The next five years will be crucial to the long-term fate of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, the iconic south London pub and LGBTQ cabaret venue that is being sold to unidentified new owners.
“I’ve got five years to get RVT turned around and made into a viable business, but for that to happen we need support from the gay community,” reports James Lindsay, in what he says will be his only interview about the sale.
Lindsay has been co-owner of the venue with Paul Oxley since 2005. He will now run it under a five-year arrangement with the new owners. “We’ve accepted the offer from the new company,” Lindsay said of the sale. “They came back and asked if I would take RVT forward.” He will oversee the venue in his capacity as chief operating officer of Vauxhall Tavern London Ltd, a new company incorporated in May 2014.
Concerns about the future of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which has housed LGBTQ performance at least since the post-war era, have been fuelled by the secrecy around the property sale, the venue’s prime location in an area of substantial luxury-property development, and that fact that not too long ago, in the mid-1990s, Lambeth Council almost demolished it to build a shopping centre. That scheme, according to local legend, was sent packing when drag queens invaded a council meeting.
Asked about the purchasers’ identity, Lindsay said only that “the new owners will make a statement in due course”.
In a statement published to Facebook on September 30 2014, Lindsay said: “RVT will undergo a full refurbishment both internal and external, which will see the first floor being opened as a wine and champagne bar with a new toilet provision at first floor level.”
That statement made no explicit mention of RVT as an LGBTQ performance venue. “I want to dispel the rumours that RVT will stop being gay,” Lindsay now says. “It’s a gay business. I am hurt by the comments people are making.” The first-floor bar will also be a gay venue, he says.
Nor does he foresee major changes to the venue’s use. “It’s business as usual at RVT,” Lindsay insists. “It’s not closing. It’s not stopping being a gay venue.” And performance will remain at its heart. “Cabaret is what’s made the RVT what it is.”
Concern about the RVT’s future is bound up with appreciation of its past – specifically, the site’s unique, centuries-old history as a place of carnivalesque fun, queer performance and, on occasion, resistance and defiance.
Currently the pub is perhaps London’s preeminent LGBTQ performance venue, putting on hundreds of shows a year, from Olivier-winning company Duckie’s Saturday night performance club and the Wotever gang’s Tuesday night experiments to exhilarating occasional runs by David Hoyle. It’s also a hub of community engagement, including fundraising sports days.
Over recent decades, the venue nurtured drag icons such as Adrella, Regina Fong and Lily Savage, who in 1988 was famously carted off in a police van after encouraging punters to riot during a raid. The police wore rubber gloves for ‘protection’ from HIV. Around the same time, Freddie Mercury and Kenny Everett took Princess Diana to the pub, dressed as a boy. RVT has also appeared in recent milestone of British gay cinema Pride.
In the post-war era, the pub was a space, perhaps unique in London, where LGBTQ people could meet and perform, alongside straight (or ‘curious’) fellow patrons. The pub itself was built in 1863 on the former site of Vauxhall Gardens, the sensational and transgressive pleasure gardens that formed one of London’s preeminent attractions from the mid-seventeenth century until its closure in 1859.
Last year, the pub’s 150-year history was the subject of a Lottery-funded Duckie project, Happy Birthday RVT.
The main challenge to the venue’s future, according to James Lindsay, is commercial. In his statement of September 30, he said “RVT has made substantial losses in recent years, which has been the driving force in the sale being necessary”. Lindsay’s LinkedIn profile says the venue managed to “increase turnover to £1.4m over a 5 year period (+93%)”. Those figures, he says, apply to the period before the departure of its most reliable earner, Jonathan Hellyer, whose long-running Sunday-afternoon residency as The DE Experience came to an end last year.
“Since Jonathan Hellyer stepped out 18 months ago, it has devastated our business,” Lindsay says. “Anybody who’s a regular visitor will see our Sundays haven’t been supported as they should have been. If the gay community want RVT to survive they have to support it.”
Midweek attendance is particularly variable. The Tavern does not currently open during the day or offer a dining menu. “It’s all up for review,” Lindsay says of the venue’s operations. “As a business operator, I think we’re doing ourselves a disservice” by missing certain opportunities.
“What happens downstairs will continue,” he insists, referring to the main pub and performance space. “I want to make slight changes to the entertainment in the week. Friday, Saturday, Sunday will remain business as usual.”
He plans to renovate the building exterior and bar décor “by Christmas”, describing these as “minimal changes for taking the image of RVT forward. The whole of that bit will be brought back into good repair. I want to improve the facilities.”
Plans for the new first-floor bar are dependent on securing planning permission, which would take longer.
On his LinkedIn profile, Lindsay also mentions plans for “a corporate hospitality programme of events targeting business to business and business to consumer markets”. Earlier this month, an edition of experimental performance night UnderConstruction was cut at short notice in favour of a commercial booking.
News of the pub’s sale prompted the formation of a Facebook page, Future of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which attracted more than 1,000 followers within two days. The page was set up by several people, including blogger Steve Akehurst, who has written about his concerns over the venue’s future, and Richard Heaton, a civil servant.
“I’ve been going for 15 years,” Heaton says. “I love the spirit and community of the place. It’s a safe, experimental space that should be of interest to anyone who cares about the history of London, pop culture, the avant garde. There aren’t many such places still operating. If the RVT were to stop being an LGBT performance space, queer London would lose part of its soul.”
