'I shall be supporting the motion to allow women to become members. But excluding women is wrong, it's appalling.' It is an area of the arts and who would you consider to have made a greater contribution, Elisabeth Frink or a second-rate art historian? I go along with the fact that problems would be caused with the plumbing and architecture, but what other grounds can there be? I have no time for radical feminism, it's boring. 'We wouldn't tolerate discrimination against blacks, gays, lesbians - why women? It's the club's loss. Women would demystify it and make it less fuddy-duddy.' There is nothing there but a few rooms with some run-down chairs. As for it being a place of great power, well, I would like to know where it all happens. I became a member because it was so near to the Royal Opera House, and I use it as a bolt hole. There are all these men with great street cred in the outside world who become different people when they are there. A very raunchy Elizabeth Taylor joined us and said, 'It's high time you let us women in here.' I remember thinking, well why not? I won't say how I shall vote, though.'ĮLIJAH MOSHINSKY, Associate Producer, Royal Opera House Some years ago I hosted a dinner when Richard Burton was doing Under Milk Wood. I think the tradition is so strong it is the women who may have to change. Men like having a good old gossip and as long as women understand that, we will enjoy them and they will enjoy us. 'At the Garrick we have portraits of jolly ladies looking down on us so perhaps it's about time we had some looking up at us.

JOHN WHITNEY, Chairman, The Really Useful Group Goodness, one-third of the pictures on the wall are of great actresses. I defy any woman to say she isn't beautifully looked after at the Garrick - be it in the loo or in the dining room. There is no club more courteous and gentle towards women than the Garrick. I joined a man's club - if you join a cricket club you expect the members to be cricketers if you join the Liberal Club, you'd expect the members to be liberal. Penny Jackson and Dina Rabinovitch canvassed a few. Why, they ask, should any woman want to join us? It is no powerhouse, has no political association and is inhabited by middle-aged and elderly men. 'No woman could understand the importance of it to us,' said one. There are members who would welcome women, and others who feel passionately that this jolly refuge should resist all change. A famous convivial West End watering hole for an elite from the theatre, media and the law, its exclusion of women seems to some at best bizarre, at worst blatant discrimination. It is an issue likely to swell the numbers at the annual meeting from the usual 150 to an unheard of 1,500. ARE GENTLEMEN's clubs merely a silly English affectation or a monstrous anachronism? On Monday members of the 160-year-old Garrick Club will be deciding whether to allow women to join.

The last bastion 1984