The Stage

Maurice Huggett

Published Wednesday 25 January 2012 at 11:02 by Richard Anthony Baker

For the past ten years, Maurice Huggett, a larger than life character, owned and ran the Phoenix Artist Club in London - a basement venue underneath the Phoenix Theatre in Charing Cross Road. Usually open until 3am, it was a favourite haunt of actors, musicians and media folk.

Huggett worked first in a branch of the Keith Prowse ticket agency at the Dorchester Hotel. After a spell looking after first-class passengers for Pan Am, he worked in Iran in the days before the overthrow of the Shah.

Back home, he honed his skills as a club owner at the Players Theatre, the music hall underneath the arches of Charing Cross station, the Cross Keys in Covent Garden and the Old English Gentleman in Edgware Road. Once in charge of the Feen, as it was known to its habitues, Huggett welcomed a wide range of celebrities from Jude Law to Angela Rippon and from Lady Gaga to Carol Vorderman.

There were, however, rules. If anyone started moving chairs and tables around, Huggett would grab his microphone and shout: “Don’t touch the props.” One night, he barred a group of young men he thought looked scruffy. They were indie rock band the Arctic Monkeys, who at the time were topping the charts. Huggett also ran a talent show at the club for which he assembled a team of judges led by Elaine Paige and Belinda Lang, one of the stars of the television sitcom, 2point4 Children.

Within hours of his death, there were tributes on a wide range of websites. One praised his mastery of the club: “Through it all, Maurice reigned supreme, dancing, pouting and gliding around the club in a vast and never-ending collection of legendary waistcoats to a piped soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof, offering advice, comfort, support and an exhaustible supply of friendship and queenly asides.”

He left instructions for his funeral - there was to be no solemn music, only show tunes, and the dress code was to be theatrical.

Maurice Huggett, who was born on July 7, 1945, died on December 17, 2011, aged 66.