Gentleman's Clubs: From Coffee Houses to Corridors of Power

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0:37What do I do? Well, you need to find another member of the club who likes you. Oh, God. Which is your challenge. We tend to think of them as being very old-fashioned and quite foggy-ish. But they were racing. So the bets on who's going to get gout first show that these people are leading barely decking life. I believe there was a lot of gout at Brooks. Right. There was a lot of gout. which is sort of, there are places which now allow for a more casual... Okay, by casual, we're talking your casual, i.e. taking a tie off. We're not talking flip-flops.

1:11Hello, and welcome to The Luxury Dispatch, the podcast that reveals the refined and the rare, the stories, people, and items that make up the luxury industry. I'm Tom Chamberlain, and today we're going to be talking about a subject of intrigue, a subject of mystery. I'm here with Geordie Willis, eighth generation family member of Barry Brothers and Rudd and Peter Howarth, a seasoned veteran journalist. You're a friend and a great editor, having edited Esquire, Arena. Thank you. And you now currently run Shoe Media. That's true. And we are here today, gentlemen, to talk about clubs. Hurrah. Now, I will try and encapsulate this in a diary entry.

1:52And this is from the diary of Tommy Lassels, who if any of you have seen The Crown, you'll remember he was the King's and then Queen's private secretary, and so close eight. So he writes on the 9th of October in 1940, when I was in Prats on Monday, there was a crackle in the street, like little boys letting off fireworks on Guy Fawkes Day, which proved to be the arrival of a bouquet of incendiary bombs. I just sat down to a very good soft road herring, so I stayed where I was. But E. Devonshire, who is the proprietor of Prats, attended by his son Bill and Harold Macmillan, dashed up into St. James's Street and spent an enjoyable quarter of an hour putting them out.

2:29Now, song, foire and gallows humour aside about the Blitz, I think that's a perfect encapsulation of these clubs and their place in history, but also the type of people who went there. And these are, of course, the clubs of St. James's. So on Pall Mall, St. James's Street, the old gentlemen's clubs, those stoic sentinel buildings that many people walk by but don't really know much about. They only know them as potential corridors of power. And there's a great reputation of these places that separate them from what we know as the private members club of today, often single sex, but very much part of the St.

3:09James setup. And when I talk about these sentinel buildings what i really mean from a naming point of view is whites brooks reform athenaeum united carlton boodles pratt's rac sort of we'll come to the rac it's an interesting really interested part of this whole debate we're going to have about the idea of luxury exclusivity membership etc i only mention it because i got kicked out the other day for not wearing a shirt and tie so we'll come on we'll come on as well i mean i almost kicked you out of today for not wearing a shirt and tie but um nevertheless uh so these are the clubs we're talking about and what i love about these places they all have their own a little bit like army regiments they have their sort of histories they have their traditions they have their their own particular reasons why somebody will or will not want to join yeah and of course what separates them from everywhere else is well firstly they're largely men only one or two exceptions and they uh have a historic reason for being which the modern mixed sex members clubs do not have the origins of the modern mixed sex members club really comes from after the first world war when women were slightly more confident in society because they were driving the buses during the First World War and making the munitions.

4:41And they wanted to, you know, they weren't just suddenly going to be sent back to the home. And so there was a need and a desire for them to be part of the London nightlife. But these places, these quiet, even sometimes sort of imposing, yes, but also dull looking frontages of these buildings, very old fashioned, very Georgian, you know, but when you can't really see him through the windows and usually it's a portrait of somebody or gust but anonymous these are those places so we're talking about the most traditional yes the earliest yeah broadly starting in the late 17th and 18th century yeah men only london based but also the precursor for private members clubs around the world exactly basically the ones that you would be a lunatic if you wanted to start up today.

