Mam Sham was born in London when supper clubs were all the rage, influencing had become a career, and everyone watched Live at the Apollo religiously. “We were in a moment in London. At the right place at the right time,” Maria Georgiou says as she recalls the origins of the high-concept supper club she set up with her long-time best mate, Rhiannon Butler.

The pair first hit it off at school over a mutual love of “weird things” and came together professionally after separate ventures in the creative industries (art dealing and graphic design) left them cold. “I just had my foot in the door. I couldn’t get paid, let alone hired,” Georgiou explains. “It was that era when you were grateful to be someone’s cupboard who worked in advertising so you could add it to your CV. You think if we do these things, they will bring us into the creative world but soon realise the exact opposite happens.” 

Surviving the unpaid rat race by working in hospitality most evenings, they started meeting people doing their own thing, and the penny dropped that perhaps going it alone would give them the creative freedom they so deeply desired. “A good friend Maria met while working in hospitality asked if we could do front of house for him for his stuff,” Butler remembers. “We said yes – if you can be in our kitchen….”