Gentlemen’s clubs for all!

Is it a stage of life thing? Recently I’ve got a hankering to join a gentlemen’s club. It might be the creeping realisation that having put it off for so long – drifting in and out of London’s clubs over the years as a guest thinking ‘This is rather nice…’ – as I near 50, it’s a case of now or never.

So here’s a question – have you been to a club recently? Have you settled into the tightly stuffed, wing-backed armchair at the Athenaeum, White’s, Buck’s, Boodle’s or the Carlton? Have you dined at the Garrick surrounded by the some of the finest things to drip off the paintbrushes of Zoffany, Millais, Hogarth and numerous others? Have you taken a few lengths in the subterranean pool at the Royal Automobile Club, as Churchill did daily, to rinse away the pressures of war? If you haven’t then the sad truth of it is that a part of you simply hasn’t lived. Admittedly it’s not a massively rock-and-roll part of you, but it’s a part.

The other day a pal of mine, Bob, took me to dinner at the Savile Club. (Bob has developed a Toadlike-obsession with joining clubs and is eyeing up his third.) After a gin and tonic steeper than the Shard, we had dinner in a marbled chamber that could serve the producers of The Crown as an interior for Buckingham Palace, and we correspondently ate like kings. The wine list went on forever and was keenly priced. In fact, the way I saw it, it was more or less two-for-one at their prices, so we ordered accordingly.

Another great thing about the Savile is that membership is really quite affordable – at £120 or so a month all I’d need to do is cut back on my children’s shoes and clothing budget. Easy. But actually, that is what a lot of people would spend every month on their Sky subscription or similar. Given the choice, I know what I’d do.

And that sparks another idea. Why shouldn’t every town the length and breadth of Britain have its own gentlemen’s club or two? Places, perhaps, where the grandfather clock on the staircase stopped at 1910, where there’s always a gin and tonic in the offing, and the sun never sets on the baize? Funnily enough, if you look carefully you’ll see that there are many clubs out there – from Aberdeen (the Royal Northern and University Club) to Edinburgh (the New Club on Princes Street goes back to 1787). In fact, from Chester to Cheltenham, from Bristol to Bradford, there are clubs in abundance.

But it’s hardly what you’d call universal coverage, which is a shame. Indeed, in these demotic times, how can we in all decency deny the burgher of any town or citizen of any city access to a good members’ club? Perhaps we shouldn’t be building a railway that costs some £80 billion in order to shave 20 minutes off a journey that only took two hours anyway. Perhaps we should be levelling up Britain by spending a fraction of that sum on a national building programme to give clubs to every town and city the length and breadth of the country. Instead of ‘stop the boats’, the Prime Minister’s lectern should declare ‘gentlemen’s clubs for all’.

And what would be so bad about giving every conurbation a place where local men – and women – can go and feel like they belong? What would be so wrong about everyone having access to a place that’s far beyond the reaches of Nando’s or McDonald’s, one which is unique and celebrates local achievement through the stories of its members and the quality of its interiors? You could engage local architects and builders, for a start. Each club could become a place so far away from Britain’s bland, repetitious and hollowed-out high streets that they could help re-foster a sense of provincial self.

These would be places where the staff know your name and feel pride in what they do. They could, in short, be places where your face can feel the warmth of the sunlit uplands. Places where there would be fruit, not fruit machines; newspapers and magazines, not social media; and luxury, not Lucozade.

Now you’re going to say that it can’t be done, that this is a ridiculous fantasy. But isn’t that what they said to Nye Bevan when he drove through the National Health Service? Isn’t that what they said to the advocates of the universal state pension? Clubs – or hubs – for all, is not an election-winning slogan, but giving people a place where they belong – if they want to join (and it could be subsidised through credits) – in a world often without churches, where the nearest thing many have to a community hub is their pub, golf club or shopping centre, is not so ridiculous.

Or perhaps, like our national art institutions and museums, the greatest names in London’s clubland could seed exclusive offshoots in prestige developments in other towns and cities? Like the V&A in Dundee or Tate Liverpool, we could have ‘Athenaeum Gateshead’ or ‘Boodle’s Oldham’. Maybe one way for the Tories to shore up the red wall would be to open ‘Carlton Teesside’?

And Britain is truly good at this. As well as the elite establishments of St James’s clubland there are the modern clubs in London, such as the eco-minded Conduit or the Mayfair hedge fund hangout 5 Hertford Street (but it’s expensive – as William Cash said despairingly to me once: ‘It’s like going to Switzerland!’). Of course, the leader among modern private members’ organisations is Soho House, which has 13 clubs across Britain (with a 14th coming to Manchester this year) and a further 26 around the world.

If that doesn’t show you that there’s demand for private space in the public sphere then nothing will. And maybe instead of offering to pour taxpayer money into gigafactories our government should instead be seeding a UK-based world-beating private members’ club industry. Because let’s face it, everybody wants to go to a place where they feel special, and there’s no shortage of people.

And what about you? Are you a member of a club? How about it? Fancy ditching the Sky box and joining the Savile or another of Britain’s clubs? I think I’ll start by cancelling the Mini Boden catalogue…