Peter Evans (restaurateur)
Encyclopedia
Peter Evans was described by journalist Linda Blandford, writing in The Observer
, 9 March 1975 as a "harbinger who heralded the youth culture with one of Soho
's first coffee bars, The Cat's Whisker
, where Tommy Steele
strummed... Evans also foresaw the coming of increasing spending on dining out with his chain of Angus Steak Houses and the David Hicks
-decorated Peter Evans Eating Houses." In short, he tapped in early to the "post-war creative renaissance."
Evans started the Cat's Whisker coffee bar with Spanish dancing but this soon gave way to skiffle
and rock 'n roll; because of lack of dancing space, the bar invented hand-jiving http://www.wikihow.com/Do-the-Hand_Jive.
Later, Evans teamed up with two other young creatives: David Hicks and architect Patrick Garnett http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1518216/Patrick-Garnett.html of Garnett, Cloughley and Blakemore. According to Malcolm Newell in his book Mood and Atmosphere in Restaurants they set the decorative style that epitomised London in the Swinging Sixties, giving the affluent vibrant places to dine and dance. The times saw an explosion in fashions - male and female: Twiggy, Biba, Mary Quant, Teddy Boys, Cecil Gee, John Stephen, Carnaby Street. Evans was voted 'Beau Brummell' Best Dressed Man in 1965 by the Clothing Manufacturers' Federation; Hicks even designed red-heeled evening slippers for men!
In 1967 Evans started the exclusive, members-only, Raffles night-club in the King's Road
, Chelsea. Hicks's stylish and durable design lasted through to 2007 when new owners gave it a 'complete makeover' http://www.nightmagazine.co.uk/venues/RafflesChelsea.htm. The club was a favourite throughout the Sixties with the royals of the day. Princess Margaret,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/2563849/Prince-William-and-Kate-Middleton-visit-nightclub-favoured-by-Princess-Anne.html Princess Anne and Prince Charles were all visitors. The younger royals have followed: Prince William when romancing Kate Middleton and Prince Harry when pursuing Chelsea Davy.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1213135/Prince-Harry-romance-Chelsea-Davy-appears--on.html
Inter alia, Hicks designed sets for Richard Lester's 1968 movie Petulia, starring Julie Christie
. Garnett's Chelsea Drugstore was immortalised in Stanley Kubrick
's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange.
Evans and his second wife, Gail, now write e-books showing how to cure without pills a number of pesky maladies that doctors find difficult, e.g. insomnia
; this cure won an award as did their book on breaking cigarette addiction; other books supply remedies for obesity, depression, hay fever and snoring. Their most ambitious book addresses adding a significant number of extra years to life, and how to save more valuable years by sleeping less but more effectively and efficiently by 'power sleeping'. "An internet book written for the two extremes in today's cut-throat economic conditions: Those desperately seeking work and those heavily pressured souls who actually run growing companies."
Other interests include astrology, politics, and new ways of selling things: "Today's advertising is stuck in the past, repetitive and boring. We have to sell but there's an urgent need to interest consumers, not hack them off so they chew up the sofa," he told Wikipedia.
, London, his father, Lionel Oliver Evans, was an inventor and builder.
Educated briefly at Belmont, Mill Hill
, Evans then worked with his father until one row too far drove him to Ghana
, West Africa. There, to spice up a boring life selling insurance, he wrote for the Daily Mirror's West African subsidiary, the Accra Daily Graphic, becoming their African and Wimbledon tennis correspondent.
Eventually his insurance employers realised he was spending more time on tennis than selling their product and he was fired. Returning to London, Evans and a self-confessed Casablancan cigarette smuggler, Roy Wallace-Dunlop partnered to open one of the first coffee bars, The Cat's Whisker
, with Spanish dancing and expressos as the drawcards. That partnership failing, Evans took on a young live-wire, Robin Eldridge (pictured); Eldridge suggested dropping the Spanish dancing for something 'fresher'. A juke box appeared, soon to be followed by live music. This attracted a flood of youngsters into Soho
to listen to Lonnie Donegan
and his skiffle
and Tommy Steele
's jumpin' rock 'n roll. With no space for dancing, The Cat's Whisker gave birth to the hand-jive
which took off, enthusiastically supported, among many others, by film-maker Ken Russell
, who was a Cat's Whisker customer making a name for himself as a freelance photographer at the time.
