Meet the colourful shul regular who admits: ‘I’m quite an extreme person’

Philip Sallon is wearing a Union Jack toga slung over one shoulder — the material has been soaked in mud, burned and cooked in the oven — and an enormous matching oversized turban which billows in the air.

This is a regular shul outfit: the denizens of St John’s Wood United Synagogue are well used to their most colourful member looking like he’s going to a Purim party every week of the year.

Sallon was at the forefront of the punk, new romantic and clubbing movements and a Pied Piper to the likes of Boy George, Westwood, the Sex Pistols, Billy Idol and even Matt Lucas. But this king of parties also likes shul.

At the Pride talk where we meet, an event hosted by Jewish entrepreneur and fellow St John’s Wood shul member Gabriela Hersham, he expounds on everything from aliens (he believes in them) to Marx and Freud (he’s a fan), consumerism (it fascinates him) to cancel culture (he was banned from Capital Radio for being drunk on the airwaves).

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Philip in his coronation-style robes (Photo: Getty Images)

But the surprise is how much he keeps harking back to his Judaism. It seems strange that a man at the helm of a hedonistic counter culture can also be so spiritual and religious. But he puts his values down to his Judaism.

“One of the most important things for me is kavod — respect for your fellow human beings — I’m really into that,” he says. “I’ve never taken drugs, I don’t smoke, I barely drink alcohol and that is partly because of respect for human life. If I destroy myself I haven’t got respect for my own life.

“It also impacts on the way I dress. I don’t see clothes as a way of showing respect. I don’t believe there is such a thing as dressing respectfully. But treating people with respect? That’s my way of being religious.”

If you’ve ever met him, you are unlikely to forget it. For Sallon clothing is art, his body his canvas. The bigger, the madder, the more outrageous and extreme, the better.

Even Boy George couldn’t take his eyes off Sallon when he first saw him at a nightclub — and knew he had to be friends with him.

“I look extreme, I act extreme. I’m an extreme person, aren’t I? And sometimes that means I get extreme reactions,” says Sallon who has been attacked several times in the street.

“But I am not going to tone myself down. People ask me, ‘Why are you wearing that?’

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Sallon outdoors (Photo: Getty Images)

"And my response is I don’t want to wear what other people are wearing. Why do they all look the same?”

To illustrate this piece, he sends me photographs of himself in his latest outfits, many of which will have been seen at shul.

They include an ermine-lined “coronation” robe complete with crown, several superhero-type numbers, pirate looks, Native American-themed outfits, a Chanukah jumper and many clothes that simply defy explanation.

He had an artistic upbringing, growing up in Cricklewood, the son of acclaimed caricaturist Ralph, who Churchill once asked to do drawings of all the Nazi leaders, which were then reproduced on leaflets and dropped over Germany by the RAF.

It was at art school, and out of his school uniform for the first time, that the young Philip started experimenting with clothes.

“No longer wearing a uniform, it was like somebody had ripped off my skin, I had nothing to hide behind,” he recalls.

“But then I realised I could wear anything and it meant nothing, just an artistic statement because I appreciate and love art.

“I’m in all the punk books because I was into that look before it was called punk. I was the first guy in Britain to have fluorescent green hair — someone once stopped my mum and asked, ‘Who is that freak with the green hair?’

"I was seen as this insane person because I was doing it before others, but I didn’t consider myself a punk, which was a fashion victim cult. By then I was onto the next thing.”

It was while working in the BBC’s costume department that he started organising parties, winning himself the title of King Beck among his fellow Jews.

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Philip at the theatre with a pal (Photo: Getty Images)

“My mother always used to say that the greatest mitzvah you can do is make a shidduch [a match] and I’ve spent my life bringing people together,” he says.

“I started with Jews, I’d go to Golders Green and tell them about my parties. The police ended up coming to close them down but it was wonderful — hundreds of Jews.”

He became friends with the Sex Pistols, staged Vivienne Westwood’s early catwalk shows and hosted the nightclub of the 1980s, the Mud Club, where discerning bouncers would turn you down if you didn’t look outré enough. From there he went into party organising, fashion, art, and being a general man about town.

Endlessly busy, even at the age of 71, when we speak he’s organising a Butlins-themed 1950s party for a friend, having chatted to Leonardo DiCaprio the night before. As you do.

But, strangely, shul has become his linchpin and he brings his celebrity friends with him.

The other week it was Lorraine Chase, sometimes it’s Bond star Naomie Harris. It used to be Boy George but they no longer talk (a broiges he doesn’t want to talk about).

He’s always been adept at predicting trends — he senses the movement of fashion not through culture but the feeling in the air, he says — and he feels antisemitism is on the rise. It’s one reason he’s going to synagogue more.

“After the war everybody felt guilty because of the murdered six million so they were like, ‘We will let you have Israel’. But that has all worn off and now they are calling Israel a Nazi state.

"What they are trying to do is destroy the Jewish state,” he says. “It used to be that the ‘Jews killed Christ’ was their excuse for antisemitism. Now Israel is the excuse and when you reply that Israel is retaliating to attacks they look at you blankly because they have no argument.

"Once the only people I would hear slagging off Zionists were the skinheads. But now it is all around.

"Before she died, Vivienne Westwood signed a letter saying Israel shouldn’t host the Eurovision. Well, I turned up to her fashion show wearing all my Israel flags. I don’t know whether she saw me — and she was never good at confrontation — but I hope she did.”

The other reason he has upped his synagogue attendance is more positive. “My life has been about introducing everyone to everyone and going to shul can be like one big party.

"When I took Lorraine Chase we managed to go to three kiddushes and spent about five minutes in the service. She loved it.

“When I started doing security there I made sure I talked to everyone — now I know them all I introduce them to each other.

“Everyone is interesting in their own way, aren’t they?”

They are, but maybe not quite as interesting as Philip Sallon.

Topics:

Fashion

United Synagogue