Hugh Hefner’s Playboy entertainment empire, built on the American magazine with its famous playmate centrefolds, is considering at least two sites in central London.

The new club would recreate one of the most famous landmarks of the swinging 60s, renowned for waitresses dressed in rabbit ears. The former London club opened opposite Hyde Park in 1966, six years after the first Playboy Club was launched in Chicago. For 15 years, the London club, on five floors, was a welcome distraction from worries such as the IRA, strikes and riots.

The original Playboy Club on Park Lane in Mayfair was closed 27 years ago after a police raid over suspected illegal gambling, despite no subsequent evidence of wrongdoing.

The most likely British site for the new nightclub is the Sports Cafe on Haymarket in London’s West End, which showed sporting events on giant screens for more than a decade. The Sports Cafe chain went into administration in January.

Tags: playboy, sports cafe

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