'But don't you know who I am?'

They may be going through tough times but the elitist ideals of gentlemen's clubs are not so alien to 21st-century Ireland, writes Louise East

Describe a restaurant, hotel, or even a state of mind as "a bit gentlemen's club", and most people know exactly what you mean. Leather sofas, old buffers reading newspapers by the light of green-shaded lamps, the smell of gravy in the dining-room, and the sound of whiskey glasses and idle networking in the bar. "Gentlemen's club" denotes privilege, elitism and a kind of old-fashioned stuffiness, although its use as a descriptive shorthand is rather ironic when you consider most people have never set foot in a gentleman's club.

So, when it emerged one of the last of Ireland's clubs, the Hibernian United Service Club on St Stephen's Green, Dublin, may sell its clubhouse due to "modest but continuous" financial losses and ever-decreasing member numbers, the news was greeted with curiosity and faint regret. It was rather as though the club was a reclusive movie star, someone we never really knew and thought had died years ago, but who somehow seems to signal the dying of an era. If the HUSC does sell up, it will leave two clubs on the Green - 10 years ago, before the Friendly Brothers clubhouse became Browne's hotel, there were four.

But for many, the surprise was not that the HUSC was to sell its clubhouse, but that it had managed to hang on to such a prime piece of city centre property for so long.

Founded for the most part in either the 18th or 19th centuries, the gentlemen's club is a relic of a different age. The Order of Friendly Brothers of St Patrick was started as an anti-duelling society, the Kildare Street Club provided a city home for the landed gentry, while the Royal Irish Automobile Club, which still has a clubhouse on Dawson Street, was started in 1901 by those who had an interest in "automobilism".

The RIAC was different, in that it accepted female members from the early days; the others only agreed to let women through their doors within the last 15 years, and even then, female members weren't always allowed in the bar.

Even if you're the right sex, becoming a member has always been tricky - you have to be nominated by a member, seconded by a member and then approved by the committee. Once you've got the nod, you can avail of the dining-room, stay in the upstairs bedrooms, play snooker, entertain your guests in the bar and expect to be greeted with a bit of deference when you arrive.

The annual fee is not exorbitant - in the HUSC, it's €952 for example - but neither is it really the point. The raison d'être of the member's club is to ensure that a member will know other clubmen in the bar and the riff-raff won't bother any of you.

In many ways, it's not hard to find reasons for the demise in popularity of the gentlemen's club in Dublin. Dining-rooms are no longer necessary in a city with enough restaurants to feed the 5,000; accommodation is not a problem now that you can get up and back from Cork in a day, and as the age profile of club members edged towards triple figures, the networking possibilities became less and less dynamic.

Yet, in other ways, the ideals behind the gentlemen's club are not so alien to 21st-century Ireland, where elitism is arguably (and paradoxically) more popular than ever, albeit elitism that is not quite so bound up in where one was went to school.

Clubs such as the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club, and certain golf and yacht clubs, are as difficult to get into and have the same kind of social cachet. In style terms, the gentleman's club is also experiencing something of a renaissance. When a new lap-dancing club opened its doors in Dublin last month, it spent more than €1 million on leather sofas, Tiffany glass and a humidor, and insisted it was none other than a new gentlemen's club, albeit one where girls are more than welcome in the bar.

So perhaps it's no surprise that just a few doors down from the HUSC, the Kildare Street and University Club claims to have just enjoyed two of its most successful years. With about 1,500 members, reciprocal arrangements with more than 70 clubs worldwide, a management team of eight and a staff of 27, the Kildare Street and University Club shows no sign of going the way of the dinosaur. Instead of slowly giving in to competition from health clubs and swish restaurants, it has installed a gym and steam-room and is restoring the kitchens and the dining-rooms. The club reports a switch in popularity from long lunches to exclusive dinners, and a continued interest in the quality of the cellar.

"We firmly believe in on-going improvement of the club, within the constraints of a listed building," says one source, who, like all members and staff of gentlemen's clubs, where secrecy is a habit as much as a rule, asks not to be named. When asked the reason for its success, he attributes it to "the great relationship between members and staff - the staff know all the members, and look after them well". Despite the changes of the last couple of centuries, it seems there'll always be a place where you can get away with the question: "But don't you know who I am?"