Luke Black is the Deputy Chairman of the LGBT+ Conservatives.
“If you want a night tsar that will be out partying every night, you’ve got the wrong tsar”. The year is 2020 and Amy Lamé, London’s Nightlife Tsar, is in the eye of the storm.
Nightclubs, bars, and restaurants closed, indefinitely, the entire industry is in crisis. Fighting off personal criticism of inertia and incompetence, Lamé retreats to the safety of the Guardian’s sister publication, the Observer, to defend her record.
“I believe that I’m doing the best job I can to support the businesses to survive the pandemic”, she tells Nosheen Iqbal, as a petition calling for her to be relieved of her post passes 1,000 signatures.
Describing her performance as ‘disappointing’ and often ‘non-existent’, nightlife businesses complained that, despite her often-boasted connections in the media and her own career in broadcasting, she was failing to be a “powerful, vocal and visible voice for the industry” at a time of crisis.
Calling for the role to be scrapped, they felt a big opportunity was being missed to “unite the members of various industry organisations in London, such as the NTIA, AFEM, UK Music, Music Venues Trust, Face the Music, Arts Council England”. Funding to save venues from ruin was only won for one venue, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which Lamé herself hosted a club night once a week – a club night she is no longer running.
Save for diligently retweeting Khan’s hawkish and unwavering support of lockdown measures, social distancing and mask wearing, Lamé very publicly accepted the lockdown and often joined in with forces pushing for more. The UK’s hedonistic capital was being represented Lamé for a stickler for the rules and COVID hypochondriasis.
Compare her performance to that of Sacha Lord – Manchester’s Nightlife Tsar – who is unpaid but still used his profile to take Andy Burnham, and the government, to task on measures that made venues business models’ completely unprofitable, with business owners unable to pay their rent, their staff and license fees. He even appeared on Question Time. UK nightlife was being defended, not by its capital city’s £85,000-a-year Tsar, but unpaid advisor in the country’s third largest city.
What a difference a few years can make. The 2016 Amy Lamé, £85,000 a year poorer, could not “wait to hit the streets” with “loads of ideas” for London’s nightlife. Like many of Khan’s vanity projects, she has failed to deliver.
Over her tenure, the number of nightclub venues has fallen every year, breaking the record for the fewest number of venues every time. In the pandemic, 58 venues closed permanently, seeing 25 per cent of the capital’s night clubs behind shutters in the space of just 18 months.
Sources from the Night-time Industries Association show that every year Lamé has been in, venues have dropped, and licensing has become more restrictive. 20 per cent of the capital’s bouncers have left the job permanently and LGBT+ venues, a cause she said she wanted to focus on primarily in her role, are also at their fewest in the capital’s history.
The night tube, which Boris Johnson fought tooth and nail to get over the line, operates on a small selection of underground lines. Crossrail stops at midnight and does not even run on Sundays. Labour-led Hackney council has brought in new regulations on licensing banning any new venues from being open after 11pm during the week and midnight at the weekends.
Westminster council has banned Soho’s al fresco dining, a policy which had been saving several businesses from complete demise, and, most heinously of all, you cannot even get a drunken Cornish pasty from the Greggs in Leicester Square after 11pm.
All of this has taken place whilst she has been in post. When she was questioned about this, like Khan, she did not afford herself of any responsibility.
She said it was unfair to pin the blame on her, as it was out of her control. But if her role is not the use her influence on pressure and lobby councils – even those run by the same party – then literally what is the point of her?
Perhaps she is a maligned individual, understaffed and under resourced in City Hall but supported with a PA and “personal data consultant”, I’m not sure that is true. An FOI request into her meetings in January 2019, reluctantly provided to Colm Howard-Lloyd, shows a meeting schedule barer than the shelves on FBPE twitter.
Take away meetings with her PA, “personal consultant”, internal meetings and guest appearances with US magazines, she had 24 meetings over 19 days. Of those 24 meetings, very few are with industry. There is one meeting with an entertainment brand (Live Nation) and one regional Mayor (Hackney).
There are no meetings with nightclubs, venues, industry groups or hospitality groups. No meetings with local councils. No meetings with creative industry. No recorded attendance of any nightclubs. £85,000 per annum.
So, frustrated with half a million pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted on London’s Nightlife expert, who does not like to party, I set to doing what any man who spends his free time reading the minutes of Mayor’s Question Time meetings does: moan about it on Twitter.
Within a few hours, my inbox was full of messages from disgruntled nightclub owners, local councillors and even a few confused Greater London Authority staffers who were all asking me the very same question: who is Amy Lamé?