, the site of the recently-closed Cat's Whisker.
The chain of steak houses grew but the partnership with Beale and Eastwood did not long survive before Evans split and started the Peter Evans Eating Houses, with establishments in, e.g. Fleet Street (with a teleprinter), Chelsea, and Kensington. Evans turned to David Hicks, the most brilliant of the young designers (others being Terence Conran
, Dennis Lennon and Michael Inchbald also making a name for themselves in the 'relatively new field of restaurant design,' according to Mood and Atmosphere in Restaurants) and architects Garnett, Cloughley and Blakemore, to design the PEEH restaurants and in 1967 Hicks designed the most enduring of Evans's creations, Raffles, one of the tiny number of traditional and high-flyer clubs surviving from the Sixties to this day.
Evans-Hicks-Garnett were among the 'potent movers and shakers of the 1960s'. Architects GCB designs included some of the most iconic buildings of the time, e.g. from the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower (then the tallest building in London), fashion boutiques on the King's Road
, Chelsea, including the Chelsea Drug Store, immortalised by the Rolling Stones in You Can't Always Get What You Want, and later used as a set for Stanley Kubrick
's film A Clockwork Orange
, to the George V Hotel
in Paris. In addition to his stylish designs for the PEEH restaurants, Hicks's creation of the snappy fork logo http://www.flickr.com/photos/rollthedice/3390273363/ , was later to give the restaurants worldwide publicity.
In 1964 Evans collaborated with illustrator William Rushton
on The Anti-Bull Cook-Book, the hardback being published by Anthony Blond
; the paperback was called The Stag Cook Book: A low guide to the high art of nosh and was published by The New English Library
- Four Square in February 1967.
. In Brisbane he met and married his second wife, the journalist Gail Wintour; their best man was Hugh Lunn
, the well-known journalist and author.
In Brisbane
Evans wrote the magic-comedy television series, the Martin St James Show, for The Reg Grundy Organisation on the 10 Network. For the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
, he wrote and presented a 13-part radio programme, "Earthquake", on the best of modern music.
Moving to Sydney
Evans became a regular contributor to Scope
, a weekly radio programme on "the unusual, the topical, the entertaining" (which ran for 18 years on the ABC); and freelanced for News Corp's The Australian and Kerry Packer
's The Bulletin.
Working for other people not much to his liking, Evans returned to the UK, founded a merchant bank (Montgomery Evans) and attempted to buy back the Peter Evans' Eating Houses and the night club Raffles. However, Norman Lonsdale had just sold the group to G&W Walker, the commercial vehicle for the boxing brothers, Billy and George Walker. The Financial Times
headline said it all: "Walker Brothers KO Peter Evans' Bid".
Soon tiring of merchant banking, Evans returned to writing when his idea for a book was commissioned by New English Library
. Increasingly worried by population growth and the West's indifference to the world's hungry, he wrote a harbinger's novel, Megadeath. "Many, many millions are already starving; most of these will die because of feeding animals (for every 10 kilograms of soya protein fed to cattle only one kilogram is converted to meat), with food that should be used to feed people." He also foretold that methane production by the planet's billion meat animals would prove a tipping point for climate change.
Prepared to put their diets where their pens were, Evans and wife Gail went vegetarian.
After doing consulting work for a children's charity, Evans attempted to breathe life back into the Peter Evans Eating House concept by up-dating it, but failed - he was too early with the 'fusion' food concept, and a further chain venture, The Vertical Refreshment Company, which offered in-house games and cut-price drinks in exciting pub environments looked promising but eventually lost out because of increasing resistance from the brewers. "Brewers are greedy b******s, I'm afraid," Evans observed.
, the couple wrote Guide To Village Riches, a how-to book showing the way to cope and earn following the transition from city to country living. Evans has a family background in medicine and this interest led him and his wife also to write a series of books (now e-books) setting out drug-free treatments for common but hard-to-eradicate ailments.
An insomnia
c following the divorce from his first wife, ("Men suffer more in a divorce than women") Evans invented an original way to get his sleep back. Writing under the pen name Zachariah Evans, he had worldwide success with a revolutionary, sufferer-controlled cure entitled Sleeplessness Cured: The Drug-free, Quick and Proven Way.
This was awarded 'Best Social Invention' by the London Institute for Social Inventions
, 1993. In 1994 another of the couple's health books Cigarette Addiction Permanently Cured was also awarded an Honourable Mention by the same Institute.
