Paul Bryant's Reviews > Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond

Paul Raymond, sultan of sleaze, crown prince of porn, the Soho-bestriding emperor of nakedness : confusingly, he came from a solid middle-class family, no oik was he, posh-toned suit-and-tie wearing rounded-voweled and Conservative to the very tip of his very member; and gifted by God with an unbreakable carapace of propriety which enabled him to wade through the oceans of filth with the bland equanimity of a drainage inspector in a municipal waterworks.

PAUL RAYMOND SPEAKS



Really, you shouldn’t listen to all this nonsense, they’ve been saying all sorts of dreadful things about me since the 1950s. You see, what I have done is to give the public what it wants, not what it thinks it should have. The female form is one of God’s most beautiful creations. It is something to be admired to the point of worship. It has been an artistic inspiration throughout civilised history. I have used that inspiration to make myself a fortune. No, my shows are not obscene, crude or pornographic. They are artistic, erotic and tasteful. Indeed, they are family entertainment. I wouldn’t put on any show which I would be unhappy bringing my wife and children to see. Or indeed your wife. Actually, my wife choreographed the striptease acts in my shows for years. And let me tell you, at least half of the patrons at the Paul Raymond Revuebar are couples, of that you may be assured. I believe my nude acts may serve to rekindle their inner lives such that when they return to their homes, intercourse may follow. I hope I have served a laudable function. We do not get enough opportunities to observe naked ladies, their grace, their perfect proportionality, and alas, this appreciation is so often regarded as a matter of shame, something furtive and nasty. But it isn’t, it is glorious! And I mean to display its glory to the world. So long as the world will pay the membership fee and be confirmed by two existing club members. May I say that I have never put on an indecent show in my life. In fact, I won’t engage a girl with a bigger than 36 inch bust because I wouldn’t like to embarrass my customers.




MIXED MESSAGES FROM GOD


At one point, Raymond’s daughter’s boyfriend’s fiancée stabbed the boyfriend in the stomach (he recovered). At another point Raymond participated in a sting to catch two crooks who had been terrorizing his family with death threats for months (they pretended to be the IRA and had demanded £15,000 – they got jail). It was like that for years.

Raymond was very close to his daughter and they were both monstrous cokeheads, boozers and smokers. He had an 80 cigarettes a day habit. So it’s just not true what they say about alcohol, tobacco and cocaine – he died peacefully at the age of 82. Oh, wait – his daughter Debbie died at the age of 36 from a drug overdose. So yeah, it is true what they say. Sometimes.




PAUL RAYMOND IN HIS POMP


His dandified get-up confirmed his reputation as that comic stereotype of yesteryear, the oldest swinger in town. He still liked to wear a long black fur coat draped round the shoulders of an expensive handmade suit, the outfit accessorised these days by a gold bracelet, plus a diamond and gold pendant worn over his tie. As if that wasn’t noticeable enough he sported a pencil moustache and a deep tan that lent him the appearance of some leathery Hollywood actor made up to play a Mexican in an old western. The darkness of his skin emphasised the whiteness of his teeth and the pallor of his ever more elaborate scrape-over hairdo. Now dyed blonde, the colour giving it a strange acrylic sheen, it was sufficiently long at the back to form a valance round his neck.


IT WASN’T ALL WALL-TO-WALL 18 YEAR OLD BLONDES (ALTHOUGH MOSTLY IT WAS)

Paul Raymond got to be one of Britain’s richest people by exhibiting female flesh (strip clubs, mainly, then also rude stage shows like Oh! Calcutta! and nude magazines) and I wondered why every other material boy of the 60s and 70s didn’t do the same, so I read this after seeing the (mildly amusing) movie, and the answer was – tenacity. He was under constant attack from three directions for almost his whole career, and only his unflappable English-to-the-core urbanity got him through.

THE COPS

Subdivided into a) bent ones who wanted a backhander; b) worse, straight ones who were raiding his club all the time. The obscenity laws were whatever the judge thought on that day, so it wasn’t easy keeping out of jail or bankruptcy. On the other hand, it seemed to be pretty easy for this slippery eel.

Magistrate Reg Seaton :

(sung to the tune of “Love Is the Sweetest Thing”)

Your establishment and others have been vying with each other to see what degree of disgustingness they can introduce to attract members from all classes who are only too ready out of curiosity or lust to see filth portrayed in the establishment. Your show can only be characterised as filthy, disgusting and beastly.

(£5000 fine plus expenses – pocket change.)


THE GANGSTERS

Running protection rackets all over Soho (as were the bent cops) and cutting up rough if you didn’t pay up (“Mr Raymond, you wouldn’t want your strippers to get broken would you?”). Raymond seemed to be something of a magician, he never got duffed over. I assume he paid whoever had to be paid. They all had names like Jack the Hat or Jack the Gangster who’ll Rip your Arm Off.


THE ANTI-PORN CAMPAIGNERS

Trying to stem the tide of filth spewing forth in the “permissive society” of the 60s, they got Paul Raymond in their sights – he was the embodiment of all that was wrong! Mostly he got in front of their panels of inquiry and investigative probes and he charmed and smarmed ‘em. He told them “I’m with you! I hate obscenity!”


SOME RANDOM QUOTES


Hidden in the small print there’s an unsavoury announcement that dispels any doubts about the habits of the show’s audience. “In the interest of public health this theatre is disinfected throughout with Jeye’s Fluid.



In the early 50s New York burlesque shows were being staged with such wonderful titles as Anatomy and Cleopatra, Julius Teaser and Panties’ Inferno.


Pyjama Tops : The joy of it was that it was completely tasteless. For no particular reason all the girls leapt into the swimming pool in their pyjama tops. And then there was the ghastliness of all these tourists in raincoats wanking in the stalls.



In 1960 Raymond told the press his income was “in the region of £2000 a week” – this was more than ten times that of the then prime minister Harold Macmillan.



In those days Soho was synonymous not just with striptease but also with hot air : the serpentine hiss of the espresso machines, the fractious shushing of steam irons, the aromatic breath from restaurant doorways, and above all, the sound of conversation.


MONOTONOUS SUCCESS


Accompanied by clouds of naked young women, in and out of court, on yachts and helicopters, backstage, front of house, suavely parlaying with gangsters, the police, the judges, the reporters, the drag queens, rock bands, porn stars, with his entire private life an extended melodramatic soap opera, even so, Paul Raymond appears to have been a bit on the dull side, his life for decades at a time filled with monotonous success, money lashing down upon him in a continual monsoon, accompanied by heavy drifts of cocaine, storm surges of bodily fluid and multiple attacks of threesomes in giant mirrored beds. He proved that, should we have been in any doubt at all, the wages of sin are frankly astronomical.