Venue: Ad Lib Club
Town: London, GB

The Ad Lib Club was a nightclub, made world famous through the patronage of the Beatles, on the fourth floor of 7 Leicester Place over the Prince Charles Cinema in London's Soho district. It opened in February 1964, and closed in its original location in January 1966 following a legal battle with local residents and the Church of Notre Dame de France over the noise level emitting from the venue. The manager, Brian Morris, unsuccessfully tried to reopen the club in Covent Garden. The club was noted for its R&B and Soul music, its inclusive atmosphere, its deviation from the traditional club model, its daring decor and its ability to attract the biggest stars of Swinging London. Mark Lewisohn describes the club as the nightclub "most strongly associated with The Beatles". The Beatles ended their evening at the club following the premiere of A Hard Day's Night in July 1964. Cynthia and John Lennon and George Harrison and Pattie Boyd thought the lift going up to the club was on fire during their first LSD trip in 1965, an event which Harrison called "The Dental Experience". The Beatles had their own table at the club. It was at the club that Ringo Starr proposed to Maureen Cox in January 1965. The musician and writer George Melly characterised the relationship between the entertainment and social elite of Swinging London and the rest of Britain's youth as "feudal" with "edicts handed down from the Ad Lib Club... to the teeny boppers in the outer darkness". The Ad Lib was supplanted in popularity by The Scotch of St. James. The Prince Charles Theatre was a project of Alfred Esdaile, who had run the Prince of Wales Theatre on Coventry Street and the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square. Its foundation stone was laid by Dame Flora Robson on 18 December 1961 and it opened for its first performance on 26 December 1962. The theatre occupied the ground floor; the floors above were intended as offices, flats and a roof garden restaurant. On 27 December 1962, Nicholas Luard, co-fo