Cafe de Paris, 3 Coventry Street, W1
Easy to miss, on Coventry Street, between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, but positively oozing gilded and mirrored glamour is the Café de Paris.
Opened in 1924, this exclusive nightclub secured real cachet when the then-Prince of Wales became a regular. Lord and Lady Mountbatten dined on oysters here, Cole Porter entertained and Merle Oberon – Cathy in the classic 1939 film of Wuthering Heights – started her career here.
During the Blitz, when most of the West End closed down, the club remained open on the assumption that it was bomb-proof. Tragically, this turned out not to be the case, and a direct hit killed 80 people.
Rebuilt, it continued to provide entertainment for the glitterati until it hit a slump in the Eighties, when it found fame as a movie backdrop. In Julien Temple’s Absolute Beginners, the smooth Henley (James Fox) hosts a très chic fashion show here, while Mandy Rice Davies (Bridget Fonda) and Christine Keeler (Joanne Whalley) sample the high life in Scandal, Reggie and Ronnie bask in their celebrity status in Peter Medak’s The Krays; and the Cafe slums it a little as the ‘Soho’ strip club where John Goodman relaxes in King Ralph.
The nightclub was relaunched in 1996. There’s a slim chance you could get in by joining the queue, but if you really want to party in style, best to book in advance or, better still, wangle yourself a place on the VIP list.
Absolute Beginners (1986, dir: Julien Temple)
Scandal (1989, dir: Michael Caton-Jones)
The Krays (1990, dir: Peter Medak)
King Ralph (1991, dir: David S Ward)
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