Six years ago I was offered a complimentary membership to a private London club: not a nightclub, but the type where people go to mix, mingle, have meetings, work, eat lunch and take drinks; a networking place, with a beautiful environ, highly-polished brass, quite perfect and quietly calm. It was the sort of place you enter with your hair combed and neat. I gracefully accepted the offer, thinking, well, you never know who you might meet and it could lead to something.
The management explained that they had these regular lunches, paired what they called “the interesting” members with “the interested”. They said they’d like to place me on a table as an “interesting” along with others and fill the remaining seats with “interested” people. They paid for their lunches. Mine would, of course, be free.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, to which the reply was: “Whatever you like – just mingle and be yourself.” So, chat and eat then? No problemo.
The club has a strict dress code, a no-phone policy, a buzzer on the door, a person to take your coat and the very best, most delicious, priciest glass of red wine in the universe.
I was seated in the dining room, where an immaculate stiff napkin was placed atop my lap by someone whose only job it was to do so. I was next to a famous politician who I have come to know well over the years. On the other side of him was a famous poet I had never met.
The politician and I had quite a laugh. We try not to talk politics, because we don’t agree. But we do have much in common in terms of cultural community. The poet glared on – I’m not sure I was “interesting” enough for him – and the rest of the table sat smiling and clinking cutlery, cutting off tiny sections of the asparagus dish I had already scoffed.
The experience was quite puzzling as “the interested” looked on with tilted heads, engrossed in a chat show they’d paid to eat beside. I suppose our tales of working class white bread antics might seem quite titillating. I ignored my feeling of having been welcomed across the gleaming threshold to entertain the elite great grandsons of a top hat era.
Private member clubs are in hidden dots around London. They’re fairly exclusive little havens concealed behind big, imposing doors. Typically, the clientele is rich, well-connected and welcomed into a hidden enclave that keeps them safe from the general public.
London, is, as they say, open. Yet there are parts of it that are very much closed unless you can pay your way in or be “different” enough to be seen to be a bit of a character who will enliven the joint.
It was a really nice lunch (à la carte deconstructed pie ‘n’ mash and lemony pudding) and I was super flattered by the whole thing. But I was relieved when it finished, so I could rush outside into the dirty old soup of the streets and mess up my hair.
Julie Hamill is a novelist, a radio presenter and more. Follow her on X/Twitter. Support OnLondon.co.uk and its writers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money too. Details HERE. Image from What’s For Dinner?
Sounds very interesting. Had visions of an Agatha Christie setting. The Poet was worth watching. ✨️