How Peter Stringfellow amassed a fortune of nearly £40million thanks to his string of nightclubs

FLAMBOYANT nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow – who died today aged 77  – amassed a fortune of nearly £40million over a career spanning six decades.

Stringfellow, who was raised in a gritty Sheffield suburb at the height of the Blitz that he dubbed “p***poor”, was a self-confessed risk taker who booked The Beatles when they were starting out and introduced nude table dancing to Britain.

The larger-than-life club boss kept his businesses going for six decades despite changing tastes and entertainment styles and was said to be worth £37million at the time of his death following a secret cancer battle.

He recovered from major setbacks – such as his disastrous foray into America during the 1990s recession. His clubs in Miami and Los Angeles left him in huge debt.

In an interview in 2016, he said: “I just wanted to make money. I never had some wonderful idea, even a plan. I’ve been bankrupt a couple of times – but you’ve got to lose money to understand how great it is to make it. You have to fail. But right now, I’m winning – life is pretty good.”

Stringfellow, the eldest of four boys, was brought up in Sheffield by the women in his family after the men went to war.

He started working at 15 and had jobs as a steelworker and in a movie theatre before a two-year-stint in the Royal Navy.

He was briefly in prison for selling stolen carpets before shifting his focus to nightclubs.

He often said his time in jail was the spark that led to his later success.

"It was horrible, nothing like those black-and-white Humphrey Bogart movies," he said later.

Stringfellow’s first venture was the Black Cat Club in Sheffield where he hosted such acts as Jimi Hendrix, Tina Turner and Stevie Wonder.

He liked to boast that he spotted The Beatles early and booked them for a pittance even though they had a number one hit by the time they performed at his club in 1963.

Other legendary Stringfellow clubs were Cinderella Rockerfella’s in Leeds and The Millionaire Club in Manchester.

In 1980, Stringfellow then signed a 25-year lease on Stringfellows in Covent Garden, describing it as the world's premier gentleman's club.

He spent £1million refurbishing it – and by his own admission was a “real maverick” with his finances.

Discussing that in a newspaper interview, he said: “It was a wild risk. This was a time when Covent Garden was considered 'the wrong end of town', but I was from up North and didn't care about that.

“I spent £1m refurbishing it, which was a phenomenal sum then.”

The club, which has hosted A-listers including Prince, Marvin Gaye, Rod Stewart and Tom Jones, is still open today.

He then purchased The Hippodrome, a struggling Leicester Square music hall, where he hosted the UK’s first gay disco night.

The nightclub owner bought it for £3.5million in 1984 and sold it for double the amount six years later.

Despite those successes Stringfellow failed to replicate his success when he branched out into New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

He said: “After the recession in the 1990s, I was hit hard and the move into lap dancing was a commercial one, as I'd overstretched myself and I saw a void for a high-class adult club.”

He described his decision to open Stringfellows in Beverly Hills as his “worst ever decision”, adding “it was a £5m disaster”.

The businessman said: “Despite being packed with celebs, the takings weren't good, because celebs expect a lot of things to be complimentary, so even though they bring publicity to a club, that doesn't translate into earnings.”

In 1996, table-side dancing opened for three nights a week in Covent Garden. Stringfellow was the first person to gain a fully nude licence from Westminster Council.

He opened a second adult entertainment club called Angels, on Wardour Street, in 2006, but sold it a decade later.

Discussing that, he said: “My landlord made me a very good offer – in the millions of course – for me to leave. I didn’t want to run this as a nightclub, so someone else is coming in and doing it; I’m in the adult entertainment business.”

He launched the Stringfellow lingerie range in 2016 and talked about opening a virtual reality strip club.

Stringfellow, who once lost £47,000 on a game of poker, said his most indulgent purchase was a boat for £500,000.

He had largely removed himself from the public spotlight in recent years as he coped with cancer, and split his time between Gerrards Cross, Italy and Majorca, where he kept his boat.