Raymond Revuebar & Walker’s Court
A loophole, and the freedom around it
Paul Raymond opened the Revuebar in 1958 – Britain’s first licensed striptease club – in the narrow passage of Walker’s Court. He had found a loophole: as a “members’ club” it escaped the rules on public entertainment. For 46 years it drew audiences from every class and made Raymond the wealthiest man in Britain by his death in 2008.
But Walker’s Court was more than the Revuebar. The short alley held sex shops, peepshows and bookshops of a particular kind, and a culture of anonymity that overlapped with gay Soho. Gay men, trans women, sex workers and curious visitors moved through on their own terms. The loophole that mattered most here was not Raymond’s – it was the one that said nobody needed to explain what they were doing there.