Notes
Provenance:
Gallery Yves Arman, New York
Christie's New York, 2 November 1984, Lot 198
Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale)
NOTES : From The Times-
August 21, 2007
ANDREW LEEMAN
Influential and gregarious restaurateur.
Andrew Leeman was an ebullient bon vivant who lived life to
the full but at the same time made sure that the guests at
his restaurants enjoyed themselves.
Leeman was the ideal front-of-house man, a talent he ably
demonstrated at Morton's in Berkeley Square and at Langan's
Brasserie in its glory days. He was famed as the man who
refused Mick Jagger entry to Langan's for being improperly
dressed. At Morton's he decided where the beautiful people
sat, including Diana, Princess of Wales, a frequent guest.
But he was generous too. One winter night he found a tramp
outside Morton's, brought him in, fed him, and then,
mischievously, put him in one of the chauffeured
Rolls-Royces always outside and sent him round Berkeley
Square to Annabel's.
His sparkle and love of life imbued all his restaurants and
hotels. The gossip columnist Nigel Dempster (obituary, July
13, 2007 ) called him "the most handsome man in London", and
his blonde hair, blue eyes and suntan enchanted many women
diners. The restaurant critic Fay Maschler said that he
strode through Langan's "like a Greek god".
Andrew Richard Alexander Leeman was born in 1946. After
schooling at Embley Park near Romsey in Hampshire - where he
inaugurated the custom of bringing in a busload of girls for
school dances - he decided that the family horticultural
business and country life were not for him and studied
catering at Westminster College.
On returning to London after graduating from the Lausanne
Hotel School he came to the notice of Sir Hugh Wontner,
chairman of the Savoy Group, who offered him a graduate
trainee post. Leeman worked his way round the Savoy,
Claridge's and the Berkeley's new Perroquet restaurant.
His Savoy days gave him an offbeat celebrity. His long-time
partner Maxine White introduced him to John Cleese, and they
became friends, drawn together, it was said, by a love of
backgammon, food and wine. In 1977, to avoid the Queen's
Silver Jubilee in London, they went for a holiday on Hydra
where Cleese picked Leeman's brains about his worst hotel
experience. Leeman told Cleese it was when he was a trainee
and had found a dead body in a Savoy bedroom and had to
remove it discreetly. This became the basis for the 1979
Kipper and the Corpse episode of Fawlty Towers in which
Basil serves out-of-date kippers to a guest who then dies.
In honour of the story's source, the dead guest was named
Andrew Leeman.
Leeman's first pre-Savoy catering effort was working with
his sister at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre for Sir
Clement Freud who became a friend and later chairman of his
London restaurant group. Other early entrepreneurial food
ventures were selling his grandmother's apples at the Isle
of Wight festival and, with Maxine White, selling soup at a
Yorkshire pop festival during one of the worst ever recorded
storms - she recalled that the soup just blew away.
His first managerial job was at Daisy in the Kings Road.
After a few years, with the support of friends, he opened
his first restaurant, the Sussex in Pimlico, to which
Princess Margaret came.
After working at Morton's in Berkeley Square, which opened
in 1976, he moved to Langan's Brasserie where he
occasionally had to rescue the owner Peter Langan from the
gutter and dust down his white suit. When Leeman left,
Langan offered him a choice of the paintings in the
restaurant or £1,000. Leeman opted for the cash -
unfortunately for him the paintings went on to become worth
much more.
Leeman adored the US and often visited Texas to pursue his
passion for shooting. He liked the food and decided that
Britain was ready for nachos, burritos, tacos and margaritas
and opened his Texas Lone Star Saloon on the corner of
Gloucester Road and Harrington Gardens on July 4, 1980. The
large Native American Indian figure that stood outside was
such a noted landmark it formed part of the London taxi
drivers' "knowledge". In 1984 the success of Texas Lone Star led Leeman to open, with two friends, the first Palms restaurant in Kensington; it was to be the first of many, including Steamboat Charlie's, Casper's Bar Grill and Telephone Exchange, and Tall Orders.
Leeman also enjoyed great success when he turned his hand to country house hotels, the Feathers at Woodstock and Bishopstrow House in Wiltshire becoming beacons for his diverse hospitality group.
Leeman was never a man to have an empty glass in his hand - nor to tolerate such a thing in his guests.
His connections to the london social scene in the late 1960s meant he was most likely to have come to sit for David Hockney through his friendship to Sir Clement Freud or other social pillars of the community. His heady days at the Savoy gave him an offbeat celebrity status of which Hockney would no dought have been aware of.
