Tales from the Colony Room by Darren Coffield

Darren Coffield, curator of the exhibition 'Tales from the Colony Room: Art and Bohemia, discusses the history of the notorious private members club that attracted many artists, writers, performers, and bohemians. The exhibition is accompanied by the book 'Tales from the Colony Room: Soho's Lost Bohemia'.
The exhibition 'Tales from the Colony: Art and Bohemia' runs from the 15th September until the 20th December at Dellasposa Gallery, London. For more information, visit www.dellasposa.com

[@iandavis2108]

Really good documentary, I have a particular affinity to it as I made it!

[@friendlier]

But why does the volume keep going up and down?

[@zamiadams4343]

Great film mate! Really enjoyed it.

[@ajs41]

@@friendlier You need to ask the uploader that question.

[@chamberpot969]

Fascinating.

[@ObsoleteOddity]

@@ajs41 the Uploader would only know if the Uploader actually edited and put the video together - the volume problem is caused by different audio and video segments knitted together, without paying attention to the different volume levels of each.

[@gingerfreak01]

Went a few times, firstly as a guest, thereafter just wandered in. My favourite visit was just after the smoking ban. Walked in to be greeted by everyone looking at me, checking me out. Took a few seconds but I passed muster and then all the cigarettes emerged from under chairs, sides of legs, every possible hiding place. It was like a 20s speakeasy. People were chucking their tab ends out of that window next to the toilet. Loved the place.

[@raymemichaels]

Thanks for posting this. Page 152 of "Hitch 22" brought me here. Christopher Hitchens was also a member of the club and was made one by Tom Driberg in the 1970s.

[@ericme4767]

Great memoire!

[@madamedellaporte4214]

Took me back to 2002. Great days.

[@byronmillanicia3384]

I see where the gangs got the idea of the casitas!!! The underground world is so amazingly complex, you never know what you gona find on every turn. Amazing how this ideas transcend time, cultures, borders

[@paulphilipempey1]

I have never been to The Colony Room. However, it certainly had a reputation. Whether good or bad, I would have enjoyed seeing it for myself. You've got to give them one thing, they were definite characters. Thank you for the upload.

[@ajs41]

Life in that area is very boring now compared to then.

[@anthonymitchell8893]

A boring old pruvliged fart club to be honest

[@mokumhammer]

Fantastic tales - thank you!

[@urbanpulsewalks]

Very interesting social history.

[@contender54]

I am reading sporadically Tales from the Colony Room.. i am fascinated , amused to snorting laughter and terrified in equal measure- just before it closed i went up for a drink with someone, so i saw it before it disappeared at least .. if hell is other people then at least this place seemed a hell of other intersting people ❤

[@sianwarwick633]

Send me the copy when you're done with it

[@anthonymitchell8893]

@@sianwarwick633 pay him

[@jeremyhaines4481]

This is very interesting I have some Books 📚 about the colony club in soho

[@user-fb3pu3qx3t]

Superb! Thanks for posting.

[@sianwarwick633]

Well, the clips are good

[@toulouseleplot3475]

i went twice late 80s with older company thent ended up owning two clubs in the Charing x rd i was propably twenty at the time, I miss all that now im 60 The A&R , TPA, Jerrys I kind of mis those days, Nicky Holloway

[@sandyrickard994]

Put the names of the interviewees up !

[@Mrrossj01]

The biggest mystery about F.B. is how he managed to live to the ripe old age of 82. The best one can say about him is that he wasn’t a chocoholic. Every other excess known to medical science he pursued with vigor.

[@metislamestiza3708]

best statement about FB ever!

[@ObsoleteOddity]

Pickled

[@debraoneill1930]

Interesting, Ian Board was my Uncle.

[@ObsoleteOddity]

How interesting Debra Did he leave any artefacts or photos behind, pertaining to the colony club?

[@MontyCantsin5]

1:24: Great to see more footage from the discussion between Bacon and Daniel Farson (as well as Terry Danziger-Miles behind the camera?). There are clips from the same discussion included in Bacon's Arena, but these are new. Do you know if there's more available or who has the full recording?

[@AlexanderVerney-Elliott-ep7dw]

Darren Coffield knowingly exhibited alongside badly faked Bacon drawings disseminated by fraudster conman Cristiano Lovatelli Ravarinoat at the Herrick Gallery and Alice Herrick also knew very well that they were extremely bad fakes but still made a greedy 'tidy' profit out of the fraud. So I would love to know what Coffield thinks now that the Italian police have confiscated nearly 500 of the fake Bacon drawings that he was happy to be exhibited with. Coffield and Herrick cannot now lie and say that they never knew they were fakes.

[@MontyCantsin5]

@@AlexanderVerney-Elliott-ep7dw: I'm well aware of the Ravarino drawings and the news of the recently confiscated works. Hopefully a proper determination as to their authenticity will be made soon. It's embarrassing that it's dragged on for so long and people are making so much money from forgeries. Having said all that, I'm not sure how any of this is relates to my initial post.

[@AlexanderVerney-Elliott-ep7dw]

@@MontyCantsin5 My apologies for inserting my message into your reply but I had trouble inserting it at the top so opted to insert it as a reply; my apologies for any stress caused. One does not need to be an 'art expert' to determine that the drawings are fakes because they are so incridbly bad and my point was that Darren Coffield knew all along they were fakes so maybe he thought that exhibiting his artworks next to the fakes would be a post modern statement concerning his own artworks being prototype fake Bacons; who knows!

