Londoners Magazine

He was a notorious porn baron but as Victoria Gallagher found out, there was more to Paul Raymond’s life than money and women.

King of the Soho strip club, porn publisher Paul Raymond died of respiratory failure on Monday 3 March at the age of 82. The Catholic striptease baron owned one of the country’s first strip clubs and is thought to have been worth over £650 million.

Born Geoffrey Anthony Quinn on 15 November 1925, Raymond was brought up by his mother in Liverpool. He left school aged 15 aiming to get into show business. He toured halls giving a variety of performances such as mind reading and being a clairvoyant. It wasn’t enough, so to pull in the punters he decided to introduce two strippers into his routine. It worked and the show became a big hit.

In post war Britain it was illegal to perform naked on stage. But Raymond found a loophole in the law and found it actually said that it was illegal for naked people to move on stage. The women stood still and Raymond started to get rich.

In 1958 Raymond opened his iconic strip club, Raymond Revue Bar in Soho. He managed to dodge censorship laws by operating as a club rather than a theatre, and after a couple of years had 50,000 members. The strip club was one of London’s first, and huge signs outside labelled it the World Centre of Erotic Entertainment. Despite criticism from the church and others, Raymond’s money continued piling up thanks to his judicious forays into the property market.

He decided to break into publishing and launched a range of erotic magazines including Men Only, Mayfair and Razzle. His life wasn’t without his own women and in 1951, Raymond married his first wife Jean Bradley, a former dancer. However his womanising put a strain on their marriage and they divorced in 1974 after Raymond had an affair with Fiona Richmond, an actress.

Raymond had a son and a daughter from his marriage, as well as a son from a previous relationship but it was his favourite daughter Debbie who took over her father’s publishing business while he focused on property. Sadly, Debbie died in 1992 from a drug overdose. He was badly affected by her death and according to his ex-wife Jean “she was the only thing that mattered to him more than his wealth.”

After selling his strip club in 1998, he lived out his days in a penthouse next to the Ritz in London.