5:29So, Geordie, why don't you kick us off about clubs? Because obviously they had a genesis and you know all about it. They did. Well, the reason I know a little bit about it is that where I work, Berry Brothers and Rudd, is at the bottom of St. James's Street in London. We're about five minutes away from Buckingham Palace to centre it in there. And we have been there since 1698. Have you been there since 1698? I've been there for almost since 1698. His portrait's up. Is it going to be one of those episodes? Yeah, it is. So the joy of St. James's Street and Palm Island, it's actually a relatively small part of London that changed dramatically at the end of the 17th century.

6:14So what happened, and this was the genesis of the private members club that we think of today as the Palm Island St. James's Street clubs, is there was the second Great Fire of London. So in England, we often learn about 1666 and the Great Fire of London. The damage of that fire was still apparent, but we're a little bit later on. And in 1698, there was the Great Fire of Whitehall. And Whitehall was the royal residence. And it burnt to the ground at the beginning of January 1698. and the court moved to St. James's Palace at the bottom of St. James's Street. So St. James's Palace had been around since the 12th century.

7:00It had been taken on by Henry VIII as a love nest for Anne Boleyn. It started life as a hospital for leprous maidens. There were 14 leprous maidens. Didn't he buy it off the provost of Eton? Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Exactly. Well, Eton would have owned huge amounts and tracts of land. So it became... They still do. They still do. It became the Royal Palace. And what that did is it completely changed the shape of London. So if you think of London as being the city broadly, suddenly this movement of the court from Whitehall to where it is today, the one on St. James's Street, is suddenly the West End became the most fashionable part.

7:44Now, this was already happening. It's like Donald Trump moving from Washington to Palm Beach. To Mar-a-Lago. It's a fraction of the distance. I mean, it is. It's funny to think of a two-minute walk becoming this huge paradigm shift in the way that London functioned and where everyone settled themselves. Well, we all think of the West End today as being the centre of London. We don't really question the fact that the term itself, West End, suggests that it's not in the centre. It was the West, to the West. But it was the Wild West. It was the sort of the pleasure district of London. But where you have smart people and smart houses, you also have things that fill in the gaps.

8:23So between, that was a very knowing. No, no, sorry. No, I was just thinking about. What gap do you fill in your smart house? Do you know what I was thinking about? Sorry, this is my brain. Follow it. I was thinking about Burlington Arcade. Yeah. And there are certain laws within Burlington Arcade. and one is that you are not allowed, well, no one's allowed to whistle apart from Sir Paul McCartney, apparently. That's good. And you're not allowed to cluck. And the reason is that in Burlington Arcade on the second, first floors above is where all the prostitutes hung out. And when people walked through, that's how they would attract people's attention.

9:00Well, you are in exactly the right place, as it were. Because what St. James's was known for was these grand houses and then between these houses was where these grand people behaved rather badly a lot of the time. So you have brothels, you have gambling dens, and you have not in the Starbucks tradition, but you have coffee houses and chocolate houses. So a lot of the private members clubs that we'll talk about today emerged at the end of the 17th century as coffee houses. Yes. So that's a sort of genesis. But broadly, these are things that were exotics that had come in from around the empire.

9:42And they were gathering spots, these spaces, not particularly grand in the early days, but they were gathering places for people to meet and talk and debate. And they were great centers of power on that basis. But crucially, with the coffee, the chocolate, the pamphlets and stuff, there were backrooms. and in these back rooms they wanted to do things that were illegal and illicit things like gambling and so that is where somewhere like white you were talking about chocolate shops um was uh became sort of famous because in the back they set up what was referred to as a private members club this is maybe how we can unpack yeah what we mean by club because club as we think of today clubbing together yeah uh the etymology of the word club in the context that we're talking about today was about being clubbable or more importantly unclubbable yes the idea that if you were unclubbable you were the sort of person who ultimately wouldn't pay their bills yeah so there was this idea that a group of people with similar interests could come together um in a in a space and it's important to say these places all had clubhouses yeah so so their property was intrinsically tied to this yes and through a shared interest and from clubbing together their resources they would have a nicer place to be they would be drinking nicer wine and in theory drinking nicer food we'll come on to whether that's still the case yes and and that idea of almost eating nice food eating eating sorry eating nice but the swirl back in the day the soup soup of the day yeah drink that yeah but i could tell you that is and you know wellington was made a point about you should always own the freehold right and that was the idea wasn't it's that these people, if you're going to start a club, own the building and the members own the building.

