'Seedy' bar manned by Kate Moss and Peter O'Toole and loved by Tracey Emin and Ronnie Kray

IT was the infamous haunt of Princess Margaret and David Bowie, the seedy Soho drinking den where a young Daniel Craig once pulled pints behind the bar. A magnet for artists, actors and a heady mix of highlife and lowlife, the Colony Room Club earned a reputation as the most notorious watering hole in London - and the most fun.

Opened in 1948, it survived decades of debauchery and scandal before closing in 2008, then reopening in 2023. Now, three years after it was gloriously brought back to life, the doors have closed once again. Few people alive know the place better than Darren Coffield, the artist behind the 2023 revival and author of Tales from the Colony Room: Soho's Lost Bohemia. He first climbed the stairs in 1988 as an art student.

Darren said. "What fascinated me was it was living history." It was a tiny, cramped, smoky room at the top of a dingy staircase - but no-one went there for the decor. The colour was in the people. You'd sit in there and you'd start chatting to a journalist who worked on the Profumo affair with Christine Keeler. Or, another afternoon, Francis Bacon might walk in, or John Hurt."

The Colony had been attracting royalty and gangsters, artists and actors since it opened. At the height of his fame as Doctor Who , Tom Baker would arrive in the famous hat and scarf, a toothbrush in his top pocket to signal he was looking for a bed for the night. Once he wandered out of the Colony in the full costume, and was stopped in the street by three Japanese tourists.

Darren said: “He always carried a stack of publicity photos, so he whipped a couple out, signed them, and handed them over. But it was quite clear they had no idea who he was. They just wanted to get to Oxford Street."

The whole spirit of the place flowed from one woman, owner Muriel Belcher, who was once described as 'the rudest person in England.' Comedian Barry Humphries, better known as Dame Edna Everage, said: "It provided an atmosphere of delectable depravity for the select company of alcoholics and would-be artists who managed to win the reluctant approval of Muriel Belcher, the gorgon-like proprietrix."

Jazz singer George Melly was fonder. "Muriel was a benevolent witch, who managed to draw in all London's talent up those filthy stairs." But there was a kind side to the self-styled Queen of Soho."

Darren said: "A lot of people who drank in Soho went there because they were orphans, or they had been orphaned by their families, who turned their backs on them, because they were gay or left wing or communist. And so she became this sort of de facto mother and looked after them."

Inside those famous green walls, the normal rules did not apply. David Edwards remembered the afternoon Francis Bacon stormed in, fuming from a shopping trip.

"One afternoon Francis walked in the club, annoyed and pulling his collar. What's wrong Francis? Harrods, I'm never going back there again," David said. "He'd bought a lot of clothes, but when he got home he'd decided he didn't like any of them. I bought so many suits and shirts and threw the lot in the dustbin. You'd never seen the club empty so quickly.