to make Annabel's contemporary and relevant.

That wasn't some PR job.

It was, "OK, we've got to listen to what younger people want."

Mark encouraged India Jane and Robin during

the transition period to make a number of design changes

to the club.

Robin and Jane's impact was significant.

I think Mark handed over reluctantly.

I think the biggest transformation was

the revitalisation of a lot of the fabrics in the place,

that the building suddenly looked more vibrant.

India Jane put this extraordinary carpet down, which is

actually rather marvellous, I think. All that strange, free-flowing... A rather beautiful carpet.

It did make a huge statement that there was new life.

There certainly was a vibrant scene out of the membership as well.

A different crowd, a slightly younger crowd.

But it was a very useful addition to the club

and it brought people in and got the club talked about again.

I knew something was happening when I walked to Annabel's,

as I have many times, one summer and there were queues done the block.

There were never queues at Annabel's.

What had happened is the stars had aligned,

many more international people - what had been happening in London -

and Annabel's became the centre again.

It was common knowledge that Annabel's was

impossible to get into.

The trick used to be that you'd find out the name of a member

and you'd phone under that member's

name and say to whoever was on the desk,

"Hi, this is Mr So-And-So," who is a member.

You'd say, "I'm coming down tonight. I'll be a bit late.

"I'm going to send two or three friends beforehand,

"they'll ask for me." And we got away with it once or twice,

but then the member never turned up.

And when the member did turn up subsequently,

we were caught out. Because he said, "No, I didn't phone, I didn't book."

So the third time it didn't work and we had to try

and think of a different ruse.

Well, I saw it looming, the sale of the club,

so I wasn't surprised.

Unfortunately, at the time that I met Mark,

the family was in a difficult situation.

I could see that the sort of tip of that empire was rocky.

I think it was inevitable.

I think that Mark had a confidence in me at the end,

after many meetings and conversations,

that his legacy, if you like,

and the impression that he has created would be carried on

in the vein of which he intended it to be.

We were very confident with each other, at the point that

he believed I would be the gatekeeper for him, if you like.

Also, the money was relevant.

Richard Caring is a very great friend of mine.

I became a great friend of his because he rang me up

after he bought Annabel's to ask me for lunch.

My knowledge of Annabel's members at the time was "aristocratic".

And I wondered how they might relate to somebody such as myself,

who is not, obviously, an aristocrat,

coming along and taking over what

they believed was part of their heritage.

Yes, I mean, you always have people complaining about the fact that new

management came in and it's not what it used to be and all that.

I think that Richard Caring, in fairness,

has done the most fantastic job

in protecting the, if you like, the tradition, the atmosphere,

the ambiance of the Birley establishments.

I think in the very early months, he made a few mistakes.

And there are still one or two things that he does

which Mark wouldn't have done, but that's bound to be the case.

The sensitivity he has towards the staff is very clear.

They clearly really like him.

Yes, he's not Mark Birley, but I don't think he's ever said that

he was Mark Birley or was trying to be Mark Birley.

He's his own man, he's Richard Caring.

I was close to where he lives and was having my hair cut,

and I thought, "I'll potter past and ring the bell."

I went into the little local newsagent.

Do you know those chocolates that are done up in a foil thing

and the ambassador likes them... What are they called?

Ferrero Rocher.

So I bought a box of Ferrero Rocher

in that little plastic container, which looks like they contain

quails eggs, done up in a brown paper bag, and rang the bell.

I said, "It's Peter Blond,

"could I have a word with Mr Birley?"

There's a long pause, and I said, "I've got a present for him."

So I was admitted and shown up.

Mark was dressed and sitting in the corner, having some poire

and a cup of coffee.

I said, "I thought I'd say hello to you."

And he said, "So what's this present?"

And I produced this brown paper bag

and he picked it up as if it was something the dog had

left behind and undid it.

He had very long, elegant hands and fingers.

He looked at it and said,

"Only you would produce these ghastly, common Italian chocolates."

I said, "You're so spoilt! You're used to Rothschild ribbons,

"but this is a present."

He said, "I hate them!"

That was the last time I saw him.

-MOHAMMED:

-I will never forget him,

because I loved him.

Annabel's is Annabel's,

and, you know, it is hard once an owner disappears.

To keep that going, it's challenging.

The Ritz hotels have gone through their challenges

since Cesar Ritz died, and you have to have an owner

who is willing to continuously fund and grow,

and I think they're lucky to.

I think it's probably why Mark chose Richard Caring.

He probably said, "This man will keep this going."

The reason why Annabel's is successful

and will be successful for a very long time to be,

is it's not trying to be something that it's not - it's timeless.

If it starts trying too hard to be modern, then it's not Annabel's.

I haven't changed Mark Birley's style in Annabel's.

What we have done is moved it very slowly forward.

Whenever I go there, it's so jammed you can hardly get in.

When I wanted a smoking terrace, I was told we couldn't have one.

It's wonderful, the terrace, for me.

It just means that everybody nice goes to the terrace.

Some of them, they don't want to come downstairs at all.

The crowd who goes there has always kind of liked music.

Lady Gaga was amazing.

The fact Annabel's managed to secure Lady Gaga

at the very height of her career was an incredible coup.

There's no trickery when it's just, you know, a bitch and a piano.

It's like...it's what it is, so you have to really give it to them.

