Slowing Down by George Melly Page A

the corner, is a cloakroom, and then a doorway and staircase down to the loos and the downstairs bar.
    This area is policed by a number of minders. ‘Policed’ is too stern a word – they are in general welcoming and of considerable charm. After so long they have become my friends, especially their ‘captain’, a big, handsome bearded man with a deep and beautiful voice, and we embrace every night.
    My only occasional difference of opinion has been with the doorman. If the club is full and the street holds many people who hope for returns or the chance to stand at the bar once those who have booked are seated, he lets them dribble in, cold and, if it’s raining, damp too. I am alloweda certain number of guests and invariably leave their names both at the desk and with the competent and beautiful young woman who holds an identical list and shows guests to their tables. But the doorman has no such list and quite often during our last gig my guests, despite protesting, were stuck out there for ages too. The doorman complains they don’t let him have a list. They say they do. Well, next Christmas I’ll get it sorted.
    There were many quite comical clashes between staff and punters in those early days, perhaps understandably in that most of the former were convinced bop-lovers, the apotheosis of ‘cool’. (Not a new word at all, kids. It was coined to establish the difference between what the boppers were playing and the ‘hot’ jazz which preceded them.) Well, today the bitter war has ended in a sort of truce: all schools, or most of them, admire the masters of mainstream.
    Up a few steps and you come into the main body of the club itself, a fair-sized room with pink shades low over the tables – indeed the general effect is of the colour rose. There are tables of different sizes covered in dark red cloths, some suitable for a couple, others which can accommodate six or more. It’s quite dark and the serving staff use torches to illuminate the usually reasonable bills. The artists are picked out by spotlights.
    In front of the stage is a no-smoking well. Behind it, raised behind a brass rail, is the main seating area, leading right back almost to the entrance wall. To the right and left are two smaller seating areas, the one on the left backed by the long bar individually lit, and on the right an area known rather unfairly perhaps as ‘the graveyard’, although if seated there you can see the musicians in profile.
    Behind the stage is the artistes’ rather cramped dressing-room with a chaise longue and several chairs. There is a sink and, up a few stairs, a loo. For a long time this housed only an Elsan. Then it was locked (health inspectors?) and most of us, if not fanatically fastidious, in an emergency used the basin, with the exception perhaps of the great and alas late Ella Fitzgerald. Finally, along a short corridor, is the rather cluttered office with a big desk behind which sits Pete King, looking magisterial but usually friendly like a good guy in Dickens. There are TV sets in both dressing-room and office.
    There is, of course, a sound and lighting cubicle, and on stage stands a very grand and frequently tuned piano. The walls throughout are a collage of framed photographs. I can’t think of anything I’ve left out except that, after the club shuts at three, they turn on the full bare-bulbed lighting system to drive out the few punters reluctant to leave. It’s so depressing it usually works. I think all clubs are like old tarts, sad under full lighting. John Betjeman wrote a poem about one. It began
I walked into the night-club in the morning;
There was kummel on the handle of the door.
    I’ve encountered no kummel, except behind the two bars in a bottle, but he’s caught the rather depressing, brightly lit ambience perfectly.
    To pin down the audience at Ronnie’s is impossible, in that it depends on who is appearing. If the music is avant garde it draws serious musicians and some rather sparse