A statement on the Future of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern Facebook page lays out the concerns of people like Heaton and Akehurst:
“Much remains unclear, in particular the identity of the new owners, and their plans. That is what has caused anxiety and the creation of this group. The RVT’s patrons and the wider LGBTQ community might well have cause for concern, especially in an aggressive culture of property acquisition in London where many treasured assets are unsympathetically developed. The RVT’s location makes it prime real estate.
“The purpose of this group is NOT to denigrate the achievements of James Lindsay and Paul Oxley, owners of the RVT since saving it from developers almost a decade ago. Nor is it to question James’s good intentions, or his personal commitment to the RVT. If his skill and commitment lead to a bright future for the Tavern, he will earn the gratitude and admiration of many people. We also recognise that the RVT at present is not profitable and needs investment.”
Heaton is quick to emphasise that it’s about seeking clarity, not being obstructionist. “It’s like a football club,” he suggests. “The fans want a say. And until we know who the new owners are, we’re cautious. Of course, it’s an owner’s prerogative to do deals without transparency but this is a venue with such history. The fact it’s excited such passion goes to show how special a place it is.”
Heaton and 40 other local patrons have applied to Lambeth Council to add RVT to its list of assets of community value. If it were listed, there would be restrictions on changing the use of the property and, in the event of a future sale, those with an interest in its community role would have an opportunity to make an offer on the property.
Last year, the South Bank undercroft used by skateboarders and once threatened with redevelopment was added to the register thanks to the Long Live Southbank campaign.
The strength of feeling, and particularly the sense of concern, aroused by the RVT’s secret sale has put Lindsay on the defensive. “Because of the social-media aspect [of how the subject is discussed], everything has moved at such a pace,” he notes. “I need time to consider” what he deems the best way forward.
In his statement of September 30, Lindsay wrote that “it is not my intention to conduct my business interest or management of RVT on social media network sites”. He seems to have had a bit of a change of heart: in a second statement posted to Facebook last night, October 10 2014, Lindsay declared “my intention to provide regular updates through the RVT Facebook page”.
Improved communication can only be a good thing for all who care about the venue’s future. Lindsay’s second statement also made explicit the intention of “retaining the RVT as a well-loved LGBT venue” and affirmed that venue employees’ jobs were safe – as well as suggesting that the “best way for the gay and local community to help RVT is by supporting the wine and champagne bar application and by spending money in the venue.”
Lindsay could be excused a little defensiveness given his efforts on behalf of RVT over the years and, by his own account, the criteria he considered when selling the property. In his statement of September 30, Lindsay reported that he and Oxley received “two very strong offers… One would have seen RVT closed for immediate development. I forcibly resisted that offer, instead working with the new owners, who I believe understand, respect the history and culture of RVT.”
“It’s the second time in nine years that I’ve come in to save RVT from developers,” Lindsay reiterates when we speak. “When the property was sold, I could have walked away. I didn’t do that.”
“It’s difficult to run a commercial cabaret theatre seven nights a week,” acknowledges Duckie producer Simon Casson. Duckie began life at the RVT in 1996 and, having branched out to the Southbank Centre, Barbican, New York, Tokyo and, last month, Sitges, it still considers the Tavern home. “Most places that have performance on have funding to pay for that performance. The Vauxhall Tavern is like a funny little commercial theatre, often with quite shabby work on, and as such it’s fun and sweet and part of London’s cultural heritage.”
Casson is keeping his fingers crossed. “The future is potentially very bright,” he says. “If James wants to spend a few bob on the venue, make it a nice destination and put some good shows on, I’d be in favour of that. I’d like them to make it as beautiful as possible. Have an outdoor area, open in the daytime, do food, open upstairs – nice wines, why not? – and have great shows on at night. I’d be against long-term plans like knocking it down and building flats or a hotel.”
What if that appeared to be on the cards? “Do the council really want a hundred-odd drag queens outside the town hall with placards?” Casson asks. “Yeah, we can mobilise. It’s important to people.”
Lindsay himself remains adamant that his involvement in the venue is driven by passion for its unique character. “It’s the whole community involvement. One of the great things that led me to become involved [in purchasing the RVT in 2005] is the great friendships that are made there. I’ve never encountered that in any other bar or in any other pub anywhere else.”
Lindsay insists: “I will do my utmost to save the RVT.”
By his own account, he has five years to do that – what happens after that in the absence of commercial success is, for now, anyone’s guess. Such success, Lindsay says, will only be possible with the support of the venue’s devotees.
But until the new owners themselves make clear their understanding and respect for the history and culture of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and express unambiguous long-term support for it as an LGBTQ performance venue, anxiety about the future of this unique London icon will persist.
Tim Brunsden’s half-hour film about the Royal Vauxhall Tavern’s recent history, made as part of Duckie’s Happy Birthday RVT project, will screen for free next Saturday October 18 at the Tavern before Duckie’s regular Saturday night event. Details here.
UPDATE: On October 15 it was announced that Lambeth council has awarded the Royal Vauxhall Tavern community asset status, making its future as a queer performance pub a bit more secure.
