London High Life

The Swinging Sixties

It was exhilarating to be 25 and in London that summer of 1966.

Fashion model Twiggy was on billboards everywhere, and her lovely look-alikes shopped in Carnaby Street and the King’s Road; Dusty Springfield sang You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me … Just be Close at Hand; England won the soccer World Cup, at home; and we all went to picture theatres to see Doctor Zhivago.

Legs galore with Twiggy and chairs

And every night after Wimbledon, I went to a 10 pm dinner in Chelsea with my best mate Kenny Fletcher and his celebrity friends … followed by a different London gambling den.

Fletch insisted, “A casino is a good place to relax in after Wimbledon.”

In 1966 these small casinos were illegal: but there were at least half-a-dozen hiding in plain sight, each catering to the foolish and famous from around the world.

Because of his vast gambling experience, one night in a basement casino in Chelsea, Fletch noticed that the four croupiers on a roulette table were cheating.

Not every time: only on the occasion that a huge bet landed a winning number.

Normally, when the little white ball fell into a slot and stayed there, the croupiers would allow everyone to see the number. Over and over and over again until we all stopped watching.

But the croupiers were on a tiny wage – plus 5% of the table’s profit: a giant incentive to cheat.

These places were not regulated in 1966 and so no cameras watched from the ceiling.

That night in the Chelsea basement, a £3,000 bet (two years’ wages for me) hit on a winning number. Instead of leaving the ball in its slot, the croupier – in the bat of an eye – plucked it out … and called a different number.

No one objected.

The food, the grog, and the boasting were free and most gamblers sat busy writing down the winning numbers on specially-provided cards to follow their system. Or, like one American bloke with a party-girl on each arm, they were only interested in showing how much they could afford to lose.

Had anyone objected, there were three other croupiers around the table to say the number called was correct at the time it fell into their hands.

Group dynamics also played a role.

If no one else in the crowd around the roulette table was protesting … then everything must be ridgy-didge.

So I suggested to Fletch that if we bet in small amounts against any huge bets, then the casino would be cheating for us as well.

That would mean betting on several numbers.

But Fletch had a more wily idea: back just one number and give the croupiers the nod that we were wise to them. To shut us up, they would have to call our number.

And they did.

Using only yellow 10-shilling chips (half a £) we very slowly accumulated a heap of winnings.

I only needed two of these bets to take home two weeks’ wages.

However, when we emerged from the basement into a dark arcade at 4 the next morning, a broad-shouldered man with an American accent, a goatee beard, and an accomplice stopped us.

“You two have been cheating!” he said, “so we’re going to break your arms.”

I broke into a sweat, but Fletch didn’t even blink.

“Do that and this casino will be shut down immediately forevermore!” Fletch replied haughtily.

“I’m playing singles on the Centre Court at Wimbledon today and if I’m not there it will be all over the front pages of every newspaper in London … and the police will finally be forced to act.

“Now get out of our way!”

As we walked out unhindered, I said: “But Fletch, you’re out of the singles!”

“Yes,” he replied, “They don’t know that, but.”

I was reminded of this incident 30 years later when I read that the infamous Kray twins of the 1960s complained that they couldn’t make a go of it when they moved their illegal casinos from the East End to the West End of London.

“We had famous celebrities and Lords as customers,” the twins said, “but if they didn’t pay up we couldn’t bash ’em.”

Notorious gangsters the Kray Twins would give gifts such as this roulette-wheel watch to special employees

The middle Sunday of Wimbledon back in 1966 was a day off for everyone, so all the champions were invited to a garden party at the 100-year-old Hurlingham Club in a bend of the River Thames in Fulham.

This ancient multi-storey mansion was surrounded by 42 acres of green lawns, tennis courts, croquet lawns, and a large putting course — all incongruously hidden behind streets of hundreds of tiny old joined brick houses.

Some Club members moored their yachts there.

Fletch had been allocated two tickets to the exclusive Garden Party, but he, of course, wanted all his friends with him.

In a brick wall at the end of a dead-end street, two very narrow single doorways into the Hurlingham Club were guarded by three men in long grey coats.

Between these two doorways was a drive-through for official Limos.

Lance and Pamela Mesh, Fletch and I, Harry Fowler and Kenny Lynch arrived by taxi.

