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He's rubbed shoulders with the stars, hosted parties for gangsters and even employed black cab rapist John Worboys as a stripper.
But Ray Radmore now lives a quieter life a world away from the one which saw his cabaret club make national headlines for all the wrong reasons.
He reminisced with reporter Jack Dyson...
Along a leafy Herne Bay street, towering Edwardian houses face a long-abandoned former Christian holiday camp.
Among them is Cromwell Cottage Boarding Cattery, run by Ray Radmore and his wife Sue. The hush along the road is only interrupted by birdsong and the low rumblings from the train track at the end of their garden. The quiet evenings they now spend together are a world away from the wild, controversial and debauched nights Ray would host at Victoria’s Cabaret Club in Harrietsham more than 30 years ago.
We’re sat at his dining room table. His 11-year-old dog, Alfie, who has an enormous tumour on his back, pokes his nose into my bag. Ray - rosy cheeked and strong-looking - is leafing through files of newspaper clippings and photographs, reminiscing.
“Kevin ‘Bloody’ Wilson – you know him?” the 71-year-old asks, grinning. “The Aussie comedian who swears – ‘Hey Santa Claus, where’s me bike?’ Brilliant he was.
“Michael Barrymore, Bobby Davro, Bernard Manning, Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Rockin’ Berries... they all appeared for me.”
Through his work at Victoria’s, Ray rubbed shoulders with the most famous comedians of the 1980s and 1990s. He booked many of them for gigs at the venue for fees ranging from a couple of hundred pounds to several thousand.
He wears a broad smile as he shows me photographs of him posing with the likes of Lenny Henry, Freddie Starr and Brian Conley, recounting stories of them backstage. Gary Wilmott and Stan Boardman, he says, would serenely wait to begin their sets, but others struggled to contain their nerves pre-show.
“I’ve seen loads of drugs,” he adds. “Singers, dancers and comics would be snorting before they went on stage - it gave them the buzz to go out and do it night after night. Others wanted alcohol and Mike Reid would chain smoke; he was always on edge. But when he’d go on stage you wouldn’t think he was nervous at all.”
Before he was appointed the manager of Victoria’s, Ray would travel to markets selling items like Bolex watches, knock-off perfumes and Elvis Presley mirrors. “I would sell swag gear – my mates used to call me Del Boy.”
Following a chance meeting with comedian Duncan 'Chase Me' Norvelle, he developed a friendship with the owner of Victoria’s, who later appointed him manager of the cabaret club when he was in his 30s. Three years later, he bought the business.
As he continues to flick through the papers, he pulls out a clipping from The Daily Sport in the 1990s. Emblazoned across it are the headlines 'A floor show' and 'Who bares wins'. Around them are photographs of a topless woman in stockings lying in the middle of a crowded dance floor with a man, only wearing a pair of trousers, on top of her. The pair, seemingly taking part in heavy petting, were surrounded by dozens of smiling revellers.
“What’s that?” I ask, as Ray starts to turn past the page.
“I used to do shows at Victoria’s called Naughty Naughty Nights,” he responds confidently. “I’d advertise them saying ‘come and wear as little as you dare’ and I’d have my staff in hula skirts or bikinis. I used to put male and female strippers and drag acts on.
“It started getting raunchier and raunchier. After the show there used to be a disco and, on this night, my band was asked to play stripper music. As it started, this couple got down on the floor. All of a sudden a bloke comes out the crowd with a bloody great big camera - it was set up by the paper. We got some money out of it in the end and tried to sue the paper.”
The nights proved to be massively popular and, as a result, Ray held them for about five years. He decided to shelve them after the story, blaming the regular attendance of a swingers’ club for its raciness. The group later asked if he would allow it to use his club for behind-closed-doors events, but he declined.
As we talk, he then comes across several photographs of scantily clad women and oiled-up, muscle-bound men. In addition to his Naughty Naughty Nights, he would host hen nights at the club to drum up further business during the week. For them he would hire strippers, with bawdy monikers like Billy Hotrocks and David Blaze. One of them – Terry the Minder – was John Worboys, the ‘black cab rapist’ jailed in 2009 for sex attacks on 12 women.
“Look at his eyes – so weird,” he says, his finger trained on Worboys’s promotional flier. “I thought he was a very weird-looking guy in the dressing room, shy and not a man’s man. I met him about half-a-dozen times over five years - I didn’t use him that often.
“I only realised he was the rapist when I read the papers. You’d never have known it back then.”
In the early 1990s, Ray lost the club. During a period of recession, he saw his takings plummet from £1 million a year to £650,000. This resulted in his bank taking possession of the business.
He then worked as general manager of the Casino Rooms in Rochester, before working at the Ridge Golf Club in Maidstone. There, he hosted celebrity events with the likes of Barbara Windsor and, contentiously, benefit dos for Charlie Kray.
“I had all the gangsters at the Ridge,” he says keenly. “I was very friendly with a guy called Tony Lambrianou, who worked for the Krays back in the day. He asked me if I’d put a night on for Charlie Kray because he was in the nick and he wanted to get him some money while he was inside. You wouldn’t believe who was there.”
Among the attendees were notorious villains Charlie Richardson, Freddie Foreman and Frankie Fraser - who spent 42 years in prison for a litany of violent crimes - and the unlicensed boxer Roy Shaw. The gangsters, who paid £100 for their seats, were wined and dined as the music of the Rockin’ Berries filled the room.
“I had two nights for Charlie,” Ray continues. “Everyone there had done their time and were no longer enemies; they were all mates. It was fascinating because they were both such good nights and you felt safe as anything.”
Following a spell running Michael’s restaurant in Tankerton, now the Yantze, Roy and Sue decided to open the £9-a-night cattery. In their garden, they built two outbuildings, which now contain 54 cats. Despite living in such tranquillity with his wife of 18 years, Ray yearns for the old days.
“I was meeting people who were doing performances in front of the Queen and then two weeks later I was in a dressing room with them having a chat about golf,” he said.
“People ask me if I miss it - I do. It was a real buzz and you can’t get it back.”