11:31It's an early co-op. Yeah. Well, that idea of being rather a social enterprise is quite different to the way people think about them today. Very much so. Whereas these were, yes, there was an element of aristocratic there, certainly, but it was a sort of proto-socialism, which is a phrase that comes out in one of the great books. We'll put a link in the show notes to some of the great books on this subject as well. But that idea of people coming together for entertainment that was mostly illegal is the starting point. And the legality is interesting because it gives them the frisson, something which I think is largely lost today because now we tend to think of them as being quite very old fashioned and quite foggy.

12:16But they were racy. And Jonathan Swift famously said that whites was the bane of half of English nobility. You know, they really had a reputation for being, you know, slightly off colour places. Yes. But the law also said that if it's called a private member's club, it made it very difficult for the police to raid it. So they were able to get up to all the stuff without any danger of being caught. But the back room, ultimately the facade of the coffee house, was where a lot of magazine titles today come from. Tatler, for example, was short for Tittle Tattle. Yes. was short for gossip. And that was the idea of this gossip coming out of the coffeehouses.

13:00Even the section... Does Tatler still exist? It does. It does. So the section at the back, the section at the back of Tatler was called Bystander, which was exactly the same, the person standing and listening to this news. And the same with the spectator. The spectator was the bystander, the person who was going in to listen to news and report it back to the wider audience. But all of these private members clubs, i think started as coffee and chocolate yes and then quite quickly when lots of sort of aristocrats and you know the sort of the generation of the uk sort of were spending a lot of time here they had nice places to go home to so when they weren't going to be home they want they had high demands of the premises they were going to so they were behind turning these buildings into something quite special so we talk about illicit uh behavior of course one of the most famous artworks out of the uk is hogarth's a rake progress yes and of course his gambling and whoring and things that's what you know sent him spiraling um into manners but guess where it all started onst james's street it all started at his club and so you know that's the first plate isn't it it's the yes exactly and it was it was it was it's just a well uh documented caricature of of what these places are putting up there is a sort of um an indulgence a decadence illusionist that you can do, which you wouldn't be doing at home.

14:37You'd be going to your back room in the coffee shop to do the stuff that you couldn't do at home. So what would you be doing in the back room of the coffee shop? Well, gambling is the major thing. Gambling and drinking. Gambling is massive and remained enormous. There's wonderful bets in the books of a lot of these clubs that have a record of what people got out to. So there's one that's like, I bet that Lord Chumley will get gout before the other. So the bets on who's going to get gout first show that these people are leading barely deck in life. Of course, gout is a big issue. I believe there was a lot of gout at Brooks.

15:17There's a lot of gout, which is the wigs. It's very wiggish. There was wiggery. So political affiliations would determine which club you joined. It would in time. It'd be a big part, a huge part of this. And I think it also created the myth that these were corridors of power. Right. Okay. So, yeah, a lot of betting, a lot of betting on how quickly a raindrop would fall down the window and so on. Yeah. But gambling mania, it was a huge, huge vice in the UK. But these places... And it was illegal. Yes. Yeah. And these places allowed, like legitimised it. Well, not legitimised, it allowed you to be able to do it.

15:54They were the bet 365 of the... Yeah. Sort of. The paddy power. well you could lad brooks yeah um but at a very high level and then of course as as you know dukes of this and also them coming along with lots of money they wanted nicer places so they wanted better food they wanted better wine they wanted better surroundings but at that point it was also trickier to get in i you had to start looking at memberships in a way that the coffee houses didn't have memberships the coffee houses had access yes you would pay a penny and you would get in but anyone could come in yeah it was a the the entry was purely based on whether you had the cash yeah whereas as we start to see the the modern traditional private members club evolving and emerging uh it becomes much more about uh setting a precedent for what those membership rules might look like yes and there was of course a sort of mania for clubs back then you look we've listed a whole bunch of these clubs.

