I’m not quite sure what the opposite of PTSD is called, but I experienced it the other day, flashbacks and all, when I walked down a set of stairs into a basement under construction. Suddenly, I could feel the soft carpet beneath the razor-thin soles of the blue, black, and red suede Gucci loafers I used to wear. I could hear the thumping bass line and the “la da dee, la da da” of “Gypsy Woman,” and for the first time in more years than I can remember, my taste buds yearned for the cool kiss of Krug. Stepping onto those steps conjured up a vision of a vanished world that touched all my senses.
In those two or three poignant seconds I saw the ghost of my 25-year-old self, glowing with the promise and possibility these basement rooms offered during the hours after midnight. Then, like a fleeting wisp of cigarette smoke (of which there used to be plenty), it was gone and I was back in the basement that, come September, will be the new Tramp.
Fifty-five years ago, in December 1969, two wood-panelled basements on London’s Jermyn Street were converted into a world-famous nightclub. Peter Sellers held his wedding reception here. It was the venue for many of the clubbing scenes of the 1960s. The stallionthe 1978 film starring Joan Collins, based on the book written by her sister Jackie and inspired, yes, by the same nightclub (loosely disguised as Hobo), which coincidentally had been co-founded by the novelist’s husband, Oscar Lerman, along with Johnny Gold and Bill Ofner.
It was a self-sufficient world. 1970s Britain may have been all rampant inflation, punk rock, power cuts, strikes, riots and unburied corpses, but someone forgot to tell Tramp. Down here, beneath Jermyn Street, it was Saturday night every night. The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Michael Caine, Roger Moore, Rod Stewart, George Best and many more piled in there. Over the years, the club made its mark on the public consciousness, with appearances by Sunday morning Editor Andrew Neil and Pamella Bordes, it girl Tara PT in a bikini with a fur coat and snorkel, and of course the famous Duke of York, who doesn’t sweat much.
Tramp captured a moment that lasted just over half a century. It’s a moment that the new owner Luca Mayor Maggiora is intent on bouncing back in a way that makes sense by 2024. Maggiora seems far too fresh for someone who, having left banking, has spent the past 15 years contributing to the night-time economy as the owner of several nightclubs, the kind popular with what we can probably no longer describe as young European trash. With sleeves rolled up to reveal tattooed forearms, sporting a smile so bright that TV’s Rylan Clark-Neal might want details from his dentist, he is immediately likeable.
“It was an honour and a privilege to be able to buy this place and rebuild it,” he says. He admits that, at 43, “what Tramp means to me is not what it means to a lot of people older than me. So I did research by interviewing all the older people about what Tramp meant to them, and they all said it was their second home.” He spent hours talking to Gold’s son, Nick, and poring over the rich archive, which includes gems such as Caine’s 1969 membership card, for which he paid £10 10s a year. The more he learned, the more impressed he was. “To be honest, I didn’t know the scale of the place until a few months ago.”
Maggiora’s enthusiasm is infectious. Passing paint cans, wooden planks and other building debris, he animatedly explains his plans. The room on the right will be a dining room called The Society, named after the restaurant that occupied the site before Tramp. The celebrated zodiacal ceiling has been restored, with the signs of the zodiac highlighted in silver leaf. To the left, in place of the nightclub, will be a lounge called Jackie’s, a tribute to the late Jackie Collins. But I don’t have time to examine the room’s famous panels, originally from Wantage Castle, as Maggiora ducks through some scaffolding and leads me through a maze of corridors and up a flight of stairs to see two muralists at work on the terrace, painting a wild scene.
It is apparently the only terrace in Mayfair licensed until 5am (late-night cigar lovers take note). Afterwards it’s on to what will become known as the (Johnny) Gold Room and, through a hidden door, into the club’s most intimate space: a small L-shaped lounge, its walls partly covered in olive and lavender silk. Fortunately, I don’t need to use my imagination to picture what this will all be like: also doing their best to keep up with Maggiora, who moves quickly from room to room, are the eponymous interior design studio. Campbell-KingDuncan Campbell and Charlotte Rey, aged 37 and 38, and with fresh faces that make them look younger, are, of course, too young to have visited Tramp in its heyday. For them, the 1970s and 1980s are distant decades, a historical era they needed to research. They began by talking to former members. “Everyone we spoke to always talked about the spirit of Tramp, how it felt and who they saw there. No one really focused on the look of it, which gave us a certain freedom to interpret it as we saw fit,” says Campbell, with a hint of a Scottish accent. “There’s a lot of lacquer and a lot of 1980s stuff that we wanted to incorporate, like brass and steel accents.”
“For example, we studied photographs of Jackie Collins,” Rey explains in his precise, Scandinavian-accented English. “Back then, women wore large, sculptural jewellery made of different metals. Mixing metals is something we often do. It gives a really beautiful double materiality – a patinated brass or a cast bronze, for example, alongside chrome or aluminium.” Accordingly, the ground-level lobby features aluminium walls, while the historic brass-coloured railing leads to a brass-detailed bar at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s something we’ve played with throughout the club,” he explains. “We looked at famous former members, like Roger Moore. We both strongly believed that Roger Moore was the best Bond of the 1980s, so we looked at Bond interiors.” “There are definitely elements of the 1980s that we felt were important to reference, but not necessarily recreate,” Campbell adds. “We tried to generate this spirit of mischief and debauchery, of discretion met with bad behaviour, wrapped up in a very glamorous form, but without slavishly trying to evoke a nostalgic recreation of what it used to look like.”
Rudeness comes up frequently when Campbell and Rey talk about Tramp. “The carpets have a bit of rudeness to them, so we work with them.” Wilton “We have designed several carpets that will be installed throughout the club,” says Campbell, who is particularly pleased with the chocolate-and-raspberry carpet made for Jackie’s, a David Hicks-style grid made up of large repetitions of the letter “T.” “There was a certain restraint in David Hicks’s interiors and François Catroux’s. There is an elegance that is given, not studied,” notes Rey approvingly. “When people talk about comfort these days, it’s very easy to think of a huge American sofa for watching television.”
Tramp, however, will offer the elegant comfort of a custom-made armchair paired with a marble side table on which a bartender has just placed a perfect version of your favorite cocktail. Rey describes this imaginary moment as a little vignette. “There’s a languor that we both find very, very elegant,” he says. “And I think that’s something that was done very well in the ’80s.”
“People are eager to go back in time, even if they haven’t lived through it, because in 2024 it’s very stressful,” Maggiora says. “People tell me, ‘Oh, it was so much better in the 70s.’”
So while Maggiora’s Tramp is a celebration of its storied past, it is also very much a product of the 2020s. Technology aside, the most obvious difference between the old and new Tramp is the absence of a dance floor. “That’s just because of the way people party in 2024,” he says. “People don’t dance as much, but when they do, they dance with their friends around their table.”
Thankfully, the stair carpet will, if anything, be plusher and deeper than before. The stairs leading down from the entrance will be covered in chestnut-coloured moiré. “It was very important to us to have this incredibly soft carpet underfoot,” says Campbell. I’m already eyeing my old Gucci loafers with anticipation.