They have also published the results of some long-term research into the validity of star signs.
Disappointed by today's politicians, they are currently working on a viable version of government that will begin to seriously address and solve the planet's urgent challenges, and at the same time put in place a theft-proof way to keep sticky political fingers from tax-payers money. Evans holds the opinion that permanently closing 'the best club in London', the redundant and massively expensive-to-run Houses of Parliament, would make a good starting point for a significant and down-to-earth money-saving campaign.
"With the availability of video-conferencing there's no longer a need for Parliament as such. The people's representatives should live and work in their constituencies, not be swanning around wasting our money."
It was closed down by the police in 1958 because of ' dangerous over-crowding'.
Within a few weeks Evans had converted the Soho coffee bar into the first Angus Steak House selling "Supremely Succulent Scotch Steaks" at "Prices That Won't Spoil Your Appetite".
There were three founders and for a time they used to drink together. However, one evening a beer-chucking incident marked the beginning of the end of the association.
Evans' prickly nature later also led to a falling out with his bankers, Kleinwort Benson
Lonsdale. Evans discovered that Kleinwort's board representative was after Evans's job as chairman of PEEH. To the bank's horror, Evans fired him.]
Evans' private life was extravagant; Bentley
motor cars, Turnbull & Asser
shirts, Lobb shoes http://www.johnlobbltd.co.uk, and Savile Row
suits were not the only indulgences; (perhaps the self-regard was an investment not entirely wasted: he was elected 'Best Dressed Man' in July 1965); high-stakes gambling and a number of ladies, including the diva, Barbara Leigh, featured, all ultimately leading to long-suffering wife Yolanda's suit for divorce.
At the divorce court hearing, Evans's QC, Billy Rees-Davis, revealed the evidence of the family chauffeur that Mrs Evans and her mother had disguised themselves in skin stains and Indian saris and shadowed Evans around London to collect evidence of Evans's adultery. Evans recorded his surprise at these dramatics; evidence was not that difficult to get...
He kept potentially expensive company round the card table. His opponents included John Bingham (later Lord Lucan), before his fall the most formidable stud poker player in London. Evans is frequently asked whether or not he believes that Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett in November 1974. "John was a killer at the poker table, a pussycat away from it. Certainly not!" And is Lucan still alive? "His family is long-lived. John is probably still with us, possibly living right here in the UK!" In Evans's opinion, Lucan should now come forward "to face the music" and prove his innocence.
Another player was Roger Moore ("Ah, Mr Bond"). Alas, in real life the handsome actor never quite measured up to the poker mastery displayed by Ian Fleming's steely-eyed creation.
Amongst several other regular poker fiends Evans took on were journalists David Spanier and Peter Jenkins
, painter David Hockney
, writer Alan Williams
, and impressario Michael White
.
These high-stakes players were dangerous but beatable if nerves held and fortune favored. However, Evans also used to play at John Aspinall
's Clermont Club where chance was apparently less likely to favor the punter, at least so it was as alleged years later with the publication of Douglas Thompson's book, "The Hustler
's" (pub Sidgwick & Jackson 2007) and Channel 4's "The Real Casino Royale".
Evans fell out with Aspinall because of the alleged Clermont cheating but ultimately forgave the dying man because of his passion for animals. "They will not destroy the planet; humans may."
Besides the nightclub, new restaurants, dalliance and gambling, Evans had other outlets for his money. At one time, with David Frost
, his host at the much-publicised Connaught Hotel breakfast of 7 January 1966, and film director Bryan Forbes
, the trio found themselves temporarily 'owning' Private Eye
whilst it overcame a little local difficulty with its cash flow.
One somewhat larger challenge Evans and Frost survived was perhaps more by luck than judgement: a high-profile mutual acquaintance had asked to be involved in the multi-million pound redevelopment of a property in a prime Kings Road position owned by Evans. At a critical stage the third party pulled out and it was only afterwards Frost and Evans discovered that he had fallen victim to one of his frequent financial crises. The acquaintance was Robert Maxwell.
Evans then was approached by the phenomenally successful Italian trattoria maestro, Alvaro Maccioni, who appealed to Evans to sell him the site. Evans agreed, but even Alvaro's magic stuttered there.
