Madame Jojo’s

Madame Jojo's was a small nightclub and cabaret venue on Brewer Street in Soho, London, known for its red-velvet, gilt-and-art-deco interior and its mix of drag, burlesque and live indie music. The venue occupied a site with a much older entertainment pedigree; according to Wikipedia, the building had previously been the basement bar Jack of Hearts beneath Isow's restaurant from the late 1930s to the early 1970s, and later spent time as an adult cinema before Madame Jojo's itself opened.

The club as most people remember it was opened in 1986 by Soho impresario Paul Raymond, who named it after a drag performer called Madame Jojo. She compèred the club until 1991, when a dispute over the stage name led to her being billed simply as Jojo thereafter, fronting a troupe of drag performers known as the Barbettes. The venue quickly became a fixture of London's gay and trans nightlife, and in 1995 it introduced a regular Drag King night and contest, first called Club Naive and later Club Geezer.

From the mid-2000s, Madame Jojo's found a second life as a music venue through White Heat, a Tuesday-night indie club and gig promotion that ran for a decade from 2005. White Heat put on early London shows for acts including Adele, The xx, Jamie T and Lorde, and became closely associated with the nu-rave and indie scenes of the period, with crowds dancing to bands such as the Klaxons and CSS. The club also hosted long-running cabaret and burlesque nights like Kitsch Cabaret and Finger in the Pie, and even appeared on screen in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

After Paul Raymond's death in 2008, the venue passed to his family's company, Soho Estates. Madame Jojo's closed abruptly in November 2014 after Westminster Council revoked its licence, following an incident in which door staff were accused of using baseball bats against a group throwing bottles outside. The closure prompted a 'Save Soho' campaign backed by figures including Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch, who argued the decision reflected wider pressure on Soho's older, late-licence venues amid redevelopment of the area.

The site has remained shut for over a decade since, despite a new licence being granted in 2019 and reports in 2022 that a revived Madame Jojo's would reopen under Simon Hammerstein; this reopening did not materialise, and by late 2024 an application had been made to use the former premises as a strip club instead.