16:56There are a couple more. But they make up about 10 % of the amount of clubs that were open back in the day. So they've died since? A lot. A lot. A lot. But prior to that, what you had was politics that played a huge part in the way that people took up membership. So we mentioned whites, conservative. You have Brooks, which is Whiggish. Then, of course, Boodles. Again, Whiggish. Whigs were the pre-liberals. Yes. And the Tories became the Conservative Party over time. And worth pointing out that Labour weren't unrepresented because straight out of the idea of clubs in the West End came working men's clubs in rural towns.

17:43Yeah. So this is about like-minded people gathering together. The political affiliations come in due course, things like the Reform Act and so on. Yeah. pushing people aside. But what started off as apolitical meeting houses over time become these political powerhouses. Is the Reform Act and the Reform Club related? Yes. Oh. Yeah. Formed on the back of it, I believe. That's great. Yeah. Okay. I think you still have to be able to recite the Reform Act if you want to be a member of the Reform Club. Is that right? I think so. That's a good thing. There was a time when these clubs had a serious political purpose.

18:24And a great story about how Wellington had that banquet thrown for him in 1814, the year before the Battle of Waterloo, because he'd beaten Napoleon in another battle. And they chose whites largely because opposite in Brooks' club, through the windows were a bunch of very liberal aristocrats who supported Napoleon. So these clubs held views that were really extreme. The idea that there was any land-earning generally that supported the French emperor, it seems extraordinary. So these places did hold a lot of different opinions and powers and so forth. Well, important things happen there. I mean, was it the Treaty of Paris?

19:20Yes. That apparently was signed by Lord Shelburne in, was it the Lansdowne, the Round Room cocktail bar of the Lansdowne, you know, basically handing over America, you know, in a private members gentlemen's club. Yeah, yeah. Not in Parliament. I mean, these things, that's quite extraordinary. They were almost a proxy for Parliament. Right, okay. They were a proxy for Parliament and the Palace because they were places where they would host foreign heads of state and so forth. Well, also you can link it because if you look at the first surviving whites, articles of association, as it were, they suggest that you couldn't be voted in when parliament was in sitting.

20:02Oh, really? Yeah. So they were absolutely linked together. But what we're talking about is this transition from the back rooms of the coffee houses to these august buildings, institutions, obviously it's kind of predicated on a move towards exclusivity, as you're saying, Jordi. Anyone can go into the back of a coffee house, but not everyone can go into a private members club and you have to be, I mean, you still have to be nominated and seconded and whatever in order to get in, which of course, along with the political affiliations, means that's where you have this sense of exclusivity, power, influence, secret societies, conspiracy theories, all this sort of stuff.

20:48Because it's a bit like the Masons. You are a member of the club. And one of the things I'm really interested in is the psychology of that, the psychology of wanting to be a member of the club. I understand the psychology of wanting to go to the back room and gamble and hang out. But the idea of like, because, you know, Groucho Marx famously said, you know, I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that psychology of wanting to be, you know, we say that these clubs are largely male only. Male psychology? Is that a bro thing? So I think we've got to debunk a few things here because, firstly, there is no absolute proof that private members clubs weren't multisex in origin.