Evans was seldom far from the headlines; one of the more bizarre (London Evening Standard, 1965) read "Eating Houses Boss Arrested at Board Meeting," and concerned the absurdity of Evans being summarily arrested in the middle of a board meeting, handcuffed and marched off to Savile Row police station. The crime? Failure to pay some parking tickets.
Certainly a row at the time, but one that Evans later realised played a part in leading to his second marriage, this connected him with another bizarrerie. In all innocence he erected his usual Peter Evans Eating Houses sign over a new restaurant at the junction of Kensington High Street and Kensington Church Street http://www.flickr.com/photos/rollthedice/3390273363/. The Eating House was bang next door to a church and the David Hicks's stylised PEEH fork was pointing directly at it. The Church elders were not amused. 'Definitely not Good Evans — His Devil's Fork Threatens The Church' summed up newspaper headlines around the world.
However, Gail, the object of Evans's affections in Australia, had read about the hoo-ha and found it amusing.
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, 9 March 1975 as a "harbinger who heralded the youth culture with one of Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
's first coffee bars, The Cat's Whisker
The Cat's Whisker
The Cat's Whisker was a coffee bar situated at 1 Kingly Street, Soho, London, during the mid-late 1950s. It offered London youngsters Spanish dancing, live rock 'n roll, and skiffle....
, where Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...
strummed... Evans also foresaw the coming of increasing spending on dining out with his chain of Angus Steak Houses and the David Hicks
David Hicks
David Matthew Hicks is an Australian who was convicted by the United States of America Guantanamo Military Commission under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, on charges of providing material support for terrorism...
-decorated Peter Evans Eating Houses." In short, he tapped in early to the "post-war creative renaissance."
Evans started the Cat's Whisker coffee bar with Spanish dancing but this soon gave way to skiffle
Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
and rock 'n roll; because of lack of dancing space, the bar invented hand-jiving http://www.wikihow.com/Do-the-Hand_Jive.
Later, Evans teamed up with two other young creatives: David Hicks and architect Patrick Garnett http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1518216/Patrick-Garnett.html of Garnett, Cloughley and Blakemore. According to Malcolm Newell in his book Mood and Atmosphere in Restaurants they set the decorative style that epitomised London in the Swinging Sixties, giving the affluent vibrant places to dine and dance. The times saw an explosion in fashions - male and female: Twiggy, Biba, Mary Quant, Teddy Boys, Cecil Gee, John Stephen, Carnaby Street. Evans was voted 'Beau Brummell' Best Dressed Man in 1965 by the Clothing Manufacturers' Federation; Hicks even designed red-heeled evening slippers for men!
In 1967 Evans started the exclusive, members-only, Raffles night-club in the King's Road
King's Road
King's Road is a street in Chelsea, London, England.King's Road or Kings Road may also refer to:* King's Road * King's Road * King's Road * King's Road...
, Chelsea. Hicks's stylish and durable design lasted through to 2007 when new owners gave it a 'complete makeover' http://www.nightmagazine.co.uk/venues/RafflesChelsea.htm. The club was a favourite throughout the Sixties with the royals of the day. Princess Margaret,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/2563849/Prince-William-and-Kate-Middleton-visit-nightclub-favoured-by-Princess-Anne.html Princess Anne and Prince Charles were all visitors. The younger royals have followed: Prince William when romancing Kate Middleton and Prince Harry when pursuing Chelsea Davy.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1213135/Prince-Harry-romance-Chelsea-Davy-appears--on.html
Inter alia, Hicks designed sets for Richard Lester's 1968 movie Petulia, starring Julie Christie
Julie Christie
Julie Frances Christie is a British actress. Born in British India to English parents, at the age of six Christie moved to England, where she attended boarding school....
. Garnett's Chelsea Drugstore was immortalised in Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's 1971 film A Clockwork Orange.
Evans and his second wife, Gail, now write e-books showing how to cure without pills a number of pesky maladies that doctors find difficult, e.g. insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
; this cure won an award as did their book on breaking cigarette addiction; other books supply remedies for obesity, depression, hay fever and snoring. Their most ambitious book addresses adding a significant number of extra years to life, and how to save more valuable years by sleeping less but more effectively and efficiently by 'power sleeping'. "An internet book written for the two extremes in today's cut-throat economic conditions: Those desperately seeking work and those heavily pressured souls who actually run growing companies."
