A couple of people have asked me to recall my days working for Paul Raymond and any memories I have of the man himself. Although I had been freelancing for his magazines for many years, I didn't actually meet him till Christmas 1990. The venue was the Windmill Theatre and the event the Xmas party for those who worked on his magazines.
I was only just allowed in as I was a freelance and not a member of staff (like a lot of millionaires, PR was not prone to splashing out unwanted cash - and even his staff parties were held in venues he owned, like the Windmill).
Our initial meeting wasn't great. He has just bought Mayfair from Ken Bound for which I had worked for some years and asked me what I had done for them. Proudly I pointed to the Christmas issue which had several serious features I'd done including one about the history of slot machines.
"Yes, I remember that!" he said after my third attempt to overcome his notorious deafness. I beamed proudly. "Well, we won't be having any of that sort of stuff from now on!"
And he was true to his word.
Paul was a firm believer in the 'amuse and amaze on every page' maxim of Kelvin McKenzie only he applied it to tits. There had to be tits on every spread of the magazine otherwise it would be rejected. All those old school features so beloved of the 70s and 80s Mayfair were out. Car features were just about okay so long as they shared the space with some curvier female bodywork, and in the end even they went. I admitted defeat.
Back at the party, after such an inauspicious start, and fortified by the limited stocks of free booze, I tried again. I knew that PR had, many years previously, been a magician and mindreader touring the country with a female partner. So I asked him if he had ever played the Windmill - on the famous stage of which we were now standing.
"Oh God no!" he spluttered. "We were never good enough." I was about to compliment him on his modesty when he added. "Fucking good thing too. If I'd been half good, I'd still be doing it. Instead I bought the theatre!"
And so, realising he was a rubbish conjuror, he gave up and invested in theatres and became an impressario - first at the Whitehall (where shows included a nude Fiona Richmond swimming in a fish tank) and then the Revue Bar. Then when the money came in, he bought all the buildings in between and became EXTREMELY rich.
Mind you, as I said, that never showed in his lavishness. In the late 80s I got taken to the Revue Bar which still had the flock wallpaper decor from the 70s and frankly looked rather like a living museum of smut. Going for a piss, I was surprised to see that all the men's urinals were different shapes and sizes and some different colours. Knowing the man who helped run the place, I asked him whether this was some kind of nuance of design.
"Oh no," he replied. "It's just Mr Raymond insists if any of the toilets get broken we have to replace them with one from another of his properties. He won't buy new ones. So they don't match!"
Likewise his anti-drug measures also lacked a certain class. Shortly after a well known chat show host (who I won't name cos he has been very nice about Splosh!) was spotted snorting cocaine in one of the cubicles making him run out so quickly he left his gear behind (ta very much!), PR insisted that this must be stopped. Did he employ staff or install coloured lighting? No. He just took the lids off the cisterns and the bowls so you could no longer snort off them.
But PR was a wonderful eccentric. He kept his long dyed orange hair well into his 70s and combed it over so absurdly his head looked like a pedal bin with a fluffy cover.He had a stammer and a hearing aid but he was immaculately dressed at all times, with a chauffeur and a Rolls and a presence that everyone in Soho admired - even if his rents were notoriously high (he famously bankrupted the new owners of the Revue Bar by increasing their rent so much they could no longer afford to run it!). He was in short a real 60s-style rogue who got away with it - to the tune, it's claimed, of £670 million. Yet, by the end, robbed of his beloved daughter Debbie - the only family member interested in his empire (she died of a drugs overdose which many claim was deliberate as she was also ill - and enough of a regular drinker and drugtaker to know how far to go) - he became a recluse and let his business be run by the accountants and lawyers whilst he stayed in his flat lonely to the end.
I can't claim I know anything about exactly how large his estate will be (though it will be keenly fought over) but I do know that his empre was so large he was prone to losing track of it. Charles, his chauffeur when I was there, told me a nice story about one night out he'd had. Waking up, a bit groggy, PR checked his bank statement and noticed that it was down to the tune of several hundred thousand pounds. Immediately, he rang Charles.
"Last night, was I robbed?" he stammered.
"No, sir."
"Did we go to the casino?"
"No, sir."
"Well, why have I lost half a million quid?"
Charles sighed.
"You remember, sir, that we were going to your favourite restaurant..."
"Yes..."
"And when we got there, the NCP car park next door was full so we couldn't park nearby?"
"Yes, so what?"
"Well, you bought it!"
Paul Raymond, a true Soho character, will be much missed by many and not nearly appreciated enough by far more,
