Soho Society: Bernie Katz's celebrity secrets
The Groucho Club's gatekeeper Bernie Katz has written about the lust, envy, pride and perversion of Soho's party animals in his new book Soho Society.
Bernie Katz has made a rare appearance in daylight to come and meet me. Dressed head to toe in black, clutching a monogrammed Louis Vuitton hold-all, with gold and silver rings flashing on both hands as he smooths back his ponytail, he looks exactly how the slickest operator on the London party scene should - discreetly decadent.
"I usually come out when the moon replaces the sun," he says. "I'm rarely out during the day."
As the front-of-house at the Groucho Club on Dean Street, where the "Prince of Soho" as he is known, has held court for 18 years, Katz is gatekeeper to Soho's most exclusive members club that has served as the A-list crowd's favourite stomping ground for more than 20 years.
The custodian of a thousand celebrity secrets - Katz is renowned for keeping tabloid fodder antics at the Groucho behind closed doors - he has now set tongues wagging by turning his experiences of life amid the stars and socialites into a book.
Soho Society, a collection of short stories about, as Katz puts it, the "lust, envy, pride and perversion" of Soho's party animals, has sparked a frenzy of speculation among the club's habitués who are pondering which of the tales with titles such as The Harpies and No. 1 Door Whore, refer to them.
"The characters are a mix of lots of different people that I've come to know over the years," he says. "Each story is fiction blended with good helping of real people and events."
Kate Moss, one of the Groucho's most regular visitors, for example, seems to make a rather thinly disguised appearance as the model W in The Harpies, a story depicting a group of bitchy socialites and their Soho antics.
W is described as "a famous supermodel...discovered in her early teens at a bus station...a little short perhaps by classic standards...but undeniably a beauty" who once dated a "jailbird junkie".
The actress, Sienna Miller, a friend of Katz's, also claims to have recognised herself in one of the book's characters. "Has she? How lovely for her," he laughs. "There are a lot of big egos in Soho so I think everyone is secretly hoping they have a mention."
The books is illustrated with works by leading artists who have become Katz's friends over the years, including Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor-Wood and Damien Hirst, who in his hell-raising days was famous for his exploits in the Groucho.
There is also a foreword by Stephen Fry, another old friend, who pays tribute to Katz's ability to capture the true essence of Soho. "I have collected Soho literature for thirty years," says Fry. "For the last ten or fifteen I had despaired of ever hearing a new voice who got it, who really understood what Soho is. And now Bernie Katz has produced this collection and I am happy."
A host of stars including Miller, Fry, Sir David Frost and the actor Leslie Phillips turned out for last week's launch party of Soho Society, so just how has Katz managed to become the most connected man in London?
"I look after them," he says, settling back into a chair at the Mayfair office of his publisher. "I mean, I really take care of them all, whether it's finding them a room for the night or wheeling them home, literally." He laughs, recalling one occasion where he had to take home Jeffrey Bernard, the journalist and legendary Soho drinker after one whisky too many. "He was in a wheelchair by then, and pretty cantankerous after a few drinks and had this walking stick which he would hit people with if he didn't like the look of them. I had to take a very careful route back to his house to avoid any injuries."
His legendary abilities as a fixer have earned him the nickname "the little man who can" from his friends - Katz is a diminutive 5ft tall, even in the well-stacked heels he is wearing today.
Discretion, he says, is key to keeping the A-list happy. "I may have seen it all but they know they can trust me completely," he says. Indeed, as I lean towards Katz hoping for just a snippet of gossip, he informs me that he has signed a strict confidentiality agreement with Groucho Club forbidding him to spill the beans. "These are sealed," he says, putting a finger to his lips, but tapping my copy of the book with a knowing grin.
Katz, now 40, was raised in Kennington, south London, by "an archetypal Jewish mother, forever cleaning and making chicken soup" and a "gangster father". "He was a colourful character, a real villain with a heavy clout around south London, more like technicolour actually," recalls Katz.
When Katz was 15, his father's life ended abruptly when a gang of masked men broke into their house and shot him in the head. Instead of being overcome with grief, Katz immediately crept into his father's bedroom, where he lay dead on the bed, and retrieved a pair of alligator-skin Pierre Cardin shoes that he had long coveted. "I had just always wanted them," he shrugs matter-of-factly.
Soon afterwards, he went to earn his keep as a waiter in restaurants around Soho, before joining the Groucho in 1994, where he worked as a barman and receptionist before his current role as manager.
He is now based in Blackheath, south east London, and describes his ideal night out as "dinner at the Ivy, drinks at the French House or The Colony Room, and then of course the Groucho". Bedtime is usually around 5am.
So what is it about the quarter square mile of streets in west London that makes Soho such an enduringly popular playground? "Even from Henry VIII's time, when he used to hunt across the land that is now Soho, it has been a debauched place," explains Katz. "And it has remained party central with lots of deviant behaviour - a very naughty but honourable place. There's a special energy, a buzz that the streets give off, so people come to Soho to be who they can't be during their nine to five lives."
The private members' clubs that line Soho's streets - the likes of the Groucho, Blacks, Soho House and The Colony Room - says Katz, also affords a level of privacy for their often high-profile members that no other area in London can provide. "They can go to those places knowing who they will see - and who will see them."
With waiting lists of several years for such clubs for those not famous or infamous enough to jump the queue, who cuts the mustard and who is blackballed in the application process?
"We want to bring in interesting, like-minded creative types - actors, writers. Anyone who writes 'banker' on their application form won't make it."
Katz's only complaint about Soho is what he sees as the steady gentrification of an area where culture and sleaze have happily merged for centuries. "I keep walking past buildings that used to be wonderful old ironmongers or little dark drinking holes, only to find they've been replaced with a fashion boutique or an office," he bemoans. "I just hope the whole place doesn't become too corporate."
If his book is anything to go by, I tell him, there is still an eclectic mix of hedonistic bohemians in W1 who will keep Soho swinging for years to come. "Trust me," he says. "It is quite tame compared to what really goes on."
Soho Society is published on December 11, Quartet Books
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