21:34Oh, really? Even if you look at the original rule books, they are not gender specific. Really? Yeah. Nobody. Somebody, anybody. Which was unusual at the time. Gender neutral language. Gender neutral language, exactly. then you have the reality of the situation as well as that a lot of the people running these houses uh would have been uh women as well so so so for example bianco yeah so let's mention her so we talked about whites earlier as the oldest uh recognized london club um that was started by uh not a grand duke or anything like that it was started by someone called francesco Bianco who was Italian yes and he anglicized his name to Francis White when he started up his coffee house he died at the beginning of the 18th century and his wife Elisabetta or Elizabeth took over yeah so a lot of these clubs had strong female leads Berry Brothers was started by a woman called the Widow born in 1698 as well so there were also female clubs as well and some of them were really quite successful.

22:46There was a precursor to Boodles called the female coterie, I think it was called. But there were also salons. So one of the reasons, reading through some of these fantastic books that is suggested for the male only club coming through, was a pushback against the fact that the power had previously sat with women. These salons, which were ticketed, you could buy a ticket to go in but they were almost always run by a group of female patrons and they held all the power in terms of who got in who got out so suddenly we get snob appeal coming in here as well right and there was a backlash against that those all died out in due course these were the you know the great debut on spaces and so on um and then the male only elements of the club and and whites was men only quite quickly i think it was a mid mid uh 18th century probably it became men only but i think i think we've got to be careful that we think that all of these were men only from absolutely from the start i think that's right it came it came it came in later so there was a weird manosphere backlash yeah hundreds of years ago yeah i think i think that's probably not a bad way of describing it at the time but these places became staunchly male now a lot of them are no longer men only and we can talk about that in due course i mean even prats you know which is considered you know it's a very small club in terms of membership it's only about 600 members um but it is considered one of the great sort of old-fashioned institutions is now yeah mixed and taking on female members and i think what's interesting though you know women membership aside is is the fact that they had this powerful history but that isn't really the case today they provide a very different function and it's interesting to see what those that function is now because would you start a club like this in St James's or Mayfair today no you absolutely wouldn't like it would be too difficult too expensive and I don't know if you would have the take up so what is behind the psychology of membership what is it that makes these particular clubs survive and what are the challenges do you think they face in this world of you know you know mixed sex clubs you know across the road in mayfair well well part you know part of it is that these are the these are the og so so private members clubs are a thing you know i've i've just been in milan and they've there's one that's opened up they're called the wild yeah for for the milanese and you go there and it's you know it it's a it's a great space and they're having events but it's you know it's a it's a modern day private members club that's set up as a business to get you know wealthy italians to to join and pay a large membership fee um so so so in a sense we we have the originals and and i've always found it interesting the way in which that that kind of traditional romance of the members club has been expressed in culture for example so james bond is a member of blades fictional club you know uh sherlock holmes's brother mycroft is a member of the diogenes club you know fiction fictional again but the idea that bertie worcester at drones exactly that that your that your club you know you're you know you mentioned earlier that you know are you clubbable are you not clubbable that your club is is this thing that that still that still has a sort of echo an after echo even today yeah you know james's private members club is not soho house and i suppose the difference between the two of them in some respect is that we're still talking about identity and status yeah there's a there's a visible expression well there's the idea that not anybody can join i mean yeah i mean okay in reality supposedly not anybody can join Soho House.

26:45But there's an awful lot of Soho Houses and there's an awful lot of members. Exactly. So that is still, there is something about the exclusivity that is definitely part of the appeal. And there is something about the historical precedent that has an appeal to a certain kind of person. Yeah, and also the charm. I think that there's a lot to, you know, these are places that are unlike anywhere else. Everywhere, every club's open now, there are a couple that hark back to something more old-fashioned, something cozier. But these places have a particular architecture and a particular set of standards and service that are utterly unique.

27:27Well, you mean terrible. Well, it's so interesting you say that because to some extent you're right. You know, when you open a private member's club today, part of the bragging rights is the chef that you've brought in or the sushi bar that you've opened up. Whereas here, they pride themselves on the rice pudding. and the savouries at pudding time. The food is not... If you took someone who recognised the modern club into one of these traditional clubs, you wouldn't be bowled away by the food. The service is fantastic, but of a type. There's often extraordinary art, traditional. And original. And original.

