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The Colony Room Club, Soho's infamous watering hole for artists of all descriptions, is marking its half-century with a suitably bizarre exhibition . . . At 50 years old the Colony Room Club has survived longer than many of its members - but then membership of this Soho drinking den was never the sort of thing you'd want to own up to on life insurance forms. So it's a relief for those of us sick of hearing that Soho isn't what it used to be to find the Colony in surprisingly good shape after all those years of serious service to hedonism. It is marking its birthday vigorously by putting on an anniversary art exhibition with work from members such as Damien Hirst and Justin Mortimer who weren't yet born when it opened. This is both a celebration of the club's remarkable longevity and a follow-up to the 1982 Michael Parkin exhibition which showed works by members Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Eduardo Paolozzi. Club proprietor Michael Wojas hopes it will show just how wrong the infamous late Soho drinker and diarist Jeffrey Bernard was in 1996 when he said that "hardly anyone worthwhile goes to the Club any more". By that time Bernard was wheelchair-bound and could no longer ascend the well-hidden, rickety stairs to the small first floor room in Dean Street - barnacled with paintings, photographs and dubious "objets d'art" (like the perished mink-tail-t r i m m e d jockstrap and the foot-long phallic candle behind the bar) - where such industrial quantities of alcohol are consumed by such a motley collection of drinkers masquerading as writers, painters and ne'er-dowells that it seems astonishing that anyone ever gets anything done. But the Colony Room has always been as rich in artists as it has been in piss-artists - some combining both roles - since founder Muriel Belcher paid Francis Bacon �10 a week and free drink to procure rich customers for her new club back in 1948 - an era immortalised in member John Maybury's recent film starring Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon, Love is the Devil. Now Francis is dead and Lucian Freud prefers to prowl pastures new, but a new generation has joined the Colony to be seen happily propping up the bar and falling down the stairs. It has become a watering-hole of BritArt stars such as Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn, Tracey Emin and Daniel Chadwick as well as the older guard including Barry Flanagan, Patrick Caulfield, David Remfry, Chris Battye, Nic Tucker and others, many of whom have drunk there for years and whose work adorns what you can see of the bilious green walls - and all of whom are in the show. For Damien Hirst the Colony was a revelation - literally so. "There's no sign of it from the street, and I was amazed it was there. I loved it as soon as I walked into the room. I felt at home. It was fantastic. Artists like it so much simply because artists like drinking." By the time Hirst pitched up the stairs, Ian Board, famously ferocious and foul-mouthed, had taken over from Muriel. "I think I was too drunk to be frightened," says Damien, "but meeting Ian for the first time was pretty terrifying - and also pretty amusing as long as you weren't on the receiving end." But the Colony Room has always had a reputation for nurturing its artist members, as a haven for those either drowning their sorrows or celebrating some triumph, and the mantelpiece always sports a row of invitations to members' private views. Hirst liked it so much that he chose to film his inter-view for his first Turner Prize nomination at the club, a move which, according to Michael Wojas, the club's barman before he took over on Ian Board's death in 1994, the artist blames for losing him the prize that year (he got it in 1995). "Damien had been up at the Colony getting very pissed the evening before," recalls Michael, who is nursing a port and a hangover, "and he seemed rather fragile during the filming next lunchtime. He had to start talking about his work and Ian listened for a bit and then said, 'Actually, it's a load of bollocks, isn't it?', which was broadcast on the Channel 4 show about the Turner. "That would have been quite good now," thinks Michael, "but at the time it was a bit much. Damien was very shaky. I had to keep feeding him large whiskies." Since then Michael and Damien have become firm friends and Damien's son Conor is the youngest person ever (at eight days) to have visited the seamy Dean Street den, being granted honorary membership to mark the occasion. Damien has also added one of his spot paintings to the club's rather eccentric art collection. At first Michael covered it in clingfilm to protect it from the dense fug of fag smoke, but now it is clad in bubblewrap, which Michael says "makes it look more interesting". But instead of just putting that in the show (with or without the bubblewrap) Damien decided to create a new piece, one he feels complements the club's "living-room" feel. "I went out with Damien on a little drinks binge to various places," explains Michael, "finally got the chance to talk to him about the show, and at about six in the morning he came up with the idea of three flying ducks in formaldehyde. We both went, 'Yes, yes, that's it!' and when I asked him if it was possible he said, 'Don't be silly, it's done. I've had the idea, it's just a phone call now.'" Called Up, Up and Away, the ducks weigh half a ton each in their glass cases - and would probably demolish the club if anyone tried to show them there. Perhaps the secret of the Colony's success and longevity is that it has always been a mixture of the famous, the infamous and - by far the largest group -those who couldn't give a damn. Princess Margaret has popped in, columnist Taki got thrown out and David Bowie is the only person to have survived asking for a cup of tea (not that he got it). "In the old days Lucian Freud and Lord and Lady Muck would be mixing with Brian the Burglar and barrow boys from Berwick Street Market," says Michael, "and Francis Bacon and Dan Farson were particularly fond of them. The club is just too small not to mix and I've reflected that by using the hot-shots of the day with people who have been members of the Colony for quite a few years but aren't so well known." Damien is not the only one to have made a special place for this show - so have Marc Quinn, Danny Chadwick, Brian Chalkey, Kathy Dalwood and Catherine Shakespeare Lane. Kathy has made special anniversary club ashtrays (her father Hubert made the last lot) which Michael Wojas dare not put on the bar as they cost a fortune to cast, and Catherine's photo-montage triptych uses the infamous snatched photograph of Francis Bacon's body on a mortuary slab which will, no doubt, upset as many people as it is intended to. Lisa Stansfield, the Rochdale-born chanteuse and Colony Room regular, has also contributed a piece designed to ruffle a few feathers. On a small square canvas painted in the trademark murky green paint which covers every surface of the club (and which Michael Wojas had the temerity to lighten one shade when he redecorated last year), Lisa scratched a four-letter word beginning with 'w' and proudly presented it to the Colony a few years ago. "I think it was Lisa's comment on the contemporary art scene at the time," says Michael. The singer was one of many with the coveted round, green invitation to the private view at which an enormous quantity of Absolut disappeared and which turned out to be one of the biggest Soho events in years - even though it was held in Clerkenwell. She was there, tears rolling down her cheeks, with Michael Wojas, most of the artists in the show and many club members to witness the laying to rest of her friend Ian Board's ashes. They were taken from their temporary home in a Sake jar above the club's till and poured by artist Kate Braine into the head which she had sculpted of this irascible, raspberry-nosed demon before it was sealed and returned to the club, a move contrary to Board's last wishes. "He wanted me to chuck his ashes out over Dean Street or roll them up and smoke them in a joint," explains Michael. "If I'd chucked them out the window they would have gone into just one person's plate of spaghetti, so I phoned the club's solicitor and asked if there were any laws or by-laws about scattering human remains on a public highway. "I thought I'd tip them through the club's air extractor, but the solicitor said I could only do it if I didn't tell anyone and Ian would have hated that, but I think he would have approved of this." He surely would have. It was the end of an era - and the beginning of a new one. Clancy Gebler Davies
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