In 1989, it was widely reported that the day before her 89th birthday, the Queen Mother talking with guests expressed her particular interest in the Gay Hussar and its ‘goings-on' whilst hosting tea in the gardens of Clarence House.
In 1999 renowned political cartoonist, now the President of the British Cartoonist, Martin Rowson drew the Tribune dinner. Rowson says that this inspired him “to draw the famous and infamous patrons, as an enduring record of the Gay Hussar’s place in the history of the second half of the twentieth century, with the intentions that these portraits of the eminence figures of past, present and future importance should end-up, hanging and drawn, on the restaurant's wall. Martin sat in the corner, wheezing consumptively and scribbling away over his supper till he completed”.
Victor Sassie passed away on June 7th that year. Journalist Ian Aitken writes ‘He was equally tyrannical to his regulars, not least about what you ate. If you ordered before he could get at you, he would dash over to your table and demand to be told what you were having. “Don’t have that muck, that’s tourist stuff”, he would snort. Then he would summon a waiter and order you something entirely different’.
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