28:10And you go to somewhere like the Garrett Club where they um a lot of their their funding comes from the estate of a.a milne so winnie the pooh put all the pictures on the wall but it's wonderful pictures in there yeah but you're not there for all of those things and those are all the things that modern clubs are sold on it's the gym it's the um underground cinema it's the you know the restaurant upstairs it's the the community so that people must be buying into something and importantly these things these clubs aren't necessarily hugely expensive uh i mean some some of them are expensive you know a couple of thousand pounds a year so it's certainly not cheap but you know there are a lot of very smart gyms that would be more expensive so what is that and i think you're on to something and i think you're right actually i think i think it's an identity thing i think it's i think it's purely a sort of bragging right it's bragging rights yeah but it's quite bragging rights it's quite bragging rights it's not ostentatious if you know you know i mean if you say well you know i'll meet you at my club and it is a saint james's private members club you are not doing the same thing as saying which then speaks to the type of members that there are because a lot of people who would sort of want to brag about being a member of whites would not be allowed to be a member of whites actually that's not so let's maybe talk about the selection process how do you how do you get in i've decided i want to be a member of a club what do i do well you need to find another member of the club who likes you oh god which is your challenge well okay well let's assume these people these rarities exist if peter wanted to become a member of the club easy if i did if i remember much more easier easier so if if okay so i have a proposer and you need a proposer who's a member yeah and from reading i believe that is a licensing law that by law there's part of the licensing for clubs is that you have to if you to bring in new members in it has to be proposed by a current member yeah then most of them if not all of them you need a seconder yeah so a second member who do it then at that point things get opened up to the membership and that is where it potentially starts to get ugly because members want to have opinions but it's very but it's very democratic it's very democratic but you have to be the right type you are assessed you have well how you assist that's the thing do you have an interview that's the difficult part of it it's why people wait years and years for membership is because you have a process by which you get put in a put on a board notice board announced on a piece of paper and either people know your name and know you're a good sort or not it's very very difficult the other the way you could do it is perhaps going with a friend there and meeting people while you're there to make to make yourself known yeah um you have to be quite socially confident so do tom do you think that are these clubs desperate to find new members well that's the question yes how are they actively trying not to yeah what kind of businesses are they are they businesses at all It's a really good question because I think that the committee is everything.

31:18Okay. And so if the committee votes on how things go, and if the committee is full of people who, for example, with Prats, you know, for thinking, wanted to, you know, want women to be members, they made women members. But there would be other clubs that just say no. And, you know, it's a club that's owned by the members and therefore... And most of these clubs are owned by the members. not all of them but most of them are owned by their members yes and most of them are not paying significant rent on property because they've owned them for so long yes so they are broadly non-profits uh how was it put the other day it's either it's either non-profit because it's trying to make a profit and couldn't yeah or it's a non-profit because it's owned by the members and therefore it could be it gets put back in but if i become a new member i don't get equity in the club do i you get subsidized bits and bobs so i think the food is probably a bit cheaper in there yeah so you have a benefit rather than the drinks the drinks aren't as expensive as a pub and stuff and so there's yeah but here's an interesting thing to put out the rc you mentioned at the beginning the rc as a building is fabulous looking it's huge and it's wonderful and and grand but people don't have to dress up there people can dress down people can not that much tom i i as i said i went in there i was wearing a admittedly probably a motorcycle jacket but i did not have a shirt and tie on uh and i was asked to leave and i went for a meeting with a member okay well that's very interesting because i've i mean maybe it was at the weekend when i went so people allowed to wear sort of gilets and trainers but there were gilets and trainers around but there but you know there are places which are now allow for a more casual okay um a more casual by casual we're talking you're casual i.e.

