The industrial strength laser was rumoured to be illegal in its intensity and the kick-drum punch emanating from the speakers could be turn your rib cage to jelly. People just waved their glo-sticks and danced around the gory puddle as the big-cocked star wiped bloody drool from his pretty lips. Nobody batted an eyelid, but perhaps with all the chemicals, they couldn’t. I also looked on in horror as a world-famous porn star laughed while coughing up half a pint of blood. I witnessed straight and gay couples having fully fledged, penetrative sex on that dancefloor. The dance floor or the DJ booth were the best place to be, where sensory overload gave way to primal meditation and unrivalled debauchery. The rumour that she was ‘in the house’ would fly from dancefloor to toilet cubicle and in that surreal playground, it seemed totally viable that she might be gurning along with the rest of us. Laurence Malice loved messing with the pharmaceutically fried brains of the punters by employing a Princess Di look-alike to float through the club. It’s claimed that Madonna came in disguise several times and it’s rumoured that Princess Diana paid a visit. You got to hang out with the Ramplings, Nicky Holloway, Wayne Sleep and Grace Jones, but at 9am, they weren’t always the best company. Being reposible for the key to that toilet was both a blessning and a curse. This job involved looking after VIPs by securing them illegal drinks in paper cups from a secret room and managing a private lock-up toilet. I worked at Trade for 5 years, initially on the cash desk, but also in charge of membership, guest list and most stressfully, monitoring ‘celebrity corridor’. It was, quite simply, E-fuelled raving pushed to the point of insanity. His son, ‘Tall’ Paul would take to the decks as most people in the UK were preparing Sunday lunch. John Newman (RIP) was the somewhat taciturn proprietor of Turnmills. The music, a frenzied but melodic odyssey through degrees of house, would get incrementally faster as midday approached. Everybody danced, everywhere– even in the queue for the toilets. A visible queue for the drug dealer would snake across the dance floor.
SCULLY DUBPLATE MACHINE TV
Snuff movies, cartoons and kids’ TV shows played on screens above the bar. Wide-eyed trans beauties would gyrate topless on the bar, kicking customers with their heels and howling like banshees. The visuals, flyers and artwork by Mark Wardel (aka Trademark) were alluring, sexy and iconic, creating a pop-art brand that became a global cult.Ĭelebrities, steroid abusers, rent boys, Kings Cross hookers, S&M swingers, gangsters and club freaks would cram into the venue and quite literally climb the walls, every Sunday morning. The vision that greeted punters was a riotous explosion of colour, naked flesh and pop-art visuals that seemed hyper-real, even without the aid of narcotics. Punters would descend a treacherous staircase and find themselves at long bar known to regulars as Muscle Alley. There has yet to be a club as debauched, unique and demented as Trade proved in its heyday. Clerkenwell felt Dickensian and had yet to become hip and costly area that it is now. This was a radical move in 1990, when the concept of clubbing from 4am to lunchtime was beyond leftfield. The club was the first in the UK to obtain a 24-hour licence and Laurence Malice seized the opportunity to host a legendary gay after-hours at the venue. For a big slice of ‘larging it’ London, the closure of this venue signalled the end of an era and a sad demise for what was once a wildly magical and creative space. Turnmills has long since shut its doors to clubbers and is now a somewhat depressing office block. The Astoria and The End have already gone. London’s discos have been dying for years.
That venue was my boss, a relentless playground and occasionally my downfall. Trade’s initial home was Turnmills, which closed in March 2008. It was the first queer after hours club in Britain. Trade spawned the move to all night clubbing in the 1990s and celebrates its 30th birthday at The Egg next weekend.
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