Well let me tell you. Lamé, born in New Jersey in 1971, is an American-British cabaret performer, writer, and radio show host. She is also the UK’s first and only paid ‘Nightlife Tsar’. In position since 2016, Lamé’s £85,000 a year salary has been tasked to turn the capital into a thriving 24-hour city.
Lesbian ‘it girl’ of the 2000s, Lamé was for many years a minor celebrity in London’s LGBT circle. Duckies, a hugely successful performance entourage of the same decade, bagged Arts Council funding for its burlesque nights and art exhibitions for many years.
By the end of the Noughties, Lamé’s career had shifted away from performance and nightlife, focussing primarily on radio appearances, podcasts, and opinion pieces in broadsheets.
In more recent years, she is also a self-described human rights activist, with apparently three decades of fundraising and campaigning to improve healthcare access and international human rights under her belt. Yet, and despite three decades of work in this area, I have found it difficult to locate any campaigns she has worked on.
Her social enterprise, Pom Pom International, which is mentioned frequently in the impassioned defences of Amy Lamé in my Twitter thread, does not appear to be in business anymore.
Twitter renditions of heart-warmingly twee community events in LGBTQIA+ venues making pom poms sadly do not appear to have stood the test of time, as I cannot find a record of any organisations under the name ‘Pom Pom International’ on Companies House. The website has been archived. Perhaps the Pom Pom market was too saturated.
What she is less public about is her long and sustained career in the Labour Party. A once-hopeful Labour MP, narrowly missing out on the nomination for a safe Labour seat in 2014, Lamé is a long-time party donor, fundraiser, and activist.
As a result, her network in politics is seriously impressive, with close relationships with several historic Labour frontbenchers and, remarkably, Sarah Brown, who even hosted her hen night in Downing Street. The star-studded event, attended by bands like Erasure,
From here, a career in local Labour politics grew, eventually landing her in the Mayor’s office, where she’s been since 2016. When put into this context, it’s easy to see the Nightlife Tsar role for what it is: a sinecure post for failed parliamentary candidate, accountable to no-one and a reward for friend to the party.
Some nightlife owners have jokingly compared her to doing about as much work as Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous. I find that a little cruel – at least Patsy would be hitting the clubs in the West End. Lamé isn’t even doing that.
Luke Black is the Deputy Chairman of the LGBT+ Conservatives.
“If you want a night tsar that will be out partying every night, you’ve got the wrong tsar”. The year is 2020 and Amy Lamé, London’s Nightlife Tsar, is in the eye of the storm.
Nightclubs, bars, and restaurants closed, indefinitely, the entire industry is in crisis. Fighting off personal criticism of inertia and incompetence, Lamé retreats to the safety of the Guardian’s sister publication, the Observer, to defend her record.
“I believe that I’m doing the best job I can to support the businesses to survive the pandemic”, she tells Nosheen Iqbal, as a petition calling for her to be relieved of her post passes 1,000 signatures.
Describing her performance as ‘disappointing’ and often ‘non-existent’, nightlife businesses complained that, despite her often-boasted connections in the media and her own career in broadcasting, she was failing to be a “powerful, vocal and visible voice for the industry” at a time of crisis.
Calling for the role to be scrapped, they felt a big opportunity was being missed to “unite the members of various industry organisations in London, such as the NTIA, AFEM, UK Music, Music Venues Trust, Face the Music, Arts Council England”. Funding to save venues from ruin was only won for one venue, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which Lamé herself hosted a club night once a week – a club night she is no longer running.
Save for diligently retweeting Khan’s hawkish and unwavering support of lockdown measures, social distancing and mask wearing, Lamé very publicly accepted the lockdown and often joined in with forces pushing for more. The UK’s hedonistic capital was being represented Lamé for a stickler for the rules and COVID hypochondriasis.
Compare her performance to that of Sacha Lord – Manchester’s Nightlife Tsar – who is unpaid but still used his profile to take Andy Burnham, and the government, to task on measures that made venues business models’ completely unprofitable, with business owners unable to pay their rent, their staff and license fees. He even appeared on Question Time. UK nightlife was being defended, not by its capital city’s £85,000-a-year Tsar, but unpaid advisor in the country’s third largest city.
What a difference a few years can make. The 2016 Amy Lamé, £85,000 a year poorer, could not “wait to hit the streets” with “loads of ideas” for London’s nightlife. Like many of Khan’s vanity projects, she has failed to deliver.
Over her tenure, the number of nightclub venues has fallen every year, breaking the record for the fewest number of venues every time. In the pandemic, 58 venues closed permanently, seeing 25 per cent of the capital’s night clubs behind shutters in the space of just 18 months.
