Moneypenny events attract the cream of the industry, together with numerous VIPs and the boldest and most beautiful that clubland has to offer, their name is synonymous with glamour and style, hug corporations are queuing up to sponsor them (last year XS, this year Marlboro), they’ve just moved into a new venue, the Church in Birmingham, where they’re enjoying capacity crowds every week, as well as at BCM and El Divino, Dermot’s become something of a celeb after his feature in FHM and Villa are still in the Premiership. It seems only logical that the next step will be the acquisition of their own venue and, indeed, rumours are currently rife that the guys are working on achieving just that.

“When we started off back in 1985”, volunteered a suddenly, mysteriously, extremely talkative Dermot, “the clothes stall was in a wicked location, right in the city centre. We pretended to be designers to get into this great development with 40 or so young, talented types, which was the perfect starting point for organising parties. The goings-on in Birmingham at the time were, to be perfectly honest, pure, unadulterated shite, so having such a good opportunity to get together 150 or so like minded people enabled us to really create something. We began a great vibe, then started the boat parties, which were just awesome, 12 hours of lunacy. We would sail away with a boatload of people, and there were no outside influences, as we handled everything from security to music to the bar. This is actually the first year that we haven’t managed to put on our annual boat bash, and I’m a bit gutted because they were always the most enjoyable thing for me. It was a handpicked crowd, half guys, half girls, and the idea back in the glory days was to attempt to get off with as many of that 50% of girls as humanly possible within the twelve hours!

“Then”, he continued, “we hooked up with Venus and began doing some joint parties, which was great for both of us because they’d been struggling and we needed something regular. Without sounding big-headed, we gave the place a new lease of life, and the joint party we did on New Year’s Eve was just incredible. When Venus closed shortly afterwards, it seemed like launching our own club was the natural thing to do, as we’d basically held it together for the last year or so of its existence. So, Miss Moneypenny’s kicked in, and we were doing the big stately home Chuff Chuffs at the same time. From there, things just kept growing, the club doing better all the time and all sorts of spin-offs coming up, like the tours and so on. All along, though we’ve never compromised on anything, from the door policy to the music, everything is kept tight to maintain top quality throughout the club, and this will be the defining factor in our grandiose future plan”.

Has, then, the road to success been as smooth as it appears, and have the merry foursome achieved what they set out to do all those years ago as young pretend designers?

“I think we’ve realised our ideals”, he grinned, “and we’ve stuck out our necks to do so and been slagged off for it. The door policy was always a talking point, but that was never a fashion statement, it was something we had to do to ensure that people could come to the club wearing whatever they wanted without being harassed. Similarly, we were labelled a handbag club, which is ridiculous, just because we have a very dressy crowd. We broke Tony de Vit, we had Sasha as Chuff Chuff resident, the American DJs call us for gigs instead of the other way around, so it’s pathetic that we were pigeon-holed as cheesy when we’ve always used only the best DJs. The only major ambition I’d still like to realise is for us to own our own venue. The clubs here in the UK just aren’t up to scratch: if you compare them with venues in Ibiza, and the attention to detail you have there, they’re all just boxes with sound systems in them. What we want to do is club just couldn’t be adapted for what we want. We want to create something completely new, a club where different rooms have different feels, different personalities. The Church, of course, is a great club, and I actually really enjoy working with the management there, but if we don’t end up owning our own venue I’ll be extremely disappointed”.

So there you have it. However, what with all these plans for venues and such, plus the massive expansion the Miss Moneypenny’s has undergone since the early days, isn’t there, I wondered, a danger that they’re setting themselves up to become just another corporate superclub?

“The whole basis of what we do is, and always will be, the club every Saturday and three Chuff Chuffs per year. Wherever we are, be it in someone else’s club or our own venue, we will never have a capacity of more than 1,000 people, which keeps us small enough that we don’t go down that corporate route. Obviously, there have been spin-offs because of our success, but our basis principles have never been compromised. On the album, for example, I sincerely believe that we’re filling a gap in the market. The whole concept of the compilation has been bastardised by the majors: the only decent club albums are the Ministry’s, the others have all just jumped on the bandwagon. I think we have a right to get our point across musically, though, as we’ve been involved since the inception of the whole scene and it’s only right that we keep our foot in the door. Clubs are where house music is played and where it came from in the first place, so they have every right to try to shape its future. For us, the album was by no means about money: we had full creative control, and we wanted to get a message across, which I feel we’ve done”.

The album represents an interesting, refreshing departure from the usual, run-of-the-mill club compilation: this is no hurriedly thrown-together collection of a few hits mixed with whatever fillers the majors were willing to throw in at bargain basement rates. Rather, the tracklisting realises perfectly the musical vision about which Jim is so passionate, stepping back from the admittedly attractive easy option of big, banging tunes in favour of the funky, soulful sound the club is being steered closer towards every week.

Compiled and mixed by Jim himself and long-time collaborator Graeme Park, the double CD offers welcome break from the frenetic pace of so much of the “bangin’ ‘ouse, mate” with which we are bombarded these days, focusing on melody and feeling rather than merely a fierce kick drum. As such, it is much more a genuine work of music than a traditional club compilation, featuring as it does two DJ sets which are genuinely representative of both the DJs in question and the club whose banner sits so proudly atop the incredibly decorated (and stupendously decorative) breasts of Melinda Messenger on the album cover, which itself has sparked controversy and will, doubtless, lead to yet more mutterings that the club’s all about semi-naked girls. Is Miss Moneypenny’s, then, too glamorous? No, because while there most definitely is a gorgeous, topless woman on the front of the CD case, that’s only the cover: just like the club itself, inside it’s all about the music.

1998 - The Story Continues......