We all know the story of Geoffrey Bernard, the hard-drinking writer who made the Coach & Horses on Greek Street his second home. Jazz musician George Melly and painter Francis Bacon are also names that pop up frequently when researching the history of Soho and its characters. This stretch of the West Endhas had its fair share of fascinating personalities over the years, from the famous to the infamous. Then there were those who were only known to the regulars of Soho’s pubs and clubs, held in very high esteem for their outlandish personas. Here we pay homage to some of those who have brightened up this part of town, which sadly seems to be losing much of its bohemian character to the Crossrail link and branches of Strada.
Muriel Belcher owned The Colony Room, a private member’s bar patronised by Melly and Bacon. They described her as being temperamental and extremely rude, but this endeared her even more to her frequent customers, who she counted as friends. Bacon in particular was given free drinks and even paid a commission to bring his friends in each week. He would go on to paint Belcher in a series of portraits entitled Three Studies for a Portrait of Muriel Belcher. In 1998 Tilda Swinton played Belcher in a film about the life of the painter, called Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon. Belcher died in 1979, but the Colony Room remained open till 2008; throughout the nineties and noughties it had become a haunt of Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and a whole host of other YBAs; Kate Moss even did a stint as a barmaid.
\n\nPaul Raymond can be credited with being the grandfather of the modern British strip club. In 1958 he opened Raymond’s Revue Bar (now celebrity favourite The Box) on Walkers Court, at the bottom of Berwick Street. At the time it was illegal for women to dance in clubs, although there was no law against them standing motionless in the nude, in front of an audience, which is how the Windmill got around this. Raymond found another loophole; when he took over the Doric Ballroom he turned it into a private member’s club, so the girls would be allowed to dance.
So successful was his club (and his publishing arm, responsible for Escort, Razzle and Men Only) that by the time he died in 2008 he owned shares in nearly half of Soho’s entertainment industry, including Soho House and Ronnie Scott’s. He may have lived in a penthouse at the Ritz, but for all his success Raymond didn’t have a happy life. He barely had a relationship with most of his offspring with the exception of his daughter, who died of a drugs overdose at the age of 36, a tragedy he seemingly never recovered from. He became a virtual recluse in the latter years of his life, receiving few visitors, and doing very little apart from keep track of his money. \n\nAs his name suggests, Ras Prince Monolulu was a flamboyant character. He claimed to be a Zulu prince from Abyssinia, when in fact he was born plain Peter Carl Mackay in 1881. The truth was that he was Guyanese sailor, and after being press-ganged onto a ship going to New York (the crew used intimidation tactics to force him to work on the ship) he decided to re-name himself as a prince as he believed this would prevent any further bullying. After a stint at a German internment camp during World War I and a series of jobs including fortune-reading, boxing and performing as part of the very first all-black West End musical In Dahomey, he ended up as a tipster. He sold tips for horses, passing on the name of the winning horse in an envelope to the punters, but he was rarely right. He became more famous for his eccentric appearance; he wore ostrich feathers on his head, baggy harem trousers with a scarf wrapped around his waist and brightly coloured waistcoats.
His catchphrase was “I gotta horse”, and for the first half of the 20th century he was the most well-known black figure in Britain. He frequented Soho Square, where he would often stop by to sit on a bench and watch passers-by. The circumstances surrounding his death in 1965 are suitably bizarre. While in Middlesex Hospital, Jeffrey Bernard visited him for the purpose of gaining an interview. He had brought a box of chocolates for Monolulu as a gift, who after taking one began to choke. Bernard promptly fled, and Monolulu died shortly after.
Pamela Jennings, more usually known as Soho Pam, was homeless for many years. She had become a favourite character of the Private Eye staff who frequent the Coach & Horses, despite the efforts of former landlord Norman Balon, famed for his prickly character. Pam was very generous with her money, and would return cash she’d begged for if she could afford to. She sat for portraits by several artists, and even had a Twitter account set up in her name. She was very reserved when it came to the reasons why she became homeless, and all that is known is that she suffered some form of crisis after the death of her parents. Soho Pam passed away in December 2012 at the age of 48, and touching obituaries appeared in the Telegraph, Popbitch, and the New Statesman.