Other interests include astrology, politics, and new ways of selling things: "Today's advertising is stuck in the past, repetitive and boring. We have to sell but there's an urgent need to interest consumers, not hack them off so they chew up the sofa," he told Wikipedia.
Early on
Born in HighgateHighgate
Highgate is an area of North London on the north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath.Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has an active conservation body, the Highgate Society, to protect its character....
, London, his father, Lionel Oliver Evans, was an inventor and builder.
Educated briefly at Belmont, Mill Hill
Mill Hill
Mill Hill is a place in the London Borough of Barnet. It is a suburb situated 9 miles north west of Charing Cross. Mill Hill was in the historic county of Middlesex until it was absorbed by London...
, Evans then worked with his father until one row too far drove him to Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, West Africa. There, to spice up a boring life selling insurance, he wrote for the Daily Mirror's West African subsidiary, the Accra Daily Graphic, becoming their African and Wimbledon tennis correspondent.
Eventually his insurance employers realised he was spending more time on tennis than selling their product and he was fired. Returning to London, Evans and a self-confessed Casablancan cigarette smuggler, Roy Wallace-Dunlop partnered to open one of the first coffee bars, The Cat's Whisker
The Cat's Whisker
The Cat's Whisker was a coffee bar situated at 1 Kingly Street, Soho, London, during the mid-late 1950s. It offered London youngsters Spanish dancing, live rock 'n roll, and skiffle....
, with Spanish dancing and expressos as the drawcards. That partnership failing, Evans took on a young live-wire, Robin Eldridge (pictured); Eldridge suggested dropping the Spanish dancing for something 'fresher'. A juke box appeared, soon to be followed by live music. This attracted a flood of youngsters into Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
to listen to Lonnie Donegan
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
and his skiffle
Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
and Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...
's jumpin' rock 'n roll. With no space for dancing, The Cat's Whisker gave birth to the hand-jive
Hand jive
The Hand jive is a dance particularly associated with rock and roll and rhythm and blues music of the 1950s. It involves a complicated pattern of hand moves and claps at various parts of the body, following and/or imitating the percussion instruments. It resembles a highly elaborate version of...
which took off, enthusiastically supported, among many others, by film-maker Ken Russell
Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism as being obsessed with sexuality and the church...
, who was a Cat's Whisker customer making a name for himself as a freelance photographer at the time.
Restaurateur
After The Cat's Whisker was closed down by the police because of over-crowding, Evans proved the old saw that luck favours the prepared mind; on the lookout for a new venture, he was by chance introduced to accountant Tom Beale and butcher Reg Eastwood and the trio became partners to create the first of the Angus Steak Houses at 1 Kingly Street, SohoSoho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...
, the site of the recently-closed Cat's Whisker.
The chain of steak houses grew but the partnership with Beale and Eastwood did not long survive before Evans split and started the Peter Evans Eating Houses, with establishments in, e.g. Fleet Street (with a teleprinter), Chelsea, and Kensington. Evans turned to David Hicks, the most brilliant of the young designers (others being Terence Conran
Terence Conran
Sir Terence Orby Conran, FCSD, is an English designer, restaurateur, retailer and writer.-Early life and education:Terence Conran was born in Kingston upon Thames, the son of Christina Mabel and South African-born Gerard Rupert Conran, a businessman who owned a rubber importation company in East...
, Dennis Lennon and Michael Inchbald also making a name for themselves in the 'relatively new field of restaurant design,' according to Mood and Atmosphere in Restaurants) and architects Garnett, Cloughley and Blakemore, to design the PEEH restaurants and in 1967 Hicks designed the most enduring of Evans's creations, Raffles, one of the tiny number of traditional and high-flyer clubs surviving from the Sixties to this day.
Evans-Hicks-Garnett were among the 'potent movers and shakers of the 1960s'. Architects GCB designs included some of the most iconic buildings of the time, e.g. from the revolving restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower (then the tallest building in London), fashion boutiques on the King's Road
King's Road
King's Road is a street in Chelsea, London, England.King's Road or Kings Road may also refer to:* King's Road * King's Road * King's Road * King's Road...
, Chelsea, including the Chelsea Drug Store, immortalised by the Rolling Stones in You Can't Always Get What You Want, and later used as a set for Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
's film A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
, to the George V Hotel
Hotel George V, Paris
Hôtel George-V is a famous luxury five-star hotel set just off the Champs-Élysées on Avenue George V, in Paris, France. It is named, like the street in which it is situated, after King George V.-History:...
in Paris. In addition to his stylish designs for the PEEH restaurants, Hicks's creation of the snappy fork logo http://www.flickr.com/photos/rollthedice/3390273363/ , was later to give the restaurants worldwide publicity.