[@nickthelick]

"...course, they're all dead now. Cheerio!"

[@ApunkDaydreamLamunanOi]

Pubs close at 23:00h in London since years, last place on the planet I want to live.

[@ajs41]

Where do they close later?

[@ApunkDaydreamLamunanOi]

@@ajs41 In Belgium there is no closing time. A bar needs to close 12 hours a day yes, but up to the bar when this is. So after a club closes, just look for the after club.

[@embryoroom]

Don't forget Tom Baker

[@insomnia3201]

beautiful Soho just died andbecame a gay and accountants rich hangout..this richness will never ever return

[@redstar7292]

the same happened to Shoreditch after the 90s.

[@georgeplattlynes11]

Get your facts straight. Soho has always been gay

[@thewrinklingbrothers]

Francis!

[@adrianc1264]

reminds me a lot of the landlady at the pub in spittlefilds where tracey emin used to drink. Genuinely one of the most unpleasant people I have ever met in my life - no doubt those she takes a fancy to love her. Idk maybe rudeness its a 'cool' 1950s thing

[@robertparkes4982]

I would have a finger amputated to be able to have just one afternoon in Soho in the fifties.

[@bobpeckham7637]

As a Minor Poet i too Robert would have loved that opportunity...signed Bob Peckham....

[@markeddeckmusic7202]

I’m with you

[@anthonymitchell8893]

Sell your spilt to the devil and I will take you back through a portal in time to 1 Jan 1955 the ball is in your court now Robert how much do ya want it?

[@worldwide_ghosts]

Great documentary! I've spent many a year lurking around Soho but never when this club was still active. Would loved to have tried to get in. Would have been nice to have been called a cunt as well and welcomed into the fold. haha ;)

[@RataStuey]

6:09 I think that's the chef Margot Henderson??

[@williamjessop]

Clubs are odd things. What did it mean if some owner/manager subjectively liked or disliked you? It all sounds like membership of the cool set at school, or the Bullingdon at Oxford. What's the appeal, apart from exclusivity? If you're rejected by a group, you probably couldn't have been happy or safe in it anyway.

[@mistofoles]

Who's the guy who has a throat like a pelican ?

[@mikesilva5085]

George Melley

[@mike581963]

Where was this interview done?? anyone know?

[@Reed-bj2dt]

The French House in Dean Street

[@mike581963]

@@Reed-bj2dt Thank you so much. Mk

[@jamesmalone1680]

What is the club used for now anybody know

[@ajs41]

The ground floor is a restaurant called Ducksoup. 41 Dean Street.

[@liammarshall1759]

It is an apartment

[@brannonmcclure6970]

I’m trying to work.

[@pattymelt-go3fv]

Artists are the biggest gossips on earth!

[@DangerfieldChris]

Michael didn't owe dangerous people money, he got most of his crack and heroin from me, for free. (allegedly)

[@petehill8885]

behind all the facade of the drink & banter it was probably a very sad, depressing place full of lonely people.

[@shakesperezen6078]

Being the son of publicans..a place of drink,music and banter is fun,flirtacious and mischiefous when young..but, as the years fall away fast and almost unnoticed unseen in a fade blur of faces familiar and voices friend or foe..a place of innebriants intoxicants and breathed blue grey wafting poisons,turmoiled spirits and lost souls, ever so slowly inevitably incrementally evolves into a residence of walking slouching sleepwaking dancing falling human shadows of former bright eyed human beings that sit and ponder just how,and when, did their life become a faded cracked stained photograph with unknown forgotten unrembered faces. Places where the once adventurous and free of spirit reigned in warm light and glow..now become the places of wandering lonely human ghosts soon to be. (/-\)..😑💔

[@jaybee2402]

@@shakesperezen6078 Cool write up. Ditch the pub and go to the gym instead.

[@ajs41]

You sound like a right puritan.

[@brannonmcclure6970]

Oh no this was a club; if you bored people, you were out!

[@byronmillanicia3384]

Like in jail drinking pruno 😅😅😅

[@butlincat1507]

classic 10000*

[@densmorde4520]

Well, I sure was born too late, would have been a regular.

[@chasbarr2612]

24:18 - looks like a young Boris Johnson on the far left, if only they'd known what he would become they could have saved the country a whole lot of bother

[@sebastianmelmoth685]

My God - that was boring!

[@ajs41]

Anything with Francis Bacon in can't be boring in my opinion.

[@petehill8885]

a very tedious presenter with such rubbish stories about the place.

[@anthonymitchell8893]

@@ajs41 hes right leave him alone and mind your own please

[@margaretmoore7034]

What a tragedy.. I recently read Tracey's biography and the most moving part was in chapter 3 when her cousin Albert smashed out her teeth with a McCowans silver toffee hammer during a game of Connect Four, when he accused her of cheating.. She had to be flown to Germany for emergency reconstruction of her lower jaw..

[@contender54]

Horrible, and from what i read , although verbally there was ruthlessness cruelty and blood, no physical violence was ever tolerated, or espoused so this is an awful story

[@nadinetalalla4435]

excellent! Thanks Darren