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Many older
Dial-a-Cab drivers will have spent some of their younger days
bopping at The Astoria theatre in Charing Cross Road before it
became a cinema and much later, reverting to its roots with many
modern day bands playing there. But perhaps its most famous incident came in February 1957. Elvis was 4 weeks away from joining the US army, the charts were filled with stories of teen love. Tab Hunter’s Young Love was perched at number one with Pat Boone at two with Don’t Forbid Me. But coming up on the rails were a group that had made their name via a contoversial movie called Blackboard Jungle. Bill Haley and the Comets were shooting up the top ten with Don’t Knock the Rock having previously made Rock Around the Clock into a hit that was to last forever. Haley’s group were bringing |
ASTORIA CLOSES ITS DOORS FOR CROSSRAIL And its memories will be lost forever… |
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 Bill Hayley and the Connets - their memory makes way for Crossrail with
them a new type of great music called rock n’roll – not
so great was the violence that seemed to follow it. Now Bill
Haley was coming to play a concert at The Dominion in Tottenham
Court Road followed the next night but one across the road at
The Astoria. |
While the Dominion show – there were no gigs in
those days - wasn’t quite so bad, many young people were injured
when the theatre’s seats were ripped out and thrown! The Astoria
promptly cancelled their show provoking yet another riot outside
its doors. Things got much quieter when the theatre became a cinema sporting the country’s "biggest screen ever" with its Cinerama presentation. Now The Astoria is to shut its doors for ever to make way for a new Crossrail station that will be built between Great Chapel St and Charing Cross Road and be linked into Tottenham Court Road Station. A new concert hall within the station is planned but it just won’t be The Astoria! |
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DAC AND THE RAYMOND REVUEBAR PORN EMPIRE! |
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| With the recent
death of porn magnate, Paul Raymond, Dial-a-Cab
has seen an era close that it might not have been too overly
proud of and possibly prefer to have remained buried in the dim
and distant past. Paul Raymond undoubtedly took pornography away from back street dives and into the comfort of his swish Soho Raymond Revuebar and Celebrity Club in Clifford Street. Just on admission fees alone, Paul Raymond earned half a million pounds by 1965. It was around that time that Dial-a-Cab - or ODRTS as it was then - became involved. Including the Revuebar, his porn empire including magazines Men Only, Razzle and many others, eventually made him a multi-millionaire and property tycoon - a field he successfully entered into later on. But the one thing he craved but could never get was social acceptance. He tried many ways of being accepted into society circles, but could never escape the porn label around his neck. But there was one way of moving just a little bit closer – one that involved ODRTS… In 1967, London taxi drivers who had picked up passengers looking for some "late night entertainment" knew exactly what those passengers meant and took them to one of many clubs in the west end that offered sizable commission to drivers. London wasn’t that busy, even though we were in the midst of the so-called swinging sixties. That included ODRTS where although nowhere near a dangerous situation, found it difficult to come across spare money. That at a time when the ODRTS under the Chairmanship of Jack Russell - nowadays a sprightly youngster of 92 – wanted to give out new hand out cards featuring our phone number. Whilst we have no record of who it was that approached the Paul Raymond empire, it is a matter of fact that someone did and that the Raymond Revuebar offered to sponsor ODRTS with our advertising hand out cards. One side of the card gave the phone number of ODRTS whilst on the other, there was a photo of a young lady obviously wearing just a fur wrap with nothing underneath together with details of the Paul Raymond empire. We can have no way of knowing how much that advertising helped or otherwise, but ODRTS has successfully grown into Dial-a-Cab and has now outlasted the porn king himself, Paul Raymond. The fact that we are still here suggests that at the time, Mr Raymond’s financial assistance was probably very welcome. And that must go down as a matter of fact. Our condolences go to his family and (we think) our belated thanks… |
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