In 1964 Evans collaborated with illustrator William Rushton
William Rushton
William Rushton may refer to:* W. A. H. Rushton British physiologist* Willie Rushton , British comedian...
on The Anti-Bull Cook-Book, the hardback being published by Anthony Blond
Anthony Blond
Anthony Bernard Blond was a British publisher and author.Blond was the elder son of Major Neville Blond CMG, OBE, who was a cousin of Harold Laski. His mother was from a Manchester Sephardic Jewish family; they divorced when Blond was a child. Born in Sale, Cheshire, Blond was educated at Eton,...
; the paperback was called The Stag Cook Book: A low guide to the high art of nosh and was published by The New English Library
New English Library
The New English Library was a United Kingdom book publishing company, which became an imprint of Hodder Headline.- History :New English Library was created in 1961 by the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles, with the takeover of two small British paperback companies, Ace Books Ltd and Four Square...
- Four Square in February 1967.
Back to the pen
Various pressures, not least his divorce in October 1965 (until 1971 divorces were only granted "because of bad behaviour") led Evans to sell his holdings to his banker, Norman Lonsdale, in 1969, and, after an extensive tour abroad, he landed in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. In Brisbane he met and married his second wife, the journalist Gail Wintour; their best man was Hugh Lunn
Hugh Lunn
Hugh Duncan Lunn is an Australian journalist and author.-Early journalism:Lunn served his journalism cadetship with The Courier-Mail. Upon completing his cadetship, he worked overseas for seven years. During 1967 and 1968 he covered the Vietnam War for Reuters...
, the well-known journalist and author.
In Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
Evans wrote the magic-comedy television series, the Martin St James Show, for The Reg Grundy Organisation on the 10 Network. For the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, he wrote and presented a 13-part radio programme, "Earthquake", on the best of modern music.
Moving to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
Evans became a regular contributor to Scope
Scope
The word scope may refer to many different devices or viewing instruments, constructed for many different purposes. It may refer to a telescopic sight, an optical device commonly used on firearms. Other uses of scope or Scopes may refer to:...
, a weekly radio programme on "the unusual, the topical, the entertaining" (which ran for 18 years on the ABC); and freelanced for News Corp's The Australian and Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, AC was an Australian media tycoon. The son of Sir Frank Packer and Gretel Bullmore, the Packer family company owned controlling interest in both the Nine television network and leading Australian publishing company Australian Consolidated Press, which were later...
's The Bulletin.
Working for other people not much to his liking, Evans returned to the UK, founded a merchant bank (Montgomery Evans) and attempted to buy back the Peter Evans' Eating Houses and the night club Raffles. However, Norman Lonsdale had just sold the group to G&W Walker, the commercial vehicle for the boxing brothers, Billy and George Walker. The Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
headline said it all: "Walker Brothers KO Peter Evans' Bid".
Soon tiring of merchant banking, Evans returned to writing when his idea for a book was commissioned by New English Library
New English Library
The New English Library was a United Kingdom book publishing company, which became an imprint of Hodder Headline.- History :New English Library was created in 1961 by the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles, with the takeover of two small British paperback companies, Ace Books Ltd and Four Square...
. Increasingly worried by population growth and the West's indifference to the world's hungry, he wrote a harbinger's novel, Megadeath. "Many, many millions are already starving; most of these will die because of feeding animals (for every 10 kilograms of soya protein fed to cattle only one kilogram is converted to meat), with food that should be used to feed people." He also foretold that methane production by the planet's billion meat animals would prove a tipping point for climate change.
Prepared to put their diets where their pens were, Evans and wife Gail went vegetarian.
After doing consulting work for a children's charity, Evans attempted to breathe life back into the Peter Evans Eating House concept by up-dating it, but failed - he was too early with the 'fusion' food concept, and a further chain venture, The Vertical Refreshment Company, which offered in-house games and cut-price drinks in exciting pub environments looked promising but eventually lost out because of increasing resistance from the brewers. "Brewers are greedy b******s, I'm afraid," Evans observed.
Publisher-writer
A life in the country beckoned and in rural PembrokeshirePembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....
