Maurice Huggett brought the West End theatre crowd together as the host and proprietor of the Phoenix Artist Club on Charing Cross Road. A flamboyant figure renowned for his collection of gaudy waistcoats, Huggett created a retreat for performers, producers, programme makers and programme sellers amid the clamour of nightly theatrical life. Not that, under Huggett’s stewardship, the club was any kind of oasis of peace. The big screen television showed films of musicals on a loop, and songs from the shows played at the bar. Huggett’s own impromptu performances from the great British and American songbooks became his trademark. His basement bunker beneath the Phoenix, one of the most beautiful theatres in London, remained extremely popular with showbiz types; sozzled singers, indigent actors, bestselling writers and aspiring hacks all rubbed shoulders on the premises. Well-known faces from the BBC and ITN also mingled with the theatrical crowd. “Through it all, Maurice reigned supreme,” one regular recalled, “dancing, pouting and gliding around the hubbub in a vast and never-ending collection of legendary waistcoats to a piped soundtrack of Fiddler on the Roof, offering advice, comfort, support, and an inexhaustible supply of friendship and queenly asides.” In Huggett’s bar Angela Rippon danced, the comedian Noel Fielding jested, John Hurt drank, and the crime writer Martina Cole sought and found inspiration. Even royalty, including Princess Michael of Kent, graced the establishment. When he arrived a decade ago, Huggett found that the club, previously known as Shuttleworths, was located in the original dressing and rehearsal rooms of the Phoenix Theatre (at which a young Laurence Olivier had made his debut on stage in 1930 in Private Lives, with Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence). The space had been converted into a wine bar and restaurant in the 1970s but still needed a good deal of redesigning when Huggett took over. He helped to clear out the warren of rooms, tearing down false panels to expose original period detailing and encouraging club members to add their own memorabilia to the decor. Scattered around are props from past productions and signed prints from West End shows. Amid the swirl of tottering A-listers and communal singing, Huggett framed strict house rules. Anyone moving furniture, for example, would prompt him to grab his microphone and to command: “Don’t touch the props! Leave the props alone!” He abolished the jukebox and enforced a strict karaoke ban. One group of youngsters refused entry because they looked scruffy turned out to be the Arctic Monkeys — then topping the charts. Other big names Huggett attracted to the Phoenix included Jude Law, Keira Knightley, Lady Gaga and Carol Vorderman. Maurice James Huggett was born on July 7 1945 at Tenterden, Kent, the son of a builder, and became involved in local amateur dramatics as a teenager. On leaving Ashford Grammar School, he joined the Westminster Bank as a junior clerk at its Maidstone branch before transferring to another in London. From there he moved to American Express in the Haymarket, joining the Keith Prowse ticket agency in 1969 at its Dorchester Hotel branch. After a spell looking after VIP passengers for Pan Am, Huggett went to pre-revolution Tehran to handle incoming tours for Air Express. One night he looked out from his room to see the streets running red. He called the BBC and gave a dramatic account. Only later did he discover the truth. The first targets of the Islamic fundamentalists were wine cellars, and the streets had been running not with blood but with red wine. Returning to London on the last flight out of Tehran, Huggett obtained a publican’s licence and for a time ran the Old English Gentleman pub in the Edgware Road. From there he left to manage the Players’ Theatre at its refurbished home beneath the arches at Charing Cross station. Huggett used the Phoenix to give budding stars their break. For his series of live shows, Phoenix Got Talent, he assembled a judging panel led by the singer Elaine Paige and the television actress Belinda Lang, notable for her role in the series 2point4 children. Huggett left instructions that, on January 13, his funeral music will consist of show tunes, and the dress code is to be theatrical. He will be wearing one of his favourite performance costumes. Maurice Huggett, born July 7 1945, died December 17 2011