Editor of the Observer Magazine Polly Vernon looks back at her heady days and intoxicating nights as a Wonderbra flaunting barmaid in 90s Covent Garden
I spent my first year in London working in a cocktail bar on the corner of Wellington Street, bang in the middle of Covent Garden. It was neon-lit and screamingly trashy, a formerly-fashionable barn of a joint called Rumours, and I loved it. I arrived equipped with nothing more than a mediocre degree in French, a Wonderbra and a regulation catsuit, and managed to land a few shifts on the basis that someone I knew had once slept with the manager. Within a fortnight or two, I was totally ensconced on the regulars’ rota.
I fell in love with the whole scene within milliseconds. There was no way you could have dragged me away from the place. I sloshed out endless pre-mixed long island ice teas for the delectation of the Eastenders stars, Premiership footballers and City boys who became my clientele. I spent my free time doing shots after hours with Croatian bus boys and my catsuit-clad colleagues, to whom I was completely devoted. We’d troop off to Stringfellows (where I had been granted something called Model Membership) or The Roadhouse in the Piazza or The Limelight on Charing Cross Road or The Spot on Maiden Lane – our sister bar with a late license. I never got out of bed before midday, and never returned to it before 3am. I toyed with the affections of doormen and the Miss Saigon musicians who would pop in for a G&T before the evening performance. I took minicabs home to Hammersmith every night from the Ali Cabs outfit situated opposite Leicester Square tube. And generally, I thought I had ARRIVED. You could keep Studio 54 in the 70s and The Blitz Club in the early 80s—as far as I was concerned, it did not get more decadent, more intensely glamorous, more heady and intoxicating, than Rumours of Covent Garden in 1994.
I was wrong, of course. Covent Garden 16 years ago was a fading shadow of former glories, and a million miles from the slick, shiny, brilliantly refurbished operation it is now. It was smelly and not especially hip. It was filled with dismal tourists, bad street artists and overpriced coffee shops. But I was oblivious. Having grown up in Devon and studied in Brighton, Covent Garden was my introduction to London and to a life outside full time education. It seemed to me to be the very epicentre of glamour, and I embraced it as hard as my cantilevered, Lycra-encased bosom would allow.
It had, as far as I could see, everything I would ever need—free champagne, C-list celebrities, an exotically multi-cultural demographic and a load of extremely glam new friends (insanely elegant shop assistants from the Piazza and stunningly cool hairdressers from the nearby Toni & Guy, one of whom grew up to be Ben Cooke, creator of most of Victoria Beckham’s best hair looks, all of whom swapped clothing discounts and freebie hair cuts for vodkatinis and fags), a cheap-as-you-like baked potato van for a pre-shift meals (although those were kept to a minimum in the name of spending more of my hard-earned dosh on fags and catsuits; and also, looking good in said catsuits), and the churchyard at St Paul’s for very occasional moments of quiet contemplation.
I was a good barmaid. I was deft and vaguely talented—I can still mix a decent martini. But more than that, I understood the theatre involved in working behind a bar. I got that this was a performance and oh, did I perform! I evolved a raucously overblown bar persona—spiky and smart arsed, flirtatious and disdainful. My punters adored being verbally mistreated while I mixed their drinks. I was like a dominatrix who wielded a swizzle stick instead of a whip. One of them offered me a job trading futures with his company (he drew up a contract and everything); another offered to ‘keep me’ in a flat in Knightsbridge (I declined). A footballer took me out for a few dates. A second footballer offered me two grand to pose for some naked photos (again, I declined, though less readily that time).
Sometimes, the performance aspect of things got out of hand. Drinks got thrown, ice got rammed down the back of catsuits, slaps were dished out. Screaming inter-staff rows were engineered to perk things up a little, but got completely out of hand. I’d flounce out of the place mid-shift once a month, only to return sheepishly the following day—graduate jobs weren’t growing on trees at that time. Nor were decent bar jobs, for that matter.
Of course, by submerging myself completely in one (decadent, late night) version of Covent Garden, I became oblivious to the others. I had no idea about the Opera House for example, despite the fact that I could pretty much see it if I leaned out of Rumours’ front door at a sufficiently dramatic angle. I was clueless about the true extent of the shopping opportunities there. I got all my catsuit needs seen to at the Pineapple studio shop off Long Acre, so I rarely ventured up as far as Seven Dials, and it wasn’t until I landed my first job in journalism and wound up in offices directly opposite the top of Neal Street, that I began to understand the multitude of treats all that involved. I had no idea about, or experience of, the fancy restaurants. I wouldn’t go near The Ivy or J Sheekey’s until years after I had left the bar.
Which I did, eventually. Ownership of Rumours changed hands about a year after I fetched up there, and the new management was less indulgent of my diva-ish dramatics and lippy demeanour. I thought I’d got a job in the just-launched, infinitely more fashionable Atlantic Bar on Glasshouse Street, Piccadilly—a bar that ushered in an entirely new cocktailing era—but it turned out I hadn’t. A day manager had been impressed by my Wonderbra and offered me some bar shifts that didn’t actually exist. I was unemployed. I knew I couldn’t go back to Rumours this time (that new management had been flagrantly delighted to see the back of me), so I signed-on instead. Two weeks after that, I scored my first office job as a very lowly PR operative for Selfridges. My life as a Covent Garden barmaid was over.
A Londoner once told me he was jealous of me, because he’d never had what he described as “the bright lights, big city experience” —that year of constantly awestruck glee that you get when you first come to live in London as an adult. He’s absolutely right. I did have one fabulous, bonkers, decadent, intense year of Bright Lights and Big City, of breathless giddiness, of vodka and adrenaline, of “Oh my God, I can’t believe my luck!”. And I had it in Covent Garden. If ever I want to feel that excited about being in London again—if ever I need to remind myself how bloody fortunate I am to be allowed to exist here, all I have to do, is go back to Covent Garden and get a flashback or two of that: my inaugural year of fun.
Polly Vernon is deputy editor of The Observer magazine