Tales from the Colony Room by Darren Coffield

Author:Darren Coffield [Coffield, Darren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783528172
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2020-02-06T16:00:00+00:00

DAVID EDWARDS: To arrive at the Colony in the company of Francis after lunch at Wheeler’s was such a pleasure. Francis would pick up the lunch bill and pay with terrific style, always in cash, and then off to the Colony. There’s a famous photograph of the Colony with Francis and the rest of us. When they took that photo, a film crew came with the biggest Polaroid camera in the world. The club was closed all day as they needed to take the camera to pieces to get it up the tiny Georgian staircase into the Colony. The photographs came out of the camera A1 size, so you can imagine the size of the machine. Because they were Polaroids, there were no negatives and each print was unique. We sat there all day on the condition that we could all drink as much champagne as we wanted. There were twelve of us there, and each person was meant to reflect a different aspect of London life – Thea Porter represented fashion; Mike McKenzie, music; Bruce Bernard, photography; Jeffrey Bernard, journalism; Tom Baker, acting; Francis Bacon, art; myself, antique dealing, etc. The camera crew made a clothes line going back to where the toilet was, so they could hang out the prints to dry. They finally finished photographing us at five p.m. Francis said, ‘I want to buy a photograph, I want that one.’ The photographer Neal Slavin was adamant, ‘They’re not for sale.’ – ‘But I want to buy that one.’ Then Thea insisted she wanted one too. It wasn’t long before this descended into a mini riot between the members and the camera crew. So I thought, How are we going to resolve this problem? There are twelve photographs hanging on the washing line by the toilet. I told Francis to keep arguing with them, so me and my brother John go out there, roll one up and throw it out of the toilet window, and come back in, where everyone is still arguing. The film crew then begin arguing amongst themselves, getting hysterical – ‘Search the club, one of the prints has gone missing.’ – ‘No, you’re mistaken, we’ve all been here all the time.’ They then go back to arguing with one another and convince themselves there were only eleven prints to begin with. At the end of the day, the film crew felt so embarrassed they’d accused us of theft, they gave one of the prints to the club. Then I had to go downstairs to the Italian restaurant, where the toilets were, and climb out onto the roof to retrieve the photo we’d nicked.

PAM HARDYMENT: The famous club photo was great. But every time I was in deep conversation with Francis, John Edwards would interfere – ‘You’re not asking him for tickets to his exhibition, are you?’ John made sure no one took advantage of Francis, but it was a bit excessive. He was like a black widow in the corner all the time.

TWIGGY: John was very street smart and extremely bright.

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