33:07taking a tie off we're not talking we're not talking flip flops uh I think I think you're judging I think we've got to be aware of your own standards we're still talking jacket we're still talking tailored jacket it's casual yeah let's go okay we're not talking tracksuit we're not we're not we're not but they okay so when we're we're looking at this then in terms of what makes a club good Yeah. Why would someone want to be a part of one today? What is to be applauded and celebrated? I guess that's the point. I think my point is that would one ever be, if they're keen on the old-fashioned thing, happy to put that aside for the sake of the RAC swimming pool and squash courts?

33:53Well. Because the thing is that from an amenities point of view, The RAC is just streaks ahead of everybody else. Sir Paul Smith swims at the RAC swimming pool every morning at about 7 o 'clock. Do you hear that, people? Yeah. Go and meet Sir Paul Smith. And actually the swimming pool is beautiful. You can wear a gilet and get in. Good question. What's he wearing to get in? I bet they let him in. Paul Smith, he likes. Yeah, but no, but actually the RAC is unusual because it does have that extraordinary. but the RSC is also not designed to sound snobby but it is a more mass market version of the private members club so if we're saying therefore that it's not necessarily the amenities although it might be in some cases then surely the next thing must be about community, belonging a sense of being surrounded by like minded people yes I think we can't get away from you know how hard it can be to get into clubs and therefore that sense of achievement from being that.

35:00So does a long waiting list or a tough admissions process equal a good club? Right. I don't know. I think most of those clubs tend to be good, nice places to be for people who are looking for that kind of thing. And we've got to remember that the reason there is a long waiting list on some of these clubs is capacity. You know, they're not going to, Whites isn't going to open another club up the road because the membership requirement is high, they're quite literally waiting for people to die to let people in. True. I mean, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit there, but probably not far off. True.

35:38I mean, you do, when you walk down St. James's Street, and I encourage people to do it, look through the windows of White's and Brooks and Boodles because what you'll usually see is a man, usually over 80, sitting in one of the big armchairs reading a newspaper. So should we be getting rid of all of them then? well that's the big question do they play a function are they are they necessary or are they at the very least harmless i would argue that to a large extent but i would also argue bit i would i'll go a bit further i would say that for a for a person like me i guess who has a sort of vaughn williams way of looking at britain establishments like this are quite important i think this is that world that sort of charming sort of you know slightly head in the clouds world where you know we don't we don't necessarily judge things by sort of you know how much money you make or how far how big your car is or you know it's not flash it's not flash okay there are lots of places for flash yeah but these are not that in fact flash is quite frowned upon And, you know, from a membership point of view, if you are somebody who's bragging about your membership or if you're somebody who comes across as being desperate to become a member, you're quite unlikely to become a member.

