大象传媒

Barbara Windsor concludes her tour of the famous (and infamous) London nightclubs of yesterday.

In the second and final part of the series, we discover more about the famous night spots of Mayfair and Soho including The Stork, The Pigalle, The Astor, Churchill's, Winstons, The Edmundo Ros Club, Danny La Rue's Club, George Raft's Colony Club, The Talk Of The Town, The Gargoyle, The Establishment, Murray's Cabaret Club.

We meet some of the most colourful nightclub operators and personalities from almost a century of nightlife, including Al Burnett, Bruce Brace, Edmundo Ros and Peter Stringfellow. And hear from many famous artistes and musicians who began their illustrious careers in nightclubs over the years including Victor Spinetti, Amanda Barrie, Sandra Caron, Lionel Blair, Una Stubbs, Fenella Fielding, Laurie Holloway, Brian Dee, Kenny Clayton, Avril Gaynor and Danny La Rue.

Also appearing are agents Barry Burnett and Peter Charlesworth, Producer Marcel Stellman and Sociologist Professor Laurie Taylor. We discover how Danny La Rue became so popular as a nightclub entertainer that he branched out and opened his own club, which immediately became one of the most successful night spots in London.

Meanwhile, other venues were thriving. Al Burnett's Pigalle was packing them in with Sammy Davis Jnr headlining; Peter Cooke's Establishment Club, featuring the Dudley Moore Trio, re-launched the career of Frankie Howerd. And The Talk Of The Town; "the world's most exciting theatre restaurant" opened its doors featuring a string of world famous performers...London's nightclubs were booming!

But as the Swinging 60s progressed, London's nightlife began to change. There were lots of reasons: legalised gambling, the growth of television and home entertainment, discotheques and cinema complexes, and people's preference for huge scale entertainment over the small and intimate.

And so in closing, and with a fond backwards glance, we raise a glass of something fizzy to all the London nightspots that made some sort of name for themselves: not just the famous ones, but the ones we went to just once, the ones whose names we can't remember, even the ones we'd rather not admit we knew about.