Mystery Tour
Mystery Tour
Two days, two film sets, one birthday surprise.
It’s the nearest thing to time travel that I’ll ever experience. One afternoon during early March 2012, I strolled through the entrance to what had once been a Victorian music hall, now transformed into a lavish recreation of the main auditorium at a London cabaret/strip-club called the Raymond Revuebar, which opened in 1958 and survived until 2004. Over that time, the club hosted customers ranging from Frank Sinatra to the Beatles who filmed part of The Magical Mystery Tour there. In that forty-six year period, the Revuebar also became a Soho landmark, magnifying the district’s twentieth-century association with illicit sex, an association that led tabloid journalists to brand it “the square mile of vice.”
Unlike the real Raymond Revuebar, which was marked by a gaudy neon sign featuring a giant can-can dancer whose right leg performed a high-kicking motion, the replica Revuebar was hidden behind a nondescript south London pub. I was there to watch the filming of The Look of Love, a big budget movie adaptation of Members Only, my biography of its founder, Paul Raymond (1925-2008), who had once been among Britain’s richest and most famous people.
As part of my research for the book, I’d spent a lot of time interviewing former employees of the club, poring over its floor-plan, and reading about the shows it hosted, so there was something eerie about finding myself walking into its glamorous late 1950s incarnation. Besides being a bit unnerved by the whole thing, I felt out of place on a film set, those feelings counterbalanced by a sense of euphoria. After all, what could be more flattering than the sight of millions of pounds being spent on enabling dozens of people to dramatise a book you’ve written?
Though the movie had gone into production more than a week earlier, this was the first time I’d been to watch the filming. I was only there because I’d been invited by the film’s co-producer, Josh Hyams. The two of us had exchanged frequent emails and phone calls ever since Revolution—the company that employed him—had bought the film rights to my book and then hired me as a consultant. This blandly corporate-sounding role entailed me being available seven-days-a-week to answer innumerable questions, arrange introductions to people who might be helpful, and comment on the script, written by Matt Greenhalgh, a Mancunian screenwriter best-known for his work on Control and Nowhere Boy.
I could see why Josh had been so keen to show me the replica Revuebar that his company had created. To the right of the doorway I’d walked through, there was an empty, spotlit stage, plush-looking red curtains hanging down from a proscenium arch embellished by the letter “R” for Raymond. Facing this were numerous elegant women and dinner-jacketed men, smoke curling up from their cigarettes as they sat at tables draped with white linen and dotted with wine bottles. Beautiful young waitresses in tights and high-cut outfits meanwhile slalomed through the labyrinth of tables, carrying trays of drinks from the glowing bar at the opposite end of the room.
Out of a huddle of people that included the headphoned director, a crane-mounted camera emerged. It swooped towards the table where the film’s star, Steve Coogan, was sitting, his diminutive frame clad in evening-dress, his hair neatly parted and slathered with brilliantine. He and the comedian Miles Jupp, who played a posh journalist sent to interview Paul Raymond about his scandalous new club, were exchanging a few lines of dialogue.
In between multiple takes of this short scene, I plonked myself down on one of the few spare seats near the bar. Within seconds, a waitress had asked me if she could fetch me a drink. Sipping this, I got into conversation with a friendly middle-aged woman, who turned out to be Fran Jaynes, the film’s choreographer. Since she wasn’t involved in the current scene, she was free to chat with me.
Out of genuine curiosity rather than mere politeness, I asked about her work. She replied that she’d choreographed scenes in quite a lot of other films. I had to press her to get her to name them—everything from Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy to Stephen Spielberg’s AI.
But our conversation kept being punctuated by shouts of, “Can everyone please be quiet?” And on several occasions we were told to duck as the crane carrying the camera glided through the air above our table.
At one point Fran asked whether I’d be around the following week to watch the big Las Vegas-style dance number which she’d been planning. I’d read and annotated a couple of drafts of the film’s script, so I knew her choreography was supposed to portray The Royalty Follies, a spectacular 1974 song and dance show produced by Paul Raymond soon after his purchase of the Royalty Theatre, just off Kingsway. In one of a succession of ultimately tragic examples of paternal indulgence, he gave the star role to his daughter Debbie, who was an aspiring singer without the vocal talent to bring her showbiz dreams to fruition.
Fran said The Royalty Follies sequence was being staged at the Brixton Academy.
Tempting as her invitation was, I replied that I wouldn’t be able to go there because I was busy working on a new book.
Several minutes later, she had to go off and oversee a scene featuring a trio of nude female dancers who were already loitering on stage. Under Fran’s skillful and enthusiastic supervision, they performed a twirling, coyly flirtatious routine using large scarlet feathered fans to conceal their breasts and groins.
For the next few hours, I mooched around the set, where I was the sole person without a function. I chatted with the extras. I ate a solitary lunch, provided by the caterers. And I watched the filming, its slow stop-start rhythm bringing to mind TV interviews when I’d heard movie stars complain about how boring the process of making movies can be. Among the most interesting aspects of that day’s filming were the changing costumes, make-up, and hairstyles, reflecting the club’s transformation from its chic and popular heyday into its loud, sexually blatant, sartorially flamboyant latter years.
Unexpectedly dull though a lot of that day was, I knew my partner Jo, who was immersed in an ordinary working day at our local Citizen’s Advice Bureau, would love to have swapped places with me. Thinking about her got me wondering whether I could reschedule her traditional birthday mystery tour and obtain permission for us to attend the filming at the Brixton Academy. In the end I had no trouble arranging that.
Aside from telling Jo she needed to have some warm clothes with her, I gave her no inkling of where we were going on the day of the Brixton jaunt. When we drove away from our home in Norwich and turned onto the A11, she speculated about whether we were heading for London, but I hinted that rural Suffolk was our destination. The untruthfulness of that was apparent by the time we parked in the Essex town of Epping and boarded a tube train.
Still with no idea where we were going, Jo accompanied me onto the crowded streets of Brixton. Only as we approached the security guards standing outside the Academy’s domed portico did she guess that we must be about to watch some of the filming.
One of the security guards consulted his clipboard when I explained why we were there. Through his walkie-talkie, he told someone that we’d arrived.
We waited a short time before Josh came and greeted us. He then escorted us through a row of swing-doors, across the foyer, and into the chilly expanse of this huge former cinema and variety theatre, which echoed to the sound of slinky music. “Your other half’s done you proud this year,” he said to Jo. Gesturing towards the stage, he added, “Look what he’s laid on for you…”
Ahead of us was a massive staircase, topped by Roman columns and flanked by cocktail glasses the height of terraced houses. I could see Fran directing a troupe of showgirls who were in the middle of a synchronized descent of the staircase. They wore matching blonde afro wigs, plus silver lamé boots, mini-skirts, and bras which sparkled under the spotlights.
A look of astonishment spread across Jo’s features as she took in the unfolding scene in front of her. None of her subsequent birthday mystery tours have ever succeeded in recapturing this moment of rapturous surprise.