, the couple wrote Guide To Village Riches, a how-to book showing the way to cope and earn following the transition from city to country living. Evans has a family background in medicine and this interest led him and his wife also to write a series of books (now e-books) setting out drug-free treatments for common but hard-to-eradicate ailments.
An insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
c following the divorce from his first wife, ("Men suffer more in a divorce than women") Evans invented an original way to get his sleep back. Writing under the pen name Zachariah Evans, he had worldwide success with a revolutionary, sufferer-controlled cure entitled Sleeplessness Cured: The Drug-free, Quick and Proven Way.
This was awarded 'Best Social Invention' by the London Institute for Social Inventions
Institute for Social Inventions
The Institute for Social Inventions was a think-tank set up in 1985 to publicise and launch good ideas for improving the quality of life. Its founder Nicholas Albery sought to promote non-technological innovations. It merged with the Global Ideas Bank, formed in 1995....
, 1993. In 1994 another of the couple's health books Cigarette Addiction Permanently Cured was also awarded an Honourable Mention by the same Institute.
They have also published the results of some long-term research into the validity of star signs.
Disappointed by today's politicians, they are currently working on a viable version of government that will begin to seriously address and solve the planet's urgent challenges, and at the same time put in place a theft-proof way to keep sticky political fingers from tax-payers money. Evans holds the opinion that permanently closing 'the best club in London', the redundant and massively expensive-to-run Houses of Parliament, would make a good starting point for a significant and down-to-earth money-saving campaign.
"With the availability of video-conferencing there's no longer a need for Parliament as such. The people's representatives should live and work in their constituencies, not be swanning around wasting our money."
The not-so-private life Thumbnails
The Cat's Whisker at one time was so busy that, at the height of its popularity, according to Coca-Cola, it was that company's biggest single customer in the UK.It was closed down by the police in 1958 because of ' dangerous over-crowding'.
Within a few weeks Evans had converted the Soho coffee bar into the first Angus Steak House selling "Supremely Succulent Scotch Steaks" at "Prices That Won't Spoil Your Appetite".
There were three founders and for a time they used to drink together. However, one evening a beer-chucking incident marked the beginning of the end of the association.
Evans' prickly nature later also led to a falling out with his bankers, Kleinwort Benson
Kleinwort Benson
Kleinwort Benson is a leading Private Bank that offers a wide range of financial services to private and corporate clients from offices throughout the United Kingdom and Channel Islands. The bank has its headquarters on St George Street in Mayfair, and is supported by seven UK regional and two...
Lonsdale. Evans discovered that Kleinwort's board representative was after Evans's job as chairman of PEEH. To the bank's horror, Evans fired him.]
Evans' private life was extravagant; Bentley
Bentley
Bentley Motors Limited is a British manufacturer of automobiles founded on 18 January 1919 by Walter Owen Bentley known as W.O. Bentley or just "W O". Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later...
motor cars, Turnbull & Asser
Turnbull & Asser
Turnbull & Asser is a British clothier established in 1885. In addition to its flagship store on Jermyn Street in London, England it also has two United States locations, one in New York City and one in Beverly Hills, California....
shirts, Lobb shoes http://www.johnlobbltd.co.uk, and Savile Row
Savile Row
Savile Row is a shopping street in Mayfair, central London, famous for its traditional men's bespoke tailoring. The term "bespoke" is understood to have originated in Savile Row when cloth for a suit was said to "be spoken for" by individual customers...
suits were not the only indulgences; (perhaps the self-regard was an investment not entirely wasted: he was elected 'Best Dressed Man' in July 1965); high-stakes gambling and a number of ladies, including the diva, Barbara Leigh, featured, all ultimately leading to long-suffering wife Yolanda's suit for divorce.
At the divorce court hearing, Evans's QC, Billy Rees-Davis, revealed the evidence of the family chauffeur that Mrs Evans and her mother had disguised themselves in skin stains and Indian saris and shadowed Evans around London to collect evidence of Evans's adultery. Evans recorded his surprise at these dramatics; evidence was not that difficult to get...
He kept potentially expensive company round the card table. His opponents included John Bingham (later Lord Lucan), before his fall the most formidable stud poker player in London. Evans is frequently asked whether or not he believes that Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett in November 1974. "John was a killer at the poker table, a pussycat away from it. Certainly not!" And is Lucan still alive? "His family is long-lived. John is probably still with us, possibly living right here in the UK!" In Evans's opinion, Lucan should now come forward "to face the music" and prove his innocence.
