What the blazes happened to Cool Britannia? The rock chicks, the bad boys, the “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” chorus? It’s now Snooze Britannia: full of wellness warriors, functional medicine doctors and “What’s your sleep stack?” These days if someone leaves a loo sniffing it’s because they have an actual cold.
As quickly as London’s bars and nightclubs vanish (more than 1,100 in the past three years), perky wellbeing spaces appear in their place: biohacking clubs, medical wellness facilities, IV stations. It’s now a cortisol-spikingly competitive market.
However, there is one new membership club that’s head and well-toned shoulders above the rest. It’s called Surrenne, has been birthed by the Maybourne group (mother to the Connaught and Claridge’s), and can be found snuggled between the Berkeley and the newly opened Emory hotel in Knightsbridge (with a sneaky back passage for shy VIPs).
Surrenne is the work of Inge Theron, the creative director of spa and wellness at Maybourne, and delivers what she believes members (with £15,000 to spare) want: “A personalised functional health, medical wellness and longevity wraparound service in the most sumptuous surroundings.” It is a place for the lucky few (only 100 members to begin with) who want the best and don’t have time to figure out eating windows, sleep panaceas or which glucose monitor to use; people who want a vagus nerve-support machine and a hyperpersonalised fitness programme for their Kilimanjaro hike. And they want it now.
Most importantly it is science-led, “thanks to our partnership with the scientific advisory board Virtusan”, Theron says. Virtusan is a health platform helmed by the professors Andrew Huberman (neuroscience), David Sinclair (epigenetics) and Shauna Shapiro (clinical psychology). It also has access to academics at Harvard and Stanford “delivering the hottest data and clinical trials so we can continually appraise the current research and adapt our approach to maximise the impact we offer our members”.
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Other secret weapons include an in-house physician from 3 Peaks Health, who will run annual diagnostic tests from cardiovascular health and cognition to endurance and methylation to determine nutritional needs. It is low key (no social media, no podcasts, no shouty website) but 3 Peaks Health’s clients are super-high profile, ranging from athletes and film stars to the stinking rich.
What the club can do, according to its medical director Dr Mark Mikhail, a surgeon and longevity specialist (with leading-man good looks), is “get to know our members, their lifestyle and goals, and by combining this with state-of-the-art diagnostics, put together protocols that are supremely bespoke and push them further than they can possibly go alone in their healthspan maximisation journey”.
As the first journalist to trial Surrenne, I can tell you: it’s delicious. Gone is yesterday’s chilly marble spa. Instead, the designer Rémi Tessier has infused four floors of nearly 2,000 sq m of space with warmth, joy and money-no-matter finishes. Before you’ve hit the UK’s first Tracy Anderson-sprung studio, got in the hyperbaric oxygen chamber or had a Korean-inspired scalp treatment in the Onyx room, you’re healing without realising. The lighting enhances your circadian rhythm; the walls painted like sun and moon eclipses inspire awe; the scents are mood altering; and the AI soundscapes either encourage focus and productivity or aid relaxation and rest (the beats even play underwater in the 22m pool for meditative laps).
Theron has chosen to omit cryotherapy (Huberman prefers cold plunges), so there’s a couples’ ice-bath for resilience bonding, a snow shower that covers the body in fat flakes and the Serpentine in Hyde Park for wild swimming, with a collagen-rich bone broth served afterwards from a drinks cart.
But most impressive was the feeling of a guardian health angel having my back. After my diagnostic tests Mikhail had advised the café staff what I should have for lunch from the nutritionist and model Rosemary Ferguson’s menu according to my food intolerances and blood results (salmon and Camargue red-rice poke bowl, £46, and green boost juice, £14).
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For my “I need it all” massage, my therapist had been told about my aches, pains and need for nervous system downregulation (so she employed fascia release, deep tissue and shiatsu stretching, finished off with hair-stroking). Post treatment, every cell felt alive and tingling. It was one of the best massages I’ve had, which, at £260, it darn well should be.
And when my diagnostic bloodwork revealed that a specific cancer marker was slightly elevated, the doctor immediately engaged his oncology team in the US for a multidisciplinary meeting to discuss next steps and a range of no-stone-left-unturned options. It was like being at the centre of a dartboard: the target of laser-focused disease interception by some of the globe’s best and most forward-thinking brains. I felt in the safest of hands.
It is not only members who have entry to this health nirvana. Surrenne is also available for hotel guests of the Berkeley and the Emory (I’m considering booking a broom cupboard simply to gain access). And the rumour is … this is just the beginning, with a Stateside club opening next.
While London might have morphed from rock-and-roll to wellbeing capital of the world, at Surrenne the party girl hasn’t completely left the building.
“It’s not about restriction or guilt,” Theron says. “This is a club, so if you fancy a martini by the pool there’s no judgment. We’ll just serve it with a side of electrolytes and a shot of milk thistle.” Make mine a double.
Membership costs £10,000 a year, with a £5,000 joining fee, surrenne.com
