IRISH IN LONDON:Sean McDermott is London's premiere doorman, used to greeting the rich and famous at some of the most exclusive restaurants in the city. He tells
LOUISE EASTthe secrets of a warm welcome
EVERY YEAR, London's Evening Standard newspaper publishes a detailed list of the capital's 1,000 most influential players, a snapshot of who's who, and who matters, across several fields from finance to fashion. The food section in the last list had an unusual new entry - alongside chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver and entrepreneurs such as Richard Caring (owner of The Ivy, Scott's and Le Caprice), was a 54-year-old doorman from Tipperary called Sean McDermott.
It was not the first time McDermott made the newspapers. In 2003, when rainmaker restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King opened The Wolseley on Piccadilly, they poached McDermott, their old doorman, from the Ivy. It was a bold move, and one that reportedly cost them £70,000 (McDermott's alleged salary), but for Corbin and King, Sean McDermott's top-hatted presence spoke volumes. Here, it said, is the new Ivy; within months, The Wolseley was the hottest restaurant in town.
That a restaurant doorman can make both broadsheet headlines and such a salary is due to the very London phenomenon of the "it" restaurant. The Ivy, The Wolseley, Scott's (McDermott's current employer), Le Caprice and St Albans are the current top five. In an age and a city where celebrity is god, these places are the Vatican, Mecca and Bethlehem rolled into one.
So great is the number of celebrity customers (and frequently, so underdressed), one of the capital's free-sheets even keeps a daily tally of who eats at each restaurant, and with whom. And it's not just girl-band members and footballers either, it's Lucian Freud at the Wolseley, Tom Cruise at The Ivy, Madonna at Scott's and so on.
Sean McDermott, then, is not just opening doors for a living. He's the smiling Cerberus who stands between the ever-expanding celebrity universe inside and the black hole of paparazzi outside.
He's the one hiding Guy Ritchie's car from the paparazzi scouts who scour London's streets on motorbikes, looking for celebrity number plates. He's keeping an eye out for traffic wardens (in all his years at the Ivy, he boasts of only getting five tickets). He notices who comes with their mistress, who comes with their wife, and gets their names the right way round. He has his own fleet of cars, a supernatural ability to source a black cab on a rainy Friday night, and a nickname - Mr Pickwick - bestowed on him by Her Madonna-ship.
"Some nights at The Ivy were mayhem. You'd have chauffeur cars all the way up the road, you'd have 12 or 13 paparazzi out front, you'd have a restaurant full of celebrities. I'd have slipped somebody out the back door, avoided a punch and avoided getting a ticket. I'd go home and think, 'It's not a bad old job,' " McDermott says with a laugh.
Despite his 37 years in London, McDermott has the same accent he did when he left Cappawhite at the age of 18 to join his brothers in London.
He's a very dapper man. Presentation, he insists, is an important part of his job, and standing on his feet all day, in all weathers, makes certain physical demands. McDermott does pilates twice a week, works out with a personal trainer and never misses his weekly massage. Stuart Rose, executive chairman of Marks & Spencer, personally supplies him with long-johns, designer Richard James provides him with ties, while trichologist (and Scott's regular) Philip Kingsley looks after his hair.
"The job has given me a lot," McDermott says easily. "I'm going to the football tonight and I sit in the director's box at Chelsea."
Being Irish has, he says, been "a major plus" in his career. "I can chat away without any kind of prejudice. The amount of times I've said 'Good evening' and people pick up on my Irishness... Robert de Niro, he said it to me one night at the Wolseley - 'You're an Irish boy.' I said Tipperary. He said, 'I know it.' "
This is the closest you're going to get to a scandalous anecdote from McDermott, who happily drops names but never details. Alarmingly for his customers, he does keep diaries, but insists they're only a personal aide-memoire.
"I say to the people I train, 'There's lots of things you'll see, there's lots of things you'll hear and you'll want to go . . . into the pub and say I saw so-and-so, I saw this happen. But just keep your mouth shut, take the money and keep on doing what you do.' It's difficult, particularly in the early years, but you become wiser and more selective in who you're talking to. You learn."
When McDermott answered an ad in the Evening Standardin 1994 ('Wanted. Doorman for The Ivy restaurant') neither he nor his employers knew quite what his role would be. McDermott was a barman who started off in the Crown pub in Cricklewood before moving to the Waldorf Astoria and the Savoy. The Ivy had never had a doorman. Corbin and King suggested he turn up in a suit and tie; McDermott added the top hat.
If anything is likely to turn McDermott sentimental, it's remembering those early years at The Ivy. "It was a very exciting time to be in London. It was the start of Britpop. Nic Hytner was in the National. Down the road, the Donmar Warehouse had just opened with Sam Mendes in charge. You had Blur, Oasis, Robbie Williams. You had Liza Minnelli and Tony Curtis. When Nicole Kidman was in The Blue Room, she and Tom Cruise would be in nearly every night. Lovely people, very friendly."
After 12 years, loyalty to his old employers, Corbin and King, plus the salary they were offering, inspired the move to The Wolseley, a much-larger restaurant on one of the busiest streets in London, Piccadilly.
"They were paying me not to park cars, which took the pain out of it, but in the finish up, I was just getting bored there."
When rumours circulated that Richard Caring, former customer and now owner of The Ivy, was re-launching Scott's, a grande dame fish restaurant in Mayfair, McDermott wrote him a letter.
Caring called the next day and offered him a job. For McDermott, Scott's is "manna from heaven", not because of the considerable calibre of its food or clientele but because of its quiet Mount Street location.
"For a doorman, standing outside, it's a lovely, lovely street. It has a single yellow line, you can park cars and it's easy to secure cabs."
The only problem is the ever-increasing number of paparazzi, anxious for shots of Scott's customers. A tip-off from a motorbike scout can result in more than 25 photographers congregating within minutes.
"It's them and us," McDermott sighs. "It's a question of knowing what people want. Some people really don't want their picture taken. Other people don't mind so much. For them, it's part of the job."
McDermott is well aware that lean years lie ahead. Many regulars at Scott's worked at now-defunct city giants such as Lehman Brothers.
"When you look back on it, the 1990s and the start of this decade were a licence to print money. It was just floating around everywhere. People would regularly come in here and spend fortunes . . . It's become a bit more difficult now and I've got to work harder to get my money. Instead of customers tipping you a large note, they'll give you a small one, but you know, I'm still grateful to get it." Still, McDermott is a man with a peculiar degree of job satisfaction, albeit with some regrets. "It's proved very, very okay for me," he says simply. "The job's opened a lot of doors and I've met an incredible amount of people. It's given me the ways and means to have a very good 15 years.
"I never got married, that's a regret, and I wish my mother was alive. She died about 15 years ago. Her maiden name was Joan Collins, and I got to know Joan Collins quite well from The Ivy. She sends me a Christmas card every year. Yes, I'd like to have shared my good fortune with my mother."