Another player was Roger Moore ("Ah, Mr Bond"). Alas, in real life the handsome actor never quite measured up to the poker mastery displayed by Ian Fleming's steely-eyed creation.
Amongst several other regular poker fiends Evans took on were journalists David Spanier and Peter Jenkins
Peter Jenkins
Peter Jenkins may refer to:*Peter Jenkins , British diplomat*Peter Jenkins , British journalist*Peter Jenkins , Canadian politician...
, painter David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
, writer Alan Williams
Alan Williams
Alan John Williams is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Swansea West from 1964 to 2010.-Early life:...
, and impressario Michael White
Michael White
- Academics :*Michael JD White , British zoologist*Michael White , inventor of narrative therapy*L. Michael White, American theologian*Michael White , English Communications Theorist- Journalism and literature :...
.
These high-stakes players were dangerous but beatable if nerves held and fortune favored. However, Evans also used to play at John Aspinall
John Aspinall
John Aspinall may refer to:* John Aspinall , zoo owner and gambler* John Aspinall , engineer* John Thomas Walshman Aspinall , English Conservative Party politician, Member of Parliament for Clitheroe 1853...
's Clermont Club where chance was apparently less likely to favor the punter, at least so it was as alleged years later with the publication of Douglas Thompson's book, "The Hustler
The Hustler
The Hustler is a 1959 novel by American writer Walter Tevis. It tells the story of a young pool hustler, Edward "Fast Eddie" Felson, who challenges the legendary Minnesota Fats .The Hustler was adapted into a 1961 film of the same title, starring Paul...
's" (pub Sidgwick & Jackson 2007) and Channel 4's "The Real Casino Royale".
Evans fell out with Aspinall because of the alleged Clermont cheating but ultimately forgave the dying man because of his passion for animals. "They will not destroy the planet; humans may."
Besides the nightclub, new restaurants, dalliance and gambling, Evans had other outlets for his money. At one time, with David Frost
David Frost
Sir David Frost is a British broadcaster.David Frost may also refer to:*David Frost , South African golfer*David Frost , classical record producer*David Frost *Dave Frost, baseball pitcher...
, his host at the much-publicised Connaught Hotel breakfast of 7 January 1966, and film director Bryan Forbes
Bryan Forbes
Bryan Forbes, CBE is an English film director, actor and writer.-Career:Bryan Forbes was born John Theobald Clarke on 22 July 1926 in Queen Mary's Hospital, Stratford, West Ham, Essex , and grew up at 43 Cranmer Road, Forest Gate, West Ham, Essex .Forbes trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of...
, the trio found themselves temporarily 'owning' Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
whilst it overcame a little local difficulty with its cash flow.
One somewhat larger challenge Evans and Frost survived was perhaps more by luck than judgement: a high-profile mutual acquaintance had asked to be involved in the multi-million pound redevelopment of a property in a prime Kings Road position owned by Evans. At a critical stage the third party pulled out and it was only afterwards Frost and Evans discovered that he had fallen victim to one of his frequent financial crises. The acquaintance was Robert Maxwell.
Evans then was approached by the phenomenally successful Italian trattoria maestro, Alvaro Maccioni, who appealed to Evans to sell him the site. Evans agreed, but even Alvaro's magic stuttered there.
Evans was seldom far from the headlines; one of the more bizarre (London Evening Standard, 1965) read "Eating Houses Boss Arrested at Board Meeting," and concerned the absurdity of Evans being summarily arrested in the middle of a board meeting, handcuffed and marched off to Savile Row police station. The crime? Failure to pay some parking tickets.
Certainly a row at the time, but one that Evans later realised played a part in leading to his second marriage, this connected him with another bizarrerie. In all innocence he erected his usual Peter Evans Eating Houses sign over a new restaurant at the junction of Kensington High Street and Kensington Church Street http://www.flickr.com/photos/rollthedice/3390273363/. The Eating House was bang next door to a church and the David Hicks's stylised PEEH fork was pointing directly at it. The Church elders were not amused. 'Definitely not Good Evans — His Devil's Fork Threatens The Church' summed up newspaper headlines around the world.
However, Gail, the object of Evans's affections in Australia, had read about the hoo-ha and found it amusing.