Happy it-would-have-been-your-94th birthday, Ian Board, proprietor of Soho’s Colony Room, hanger-out with the likes of Jeffrey Bernard (here on the right) and a man who once helped Francis Bacon go on the rob.
Board inherited the Dean Street club from its original owner, the legendarily rude Muriel Belcher, who ran it from 1948–79, and paid Francis Bacon £10 a week to bring in the sort of people who would make it memorable. As Barry Miles tells it in London Calling (2010):
Muriel was clearly a genius at creating atmosphere and was once described as conducting the bar like an orchestra, keeping tabs on whose turn it was to buy a round, and making sure that those who deserved drinks but were too broke to buy them were treated by those too parsimonious to offer. ‘Open your bead bag, Lottie,’ she would cry, or, if they were less than forthcoming, put them in an intolerable position by declaring: ‘Come on everyone, this vision of loveliness is going to buy us all a drink!’ George Melly told Oliver Bennett: ‘Muriel was a benevolent witch, who managed to draw in all London’s talent up those filthy stairs. She was like a great cook, working with the ingredients of people and drink. And she loved money.’ As Melly said, Muriel was able to make every quip appear good, even when it wasn’t exactly a Wildean epigram. Her camp delivery made everyone’s sentences sound witty and she could keep it up for hours at a time. She called all men ‘she’, including ‘Miss Hitler’, and established a long-standing cult of rudeness in the club. For Muriel, ‘cunt’ (her favourite word) was a term of abuse, whereas ‘cunty’ was meant affectionately. If you were really in her good books she would call you ‘Mary’.
Apparently, she was a tough act to follow, a:
Board had been her barman, and by all accounts, on inheriting the club, responded to the challenge of living up to her reputation by being drunker and ruder. According to his obituary in the Independent, for example:
This is presumably why, although his first names were Ian, David and Archibald, only his very closest friends ever risked using his nickname: Ida
Still, according to his Telegraph obit,
the Colony had a heart of gold, and every year the club gave a party for disabled children.
Perhaps the best story about Board comes from the same source, about the time they were on holiday and ran out of money to get home:
In August Muriel, Bacon and Board used to holiday in the casino towns of the South of France. Bacon shunned the sun because it made his hair dye run. In the evenings, Ian and Muriel would watch him play roulette. It was in the days of currency restrictions, and they once found themselves stranded. They decided to rob a rich acquaintance who was staying nearby. Board stood lookout while Bacon shinned up a lamppost. Then they went to the casino where Bacon gambled the loot. He began to win at the tables, but as he did so his face slowly turned a frightening black (he had run out of hair-dye and had used boot polish instead). Having won their fares and more besides, Bacon shinned up the lamppost and replaced the stolen money.
The mid-century Soho lifestyle is not good for a chap, though — the Telegraph obituary again:
…so Board went the way of all flesh in 1994, aged just 64. In 2008, his old club did the same, but then, as the man himself remarked:
People say Soho isn’t what it was. But Soho never was what it was.
