‘King of Soho’ who launched Britain’s first strip club and top-shelf mags
Geoffrey Quinn, better known as Paul Raymond, who died on 2 March, 2008, aged 82, was a showman, publisher and property developer who amassed a fortune of over £650 million but was blamed for the moral decline of Great Britain.
His range of pornographic magazines included such titles as Men Only, Mayfair, Escort and Razzle. He also ran a famous Soho strip club from which his empire was controlled, earning him the nickname ‘King of Soho’.
He was a man of simple, if questionable, tastes to whom books were anathema and family life came second to business. He strived for probity, but critics accused his venue and publications of paving the way for seedier, more explicit ventures and he frequently skirted the law.
Geoffrey Anthony Quinn was born on 15 November, 1925, in Liverpool. He was the son of a haulage contractor, but was raised by his mother and her sister. He left school at 15 with show business ambitions but was forced to take an office job with the Manchester Ship Canal Company.
His aspirations were further thwarted when his attempts to get out of military service with a feigned heart condition were foiled and he spent two years in the RAF. A self-proclaimed "total spiv", he made best use of the time with black market sidelines which funded his post-war variety circuit ventures.
He and assistant Gaye Dawn began performing a corny mind-reading act on Clacton pier in Essex in 1947, but the duo came to an abrupt end when Ms Dawn became pregnant. Mr Raymond supported his son financially but was estranged from him and his mother for many years.
Next he went into the nude revue business with a touring variety show. At the time topless models were permitted on stage providing they stayed completely motionless. In his Moving Nudes show, the ‘movement’ was provided by mobile platforms which would transport the girls across the stage.
Mr Raymond, always keen to give his punters what they wanted, hunted long and hard for a loophole. In 1957 he found it, realising that he could bypass the laws by opening a private members club. The Raymond Revuebar, Britain’s first strip club, opened the following year, brashly advertising "erotic entertainment" with a neon sign.
The Revuebar attracted a sophisticated clientele but also the attention of the law, with numerous police raids culminating in a £5,000 fine for "unruliness" in 1961. It was small change, however, with more than £500,000 in membership fees coming his way by the mid 1960s.
In 1965 he invested the money in launching ‘man’s magazine’ King, a rival to Playboy and Penthouse, the American magazines that had recently arrived on British shores, that mirrored their mix of ‘tasteful’ nudity and serious journalism.
It folded after a mere two issues, but the experience had whetted Mr Raymond’s appetite for the publishing world. For the remainder of the decade he concentrated on producing racy West End shows, but in 1971 he launched Men Only. Mainstream retailers initially refused to stock the magazine because it ventured into new risqué territory, but its upmarket audience attracted big advertising investment.
Over the coming decade Paul Raymond Publications launched and acquired several more similar titles and Mr Raymond was believed to be one of the richest men in the country. The Raymond Revuebar survived the Soho clampdown of 1977 – which saw 500 policemen resign over accusations of bribing by club owners – and purchased many of the businesses that suffered by it.
But in the 1980s his personal fortunes (if not his financial fortunes) began to decline. He had left his wife Jean in 1974 for the sex symbol Fiona Richmond but that relationship had now broken down too. In addition long-time Men Only editor Tony Power left his position for personal reasons during a time when the magazine was facing competition from a proliferation of hardcore rivals.
Conversely, in the 1990s it was in the softcore market that Paul Raymond Publications suffered, with lad mags and newspapers offering the same content that had been so scandalous in the ’60s. In 1992, his daughter Debbie – eager heiress to his empire and the one relation with whom he still had contact – died from a drug overdose at 36.
In the latter years of his life he became increasingly reclusive and struggled to retain his image as an old-fashioned showman as his company expanded onto the internet. In 2007 the value of Paul Raymond Publications and his property business Soho Estates put him at number 109 on the Sunday Times ‘Rich List’.
He ended his life in seclusion in a penthouse apartment at the Ritz, estranged from his ex-wife, their son, and his son with Gaye Dawn. His death was announced by his company and no cause was given.