Madame Jojo's
Madame Jojo's was a cabaret club at 8–10 Brewer Street in Soho, London, which operated from 1986 until 2014 and was for much of that time a fixture of the capital's drag and gay nightlife.
The club took its name from the drag performer Madame Jojo, who compèred it until leaving in 1991; the Soho impresario Paul Raymond, whose organisation owned the premises, subsequently obtained an injunction preventing the use of the stage name, after which she was billed simply as Jojo. The club was home to a troupe of drag cabaret performers known as the Barbettes, named after a character in Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet, who at first appeared six nights a week. It became popular with parts of London's gay and trans communities.[1]
From 1995 the club hosted a drag king night and contest, originally called Club Naive and later Club Geezer. A scene for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) was filmed there. From 2005 the indie night White Heat ran on Tuesdays, staging early London appearances by performers including Adele and Lorde, and in the 2000s the club also hosted the club night Kaos.[1]
The venue's logo was designed by Jonathan Harbourne while he was running a gay advertising agency in Covent Garden in the early 1990s.
Madame Jojo's closed in late November 2014 after Westminster City Council revoked its licence, and its loss became a focus of campaigning about the disappearance of Soho's LGBT and cultural venues.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Madame Jojo's, Wikipedia.