In May 2003, my brother Michael & I (in the spirit of Tricky Dick’s) opened Bedlam Bar on Heath Street in Hampstead, London.
It featured a four-sided-wall-plus-ceiling mural with full moon, swirling night sky and glowing white stars overhead—homage to Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.
That is because we envisioned every night to be a full moon in Bedlam Bar.
The bar area was called The Department of Mood Enhancement and the bartender offered free counseling to barflies in need along with dispensing alcohol-based remedies at discounted prices during Mad Hatter's Happy Hour.
The full moon links to lunacy and lunatics, luna being Latin for moon; those blessed with madness are believed to become more restless during a full moon.
Some involved in the project found our logo spooky. They did not quite (at first) grasp the concept (Don’t suffer mental illness, enjoy it) so we settled on a different design, incorporating the full moon with a pair of statues that once graced the arched entrance into Royal Bethlem Hospital at Moorefield’s, east London, by a Dutchman named Cibbius: Life-size male nudes, one named Raving, the other, Melancholy.
Royal Bethlem is the world's first and oldest mental hospital—and the cockney slang for it was…
Back in the 1600s, mental illness was divided into "raving" or "melancholy."
Hence our logo: a cloud halo over full moon, winged by Raving and Melancholy, creating a subtle angel of the universe.
Six renowned institutions (dominated by Royal Bethlem) were spread throughout our bar mural, each with its own sense of place.
A bottle of champagne was promised to any customer who could name them all. (No one ever did):
The Klepp Psychiatric Institute from Iceland.
St. Paul-du-Mausol. Van Gogh’s greatest source of inspiration.
MacLean. The best known mental institution in the United States, located in Belmont, a suburb of Boston. This is where James Taylor composed Fire and Rain and was the setting for Girl, Interrupted.
The Priory, Southgate, north London, where my brother lost his taste for alcohol, became an expert on the subject of addictions—and made a new set of friends.
Tricky Dick’s. Precursor to the Bedlam Bar. A late-night coffee house I ran with my brother in the mid-1970s, the looniest of the lot. (Patients included Bronco John, “Burned-out” Paul, “Coughing” Abdullah and folk singer Tim Hardin.)
A surreal Bosch-like ice age on the lower left (home to the Kleppur of Reykjavik) depicts freezing cold water and a snake, symbolizing the treatment of mental patients centuries ago (especially in Germany), when patients were lowered slowly into snake pits or hosed with ice cold water.
Why such barbaric treatment?
It was believed such “therapy” would shock melancholy catatonics to their senses.
Walt Freeman, the lobotomist, is commemorated within the mural, ice pick in hand, as is Philippe Pinel, a Frenchman who revolutionized the care of mental patients in the late 1700s.
Pinel, as Keeper of the largest French asylum, Bicestre, removed the shackles and decreed that insane patients should engage in conversation as therapy.
Nearby, an icon of St. Dymphna, patron saint of lunatics, for whom a blue candle was always lit.
On another wall, two drawings by the late comedian Jonathan Winters, along with an autographed photo of himself sitting with me inside the Montecito Bar, and this inscription: “Bedlam and Breakfast for Two.”
A genuine straitjacket is mounted to the wall.
And also a kazoo, behind glass, with this instruction: In case of emergency, break glass.
Add Vincent van Gogh’s severed ear, framed and bolted to the wall.
Around a banquette, original artwork by Charles Bronson, declared criminally insane in 1978 and considered Britain’s most dangerous prisoner: Electrifying art that reflects his unique reality, having resided in the criminally insane wing of every prison in England.
On another wall: A Hall of Lunacy features expressionist portraits by Papa Duke of Van Gogh, Dali, Nietzsche and Rasputin.
We shelved a modest library with titles including The Discovery of the Art of the Insane; Gracefully Insane, DSM-IV Made Easy (The Clinician’s Guide to Diagnosis); and my personal favorite, I Knew 3000 Lunatics, a 1935 book by Victor R. Small about his internship at an American east coast asylum.
The décor is Van Gogh’s favorite colors, orange and blue, which dominated the artist’s palette and his clothing.
Orange is the color of insanity and appeals to one and all as a unifier; blue compliments orange and triggers tranquilizer hormones.
For background music, the score from the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest—and anything by Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.
Downstairs, the ladies room is decorated French bordello style. Tart Ville.
The men’s room?
Poopland!
Greeted at the door Colonel Crappeur, gents enter The Battle for Dung Hill, a mural in which two armies of poops—the French Foreign Feces and Nerdy’s Turds—face off over who can claim Dung Hill, amid flatulent sound effects.
Bedlam’s duty manager was The Keeper (official title of Bethlem Royal’s top nutcracker); the bartender, psychoanalyst; wait staff were therapists; busboys were orderlies, customers were Bedlamites.
(Said one genuine Bedlamite, a witty dramatist named Nathaniel Lee: “They said I was mad, and I said they were mad, and damn them, they outnumbered me.”)
Our menu was called Ideas of Reference, and it offered this encapsulated history:
Bedlam, both in word and concept, derives from the world’s first mental institution, Bethlem Royal Hospital. Opened in 1247, Bedlam housed and treated Britain’s maddest visionaries for six centuries.
Three hundred years ago, aristocrats and tourists would pay an admission to observe and question the “poor lunatikes”—and otherwise be entertained by raving Bedlamites.
The word Bedlam has come to mean “a state of mindless chaos”.
We pointed out that one in four British people will experience mental illness at some point in their lives.
I greeted customers myself and astonished them on a walking tour through the history of madness.
Everyone inevitably asked, What ever compelled you to think of this?
Simple: After watching the movie A Beautiful Mind I had to question whether my adventures in espionage were purely in my mind…
Bedlam Bar’s motto: “We gladly suffers fools.”
But we particularly welcomed artists, writers, musicians, bohemians, eccentrics and lunatics.
When neighbors complained, we drove them mad; if taken to court, we pled insanity.
You’re already committed (so you might as well have dessert), said the menu. Prove you’re certifiably nuts and it’s free! (Letter from Dr. Riddlebollox required.)
In keeping with Royal Bethlem’s strict policy of distinguishing between the mentally insane and the feebleminded, our offer did not extend to idiots, imbeciles and morons.
And The Keeper’s Cell Phone Policy: As we are trying to build a radiation shield to thwart the prying ears of Big Brother, the use of cell phones is not only permitted but encouraged (and may be monitored by management).
When we were closed, this sign graced the door:
Dare I add, Bedlam Bar was also a cover for the Monaco Intelligence Service—and in that capacity hosted Prince Albert II…