Actor Harry Fowler and pop singer Kenny Lynch were great friends who lived on different floors in the same block of flats, the famous Art Deco-style Chesil Court in Chelsea

Harry, the actor, was annoyed that Fletch had put £1000 on a racehorse the previous day and lost.

But Fletch justified the bet saying: “It was a dead-set cert, H! The tip came straight from the jockey.”

Harry replied in his Cockney accent:

“That’s right! The jockey’s climbing onto ’is ’orse and everyone’s ready for the race and ’e suddenly says: ’old on a mo! Say nothing! Say no more! Be shrewd! … I ’aven’t rung up Fletch! So they ’old up the race and show the jockey to a telephone.

“With the hook up, Fletch!”

But Harry still came along because he couldn’t resist the challenge of trying to moody his way past three gatekeepers into the posh Hurlingham Club without a ticket.

Harry asked the taxi-driver to stop at the beginning of the cordoned-off dead-end street instead of driving us up to the official entrance.

As we alighted, the taxi driver turned to Harry – famous on British TV for his role in The Army Game comedy which ran for four years – saying: “Oi! Don’t I know you from somewhere, guv’nor?”

“I should say so,” said Harry, crimping his small brown mouse eyes.

William Hartnell (the original Doctor Who) gives Harry Fowler (Corporal Flogger) a right dressing down in The Army Game

Then Harry slowly surveyed the dead-end street as if we were going to rob the joint.

He’d never been here before … and he didn’t like the set-up.

“’ang about!” Harry exclaimed. “What’s the caper ’ere, Fletch? Six of us will never get through those little doorways one at a time with only two tickets … not with all those geezers blimping us.”

Fletch replied: “Well you and Kenny Lynch are the experts at moodying, H … This’ll test you, but. … I don’t really believe you can do it.”

“Say no more,” said Harry Fowler. “If Lynchy and I don’t get through, you can have me in Selfridges’s window!

“Say nothing, but we’ll ’ave to scamper through that wide Limo entrance before they twig. It’s our only chance.”

Harry called on us to spread out across the middle of the road and to march towards the official vehicle entrance as if we were gunfighters in an American western … while the men in grey coats stood menacingly in the way.

It was starting to resemble the Gunfight at the OK Corral as Harry called on us all to stride out more confidently.

Seeing us bearing down, the men in coats moved to the middle entrance.

“They’re ’aving a blimp!” Harry warned. “Just keep walking ... no one stop, whatever happens, even if I do! … Be shrewd, smile-smile, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more.”

Then, as we were almost there, Harry unexpectedly turned and said to his gang of desperadoes: “It’ll be hard for the black man!”

But Kenny Lynch kept striding out with the insouciance of a man who had strutted the stage throughout England when singing his Number One hit record Up on the Roof.

Harry marched up to the gatekeepers, held up the two gilt-edged invitations like a fan, and said with gusto:

“It’s the comasohavok and the gyme-dafoose.”

Confused by the gobbledygook, the three gatekeepers gathered around Harry while we all did as instructed and strode through the vehicle entrance.

We were almost through, when one of the guards swung around and grabbed Kenny Lynch by the arm, pulling him back out, saying: “And where do you think you’re going?”

As Harry might say, the jig was up.

But Harry lifted his folded umbrella high in the air and struck the arm holding Kenny Lynch a decent thwhack.

“Good God, man!” Harry yelled, his gimlet eyes taking on a fierceness I’d never seen before. “Don’t you realise who that is?”

“No guv’nor,” said the chastened Cockney gatekeeper.

“Well keep your hands to yourself in future!” Harry roared … and took Kenny Lynch by the offended elbow and ushered him respectfully through the opening into the elegant Hurlingham Club Garden Party that awaited us all.

There we had a wonderful afternoon feasting on champagne with chicken, poached eggs and salmon, then French candied orangettes dipped in ginger chocolate.

We played croquet, mini-golf and mixed with tennis royalty.

And, who knows, perhaps some real royalty too.

Hurlingham was that sort of a club.

The following year, 1967, the Queen moodyed her way past the guards into the Hurlingham Club Garden Party. She just missed us.

[This story is adapted from episode 105 of “The Great Fletch”, the upcoming audio serial. See also my early substack stories Betting Against the Casinos and When My Number Came Up]