London Stories: Gay London

For the third of our London Stories series with Bill Brewster, we alight upon one of the most vibrant (and illicit) facets of London club culture: the gay scene.

London has one of the most established gay communities in the world, from the molly houses of the 18th century (one of the first documented police raids was on Mother Clap’s house in Field Lane in February 1726; three men were subsequently hanged), to Crisp’s wartime fun with various serviceman and the birth of the modern London nightclub scene and its notorious and wonderful characters – Dockyard Doris, Selena The Horse, the wonderful Tallulah and even to today's post-Grindr scene.

We will be remembering some of the great DJs and clubs, and talking about the many changes that have happened over the past 60 years.
Our three protagonists are Norman Scott, Jeffrey Hinton and Luke Howard.

Norman Scott began DJing in the late 1950s, and even worked as a DJ for the Beatles in the 1960s, but made his name on the gay scene as one of the founding residents at the groundbreaking Bang in charing Cross Road, he also played regularly at Global Village, down the road (it later became Heaven).

He was working DJ for several decades and has many stories to tell, several of them unprintable.

Jeffrey is a visual artist and DJ, who danced to disco in New York in the late 1970s before becoming a resident at the notorious Warren Street squat, which also housed Boy George, dancer Michael Clark, Princess Julia and countless others. A friend of Leigh Bowery he DJed at Taboo, one of London’s most legendary gay nights and subsequently has played in every club worth the name.

As well as being a historian of gay nightlife, Luke Howard was also resident at Queer Nation for many years, lived in New York for a while and lately is better known as one of the quartet of resident DJs at the Vauxhall institution, Horse Meat Disco.

The evening will be once again hosted by Bill Brewster, the DJ and co-author of Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.

Tickets are free for members and £3 non-members.

All proceeds from our cultural programme go to the Kibera Hamlets school in Nairobi, where Second Home has funded the construction of a new school building designed by our architects Selgas Cano.