37:02And I suppose that then leads us on to the question of are we talking in any sense about luxury? How do we unpack luxury in this scenario? That's a really good question. they're not necessarily luxurious in the way that some of these private members clubs that are popping up in new york or five hartford street or annabelle's which are probably luxury there are rooms there but if they if they were a five star if they were considered called a five star and you showed up to stay in them you know yeah um there's you know they go anywhere near what you'd expect from there so it's a really it's a really good question is like is luxury exclusivity i mean that's really all it offers no i think like i mean well okay big question but in a sense luxury is a is a is a kind of best in class experience and if your best if your class is a kind of um you know historic St James's members club experience they are best in class of that kind of experience yeah fine so that's fine if that if that if what I want is your what did you call them the savory puddings yes that uh you know and and I want to sit in the wing armchair and i want to read a copy of the london times and you know and whatever or the wall street journal marvelous newspaper marvelous newspaper thank you very much uh if i want to do that in that environment that is like a luxury joke that is the best kind of place to do it and that that is a form of luxury if we are talking about what can make these clubs great and fascinating and historic and interesting and part of our cultural heritage there is equally a side that says they are potentially rife with snobbery they are exclusive but not in a positive sense because they are door shut exclusive they are places where old-fashioned ideas circulate in echo chambers and the world doesn't move on or the world moves on outside so there is always the danger i suppose it's all sounded very whiggish of you i i well you're a brooksman i'm interested in the fact that that wherever there is something historical and wonderful and working for a very old business myself yeah there is a tendency to look backwards at the past and uh unfortunately bump into the future i suppose the question is can these clubs remain interesting and relevant for future generations or are they managing the decline what do you think peter well i think i think there's a paradox here because i think one of one of the appeals of this type of club is that it doesn't keep up with the times so what you might determine as being um you know a reason for somewhere to be in decline i.e you know the food's not great the decor is a bit tired and doesn't change the facilities aren't brilliant the rooms are a bit rubbish you know whatever actually those are all the reasons why people want to be there it's a sort of kind of it's an anachronistic piece of heritage having said that um you know i i was taken to lunch um the club shall remain nameless but i was taken to lunch at one of these clubs by somebody did you get in well i was warned so i did wear a shirt and tie this time uh and i was actually horrified by the experience because i walked into a place that was full of you know i am no longer a spring chicken but i walked into a place that was full of extremely old white men sitting there eating very average food i felt that i'd been catapulted back decades if not centuries into into a into a britain that was not you know modern contemporary forward-looking multicultural blah blah all of those kinds of things it sounds marvelous i mean i'm jealous you listen tom you live in south london stop pretending so the the yeah so no so so all the things that i love yeah about this country which is its tolerance and its creativity and all of those seem to suddenly be kind of sucked into this vacuum of this weird i felt like i was in a in a bbc tv drama i think if what's only on offer is the kind of private members because you have today like the sew houses and the mazes like all those sorts of things and that's it for me i i there's not much that i want of it and and i would be i would lament uh a lost world of extraordinary sophistication taste and and and and elegance that is very much a part of the dna of of what makes british british a part as you say brand britain it is james bond it is pg woodhouse it is sherlock holmes and it is it's it's it's it's You could just imagine Tolkien writing Lord of the Rings from these places.

41:47You can imagine Byron getting over his trips to Europe at these clubs with the King's Ginger, of course, or a cavalry officer coming home from Afghanistan and wanting to go there for a buck's fizz. There are these touchpoints, cultural touchpoints, that just like the Royal Navy or Shakespeare and stuff, You know, we don't realise that they're part of our kind of cultural canon, but they really are. And so to just to sort of, I think it's, it's, it's a, they're a very easy target because they'll never bite back. Because they're just, as you say, they are old guys who sit and like to have a sandwich and a plate of crisps and read the newspaper.

42:30And they may rant about things that make people uncomfortable. but they but it is a it is a it is the charm of the place that i think is worth preserving and i think what we're saying as well what you're saying tom is that they don't need to be for everyone i mean by default they're not for everyone yeah so so i suspect they will naturally attract a certain type of course yes of course i completely accept what you're saying about the kind of i don't know the sort of cultural value of these places where i think it's slightly different is you know i'd use the fashion analogy i'd say you know you go you go to savile row and you go into places like huntsman or whatever and they are they are of that world they are of that era but what they are also doing is they are constantly struggling with the idea of being relevant and contemporary and bringing in a new customer and what they can do and there have been moments in Savile Row's history where that's been right on the money you know when the Beatles had their headquarters there and they were making kind of you know bespoke velvet suits and Tommy Nutter was doing his stuff and that kind of stuff which for me is very exciting Edward Sexton really exciting kind of like let's use this thing that we've got that's very British and traditional But let's welcome in, you know, let's open the curtains and welcome in the 1960s and, you know, whatever, because, hey, times change, you know, whatever.

44:01And I guess I suppose that my feeling is that these clubs are really not willing to do that at all. They're not going to make any concessions to a changing world. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. it's not for me because i feel that things do need to evolve or eventually they will die as 90 of these places have done when you said earlier is is it a bad thing is it a harmless thing if it's a harmless thing fine let let the members sit there and read the wall street channel you know in their in their wing back armchairs and eat spotted dick or whatever it is they're going to eat.