To Muriel
Jeffrey Bernard
I suppose the final joke was that Muriel Belcher should have died on Halloween and then been cremated on Guy Fawkes Day, She certainly would have appreciated it and members of the Colony Room Club can well imagine how she would have laughed sitting on her stool at the end of the bar like a raven on its perch. Well, she has fallen off her perch and the news came through to Soho just minutes after a memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden, for the actor Sean Lynch who died in Spain just a few days before. A depressing week indeed for all those who have been using the Colony Room since it opened in 1948 and who also either worked with Sean or knew him from Gerry's Club.
I'm afraid I have to be very personal about Muriel since I know very few facts about her except that she originally came from Birmingham to London, worked for a time in Harrods, and eventually took over a Club near the Haymarket before establishing her unique watering hole in Dean Street. I was rather intimidated by her when 1 first met her — she always commanded a sort of respect — and, in those days, the club was actually quite posh. She never minced words about the fact that she really only wanted rich, famous, successful, titled people as members, but she made an exception with a few of us provided those same rich, famous . people spent plenty of money on us layabouts. Neither did Muriel mince her language which was as strong as her wit was quick.
There was the bald-headed man well known for his compulsive verbosity. He walked in one afternoon and said, 'Muriel, I'm worried. I've got to go to a fancy dress party tonight and I can't think what to go as.' She fixed him with a smile and said, 'Why don't you go as a baldheaded c---T Language apart, there was something almost outrageous about her 'campness'. Sometimes she seemed convinced the world was populated entirely by homosexuals — she called most men as well as women either Kate or Mary — and her attitude towards Len Blackett illustrates a little her 'knowingness'. Blackett — long since dead himself— was a charming old queen who worked in the city and drank scotch for England in the Colony in the evening. He was, more or less, a hostess and it so happens that he'd won the Military Cross in 1916 when he was a Captain. Anyway, whenever anyone asked Muriel about Blackett, she'd say: 'She was a very brave little woman at the Somme.' Apart from that sort of remark I can still hear the general patter quite clearly. 'Come on cunty, spend up. You're not buying enough champagne. Are you a member sir? No? Come on then, f--off. Members only.' She won't just be missed, she has been missed ever since the beginning of her long illness, and all those of us who knew her will continue to raise our glasses — far too frequently — to drink to her. And that's just what she would have liked.
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