Sources from the Night-time Industries Association show that every year Lamé has been in, venues have dropped, and licensing has become more restrictive. 20 per cent of the capital’s bouncers have left the job permanently and LGBT+ venues, a cause she said she wanted to focus on primarily in her role, are also at their fewest in the capital’s history.
The night tube, which Boris Johnson fought tooth and nail to get over the line, operates on a small selection of underground lines. Crossrail stops at midnight and does not even run on Sundays. Labour-led Hackney council has brought in new regulations on licensing banning any new venues from being open after 11pm during the week and midnight at the weekends.
Westminster council has banned Soho’s al fresco dining, a policy which had been saving several businesses from complete demise, and, most heinously of all, you cannot even get a drunken Cornish pasty from the Greggs in Leicester Square after 11pm.
All of this has taken place whilst she has been in post. When she was questioned about this, like Khan, she did not afford herself of any responsibility.
She said it was unfair to pin the blame on her, as it was out of her control. But if her role is not the use her influence on pressure and lobby councils – even those run by the same party – then literally what is the point of her?
Perhaps she is a maligned individual, understaffed and under resourced in City Hall but supported with a PA and “personal data consultant”, I’m not sure that is true. An FOI request into her meetings in January 2019, reluctantly provided to Colm Howard-Lloyd, shows a meeting schedule barer than the shelves on FBPE twitter.
Take away meetings with her PA, “personal consultant”, internal meetings and guest appearances with US magazines, she had 24 meetings over 19 days. Of those 24 meetings, very few are with industry. There is one meeting with an entertainment brand (Live Nation) and one regional Mayor (Hackney).
There are no meetings with nightclubs, venues, industry groups or hospitality groups. No meetings with local councils. No meetings with creative industry. No recorded attendance of any nightclubs. £85,000 per annum.
So, frustrated with half a million pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted on London’s Nightlife expert, who does not like to party, I set to doing what any man who spends his free time reading the minutes of Mayor’s Question Time meetings does: moan about it on Twitter.
Within a few hours, my inbox was full of messages from disgruntled nightclub owners, local councillors and even a few confused Greater London Authority staffers who were all asking me the very same question: who is Amy Lamé?
Well let me tell you. Lamé, born in New Jersey in 1971, is an American-British cabaret performer, writer, and radio show host. She is also the UK’s first and only paid ‘Nightlife Tsar’. In position since 2016, Lamé’s £85,000 a year salary has been tasked to turn the capital into a thriving 24-hour city.
Lesbian ‘it girl’ of the 2000s, Lamé was for many years a minor celebrity in London’s LGBT circle. Duckies, a hugely successful performance entourage of the same decade, bagged Arts Council funding for its burlesque nights and art exhibitions for many years.
By the end of the Noughties, Lamé’s career had shifted away from performance and nightlife, focussing primarily on radio appearances, podcasts, and opinion pieces in broadsheets.
In more recent years, she is also a self-described human rights activist, with apparently three decades of fundraising and campaigning to improve healthcare access and international human rights under her belt. Yet, and despite three decades of work in this area, I have found it difficult to locate any campaigns she has worked on.
Her social enterprise, Pom Pom International, which is mentioned frequently in the impassioned defences of Amy Lamé in my Twitter thread, does not appear to be in business anymore.
Twitter renditions of heart-warmingly twee community events in LGBTQIA+ venues making pom poms sadly do not appear to have stood the test of time, as I cannot find a record of any organisations under the name ‘Pom Pom International’ on Companies House. The website has been archived. Perhaps the Pom Pom market was too saturated.
What she is less public about is her long and sustained career in the Labour Party. A once-hopeful Labour MP, narrowly missing out on the nomination for a safe Labour seat in 2014, Lamé is a long-time party donor, fundraiser, and activist.
As a result, her network in politics is seriously impressive, with close relationships with several historic Labour frontbenchers and, remarkably, Sarah Brown, who even hosted her hen night in Downing Street. The star-studded event, attended by bands like Erasure,
From here, a career in local Labour politics grew, eventually landing her in the Mayor’s office, where she’s been since 2016. When put into this context, it’s easy to see the Nightlife Tsar role for what it is: a sinecure post for failed parliamentary candidate, accountable to no-one and a reward for friend to the party.
Some nightlife owners have jokingly compared her to doing about as much work as Patsy Stone from Absolutely Fabulous. I find that a little cruel – at least Patsy would be hitting the clubs in the West End. Lamé isn’t even doing that.