At one stage, she even used the heel on her stiletto

to play one of the tunes.

And I found one of her nails, which I keep.

The staff alone, they should make a movie out of,

because they are incredible characters.

People are themself. People are true to themself

and when they pass through these doors, they just feel at home.

Everybody knows everybody. "Hello, Miss Moss."

Everybody like it differently

and we have to make sure we can deliver it to them.

I think it's an extraordinary melting pot of everybody,

all walks of life, interesting people,

and they even let carpenters in.

BAFTA parties are the highlight of the year for me.

Charles Finch's BAFTA nights are different because of Charles Finch.

He somehow makes it Hollywood, makes it work.

I think when we bring the movie stars, they are surprised

that you have this beautiful grandeur in a nightclub.

Quite a few people have come up to me and said, "Is this your house?"

And I always say, "No, sadly not."

You get dressed up in a nice evening dress and everyone just feels

that they're doing a really mature, grown-up thing.

If you were old and posh, you drank claret.

If you were young and posh, you drank claret,

and if you're now new and not posh, you drink claret.

I've had some very great claret moments.

Everybody drinks claret, bucket-loads of the stuff.

Everybody arrives being very kind of put together

and then when they leave, they're a bit staggery.

Discretion is not just important, it's a job description.

Men and women together, getting drunk, having a great time -

there's a bit of decadence about it, yes.

-Yeah, baby!

-Hello, rich people!

CHEERING

-We're poor!

-I'm poor!

-Come on, it's a tradition.

I always say that when I come here.

LAUGHTER

I really love it here at Annabel's.

I mean, I started out playing in restaurants and bars

and nightclubs, so being here is a real treat for me

because I get to do a more intimate type of performance and I get to say

what I like and do what I like and everybody's just along for the ride.

London is now kind of going through a great phase,

it's really at the centre of everything, you know,

the art scene, music,

all kinds of cultural great events happening here,

like the centre of the world.

And you could say that Annabel's is also, in Berkeley Square,

it's the centre of that world, you know?

I love this place more than anything in the world. I promise you.

It's the same, it's like my family, this place.

You don't feel that you are just serving someone,

you really feel like you are a friend looking after them,

like at home, like when you will welcome a guest to your house.

The great scenario is when you've got the 75-year-old grandad

and the 21-year-old grandson,

and the grandson is telling the grandad to ease up.

Walking into Berkeley Square, walking down that staircase,

walking into the club, being seated at that table,

ordering that cocktail, speaking to Mohammed,

Mohammed making you look like a rock star to the person that you're with,

all of that is intoxicatingly romantic.

You can hear each other speak,

you can feel that the lights are beautiful.

The lighting is fantastic, by the way.

It's not bright, that's what I definitely love about it.

For any woman who wants to go to a place and feel that the lighting

is gifting her something, it definitely does at Annabel's!

I like the little library room that's by the bar,

because you don't even know it's there and then you turn

and then you go right round and you see this little area

where you can sit cosy with your friends before your table is ready.

I think when something is put together

with that kind of affection,

it kind of lasts forever, basically.

Annabel's will be here another 50 years, I'm sure,

with a different set of members,

and another period of evolution in the club's history,

and I won't be here to look after them.

I'm sure, hopefully, they'll be drinking well.

And I think it would be a shame if Annabel's lost all its sense

of...coming home, but at the same time,

obviously it has to move forward

and I think they have managed that very successfully.

They are managing to balance the old with the new.

I was taken there around my 18th birthday

as a present by my father and Mark, as a rite of passage.

My son will be 18 in 17 years' time

and hopefully I'll be around to take him there myself.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

# Can't read my, can't read my

# No, he can't read my poker face

# She's got me like nobody

# Can't read my, can't read my

# No, he can't read my poker face.

# I want to hold 'em like they do in Texas, please

# Fold 'em, let 'em hit me

# Raise it, baby, stay with me

# Love game, intuition, play the cards with spades to start

# And after he's been hooked... #

LAUGHTER

# ..I'll play the one that's on his heart

# Oh, oh-oh-oh-oh

# Oh-oh-oh-oh

# I'll get him hot, show him what I've got

# Oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# I'll get him hot, show him what I've got

# Can't read my, can't read my

# No, he can't read my poker face

# She's got me like nobody

# Can't read my, can't read my

# No, he can't read my poker face

# He's got me like nobody. #

You know, this song is about

actually when I was making love to this one guy that I was dating

a long time ago,

that I was thinking about chicks every time we had sex.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

And I just didn't want him to figure it out because I felt so bad,

but I don't any more, because I wrote a song about it!

# Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face

# Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face

# I want to roll with him, a hard pair we will be

# A little gambling is fun when you're with me

# Russian Roulette is not the same without a gun

# And baby, when it's love

# If it's not rough it isn't fun

# Oh, oh-oh-oh... #

-WHISTLING

-Thank you.

# Oh, oh-oh-oh... #

A dollar for my hat, please!

# I'll get him hot, show him what I've got

# Oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh

# I'll get him hot, show him what I've got

# Can't read my, can't read my

# No, he can't read my poker face

# He's got me like nobody

# Can't read my, can't read my

# No, he can't read my poker face

# She's got me like nobody

# Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face

# Pa-pa-pa-poker face, pa-pa-poker face. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE