When you think about Peter Stringfellow, aka ‘Stringy’, it’s hard to think about anything other than topless women. Stringy, who’s just died aged 77, made a fortune first out of music clubs – early bookings included the Beatles – and then out of women who’d mislaid their tops.
Not the most salacious of pursuits, you might think. And the sleaziness of the image wasn’t helped by the foot-long mullet and the taste for leopardskin-print outfits. Certainly, on the outside, all those trashy clichés rang true in 2000, when I interviewed Stringy for The Spectator shortly after his 60th birthday.
On his birthday, he sat on a gold throne in his Covent Garden nightclub, and consumed a three-course Taittinger champagne supper, flanked by the prettiest tabloid journalists invited to the occasion.
His godson paid tribute: ‘He’s made a lot of people divorced, he’s made a lot of people married.’
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