They've put him in a private room. Through the window, the London Eye can be seen turning languidly in the heat. On the table there is a jar of gefilte fish and a can of pickles; on the wall is a get-well-soon card from the Pet Shop Boys. A bouquet of flowers from Vivienne Westwood (who was turned away by hospital staff, having arrived outside visiting hours) is on the windowsill. And lying in bed, pale, bruised and dishevelled – yet nevertheless looking irrepressibly pre-Raphaelite – is the iconic gay socialite Philip Sallon, his extravagant black hair forming a corona around his head.
"I still feel weird. Like it's a dream or something," he tells me. "When they first brought me in, I couldn't even remember the details of my parents' deaths. And now I'm suffering from terrible headaches. Does my memory seem all right to you?"
The night before, Sallon – a committed, if not religious, Jew – hosted a Passover "Seder night" in the ward (hence the gefilte fish, the pickles). Among the guests were Boy George and Matt Lucas's mother. But after a while, plagued by severe headaches, Sallon retired to bed.
In Piccadilly Circus, central London, in the early hours of April 3, Sallon was seriously assaulted. Having suffered a haemorrhage on the brain, he was given a 50/50 chance of survival. Now, with the aid of round-the-clock medical care, he has stabilised. The reason for the attack remains unknown; his memory of it is blank.
The police investigation is moving slowly. Detectives have released a description of the suspect: an athletic, six-foot male of around 20; short black hair; a tight, royal blue T-shirt; jeans; black trainers. "Several people came to Philip's aid after the attack," says Mick Forteath, the detective leading the investigation. "But so far they haven't come forward. We're appealing to anyone who saw the assault itself, the prelude, or the aftermath, to come and talk to us."
Despite the density of CCTV cameras in Piccadilly, footage of the attack seems to be eluding the investigators. "We've gathered 40 hours of video," explains Forteath. "Some of it needs to be sent off to a special lab before we can watch it. It's not as easy as people think." He is also unclear whether or not the attack was homophobic. At the time of writing, the assailant remains at large.
Such is the affection that Sallon inspires that his friends staged a parade through Soho to appeal for witnesses. There were three organisers: veteran clubber Alice Shaw, Tamar Adair (a Guardian Angel vigilante) and composer Benjamin Till, who directed Taboo – the musical about Boy George's life in which Sallon features prominently. Hundreds of supporters attended, singing his favourite songs: I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles; Oom Pah Pah; Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag."It could only be described as a shambolic display of affection," the composer recalls. "Philip touched the lives of all sorts of people, from the high life to the low life and back again."
It was this parade that prompted the key witness – a bouncer who saw the attack, and who provided the description released by the police – to come forward. Yet in a poignant and shocking twist, the parade itself was attacked. Banners were destroyed, Till was pelted with eggs while making a speech, and a drag queen was punched to the ground. "It was outrageous," says Till. "I was shocked at how much hatred there is out there."
Homophobia in the capital has been in the news recently, not least in connection to the gay couple thrown out of a pub for kissing. Although this attracted much attention, the story behind the story has been largely overlooked. "The intolerance of gay kissing was actually part of a trend," says Paul Shetler, the gay-rights campaigner who organised the subsequent kiss-in protest. "The previous week, two other same-sex couples were unfairly barred from pubs. And an anti-gay sticker campaign has been ongoing in east London for some time. The kiss-in was our way of taking a stand against burgeoning homophobia in London."
To some extent, the statistics support his fears. Although homophobic crime overall dropped by 3% in London last year, in the West End it increased by 20.9%. This is symbolised, perhaps, by the fatal homophobic attack on Ian Baynham in 2009, minutes from where Sallon was assaulted. Last January, Ruby Thomas, 19, was sentenced to seven years for the crime. (By a strange coincidence, she was defended by Sallon's cousin, Christopher Sallon QC.)
When these are added to other assaults, such as the homophobic murder of Jody Dobrowski in 2005, and the stabbing of the 20-year-old gay student Oliver Hemsley in Hackney in 2008 – which left him paralysed – an impression emerges of a trend that is at once shocking and insidious.
"The majority of homophobic attacks are never reported," says the gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell. "Low-level assaults could easily be multiplying under the radar. It can be even worse for prominent gay figures like Philip. I myself have been attacked more than 300 times in the past 20 years. As a result, I suffer from permanent brain damage."
According to Sam Dick, a researcher for the gay-rights charity Stonewall, perceptions of London as a "gay-friendly city" are incorrect. "Studies indicate that gay people feel more vulnerable in London than elsewhere in the country," he says. "The attack on Philip Sallon – whether homophobic or not – can only make matters worse."
Boy George, a close friend of Sallon for 35 years, agrees. "The London that I grew up in has gone," he says. "The old sense of community has been eroded. It is becoming more transient, aggressive, soulless. In the early 80s there was this sense that things were changing, and becoming more open-minded. But we don't have that sort of gorgeous youth culture any more, the glam rockers, the New Romantics. People aren't so individual any more. There is this sense of why would you want to stand out and make a show of yourself?"
George believes that Sallon's all-embracing gregariousness may have been part of the problem. "Philip is like a modern-day Oscar Wilde," he says. "His favourite pastime is to walk around Soho chatting to whoever he encounters – pimps, rent boys, drug dealers, celebrities. I tell him to be careful, but he takes no notice. He loves interesting and colourful people."
As it happens, Sallon is related to me by marriage. When I first met him, at a party years ago, he was wearing a mock-Restoration costume, with embroidery and frills, and a large dollop of shaving cream on his head (presumably in lieu of a wig). He took my hand, murmured "charmed," and curtsied. Strange as it was, it was I who was charmed.
Yesterday, I phoned a few of his friends to harvest more examples of his costumes. This from my notes: a massive silver star that he wore to Paris fashion week; a costume made out of lobster traps; another composed of liquorice allsorts, worn with a blue wig; and a dress of pound notes, which fellow partygoers removed one by one until he was almost naked. "If I want to tease Philip," Boy George confides, "all I have to do is tell him he's looking normal."
So I question Philip about his fashion sense. "Every detail of the aesthetic world reflects the anxieties of the age," he replies, propping himself up gingerly with a pillow. "Every tiny thing – the heel of a shoe, the shape of a button, the cut of a jacket – reflects our society's sense of security, like a dream reflecting your unconscious mind."
I ask him to elaborate. "Stone Age man's survival depended on hunting animals," he says. "And what did he wear? Animal skin. You see? In the 1930s there was a German peasant girl fashion trend, because everyone was worried about Germany. These days, because of our increasing fear of the Arab world, there is an Arabic influence creeping into our fashion, art and music. This applies to buildings, too – communist-style architecture can be spotted a mile off. Those horrible blocks. What I'm saying is, you can affect what people think – you can affect the world – by challenging the aesthetic."
Sallon was born in London in 1951, the grandson of Polish Jewish immigrant tailors. His father, Ralph Sallon, was a well-known caricaturist – the ultimate outsider-looking-in. The sartorial preoccupation, the artistic eye, the outsider tendencies, all found full expression in Philip. By the time he arrived at Harrow County school – later renamed Gayton school, he tells me with a chuckle – he knew he was different. "I was the queen of the school," he recalls. "But I had quite a gob on me, and that stopped me from being bullied too badly."
He went on to study fashion design at the London College of Print and illustration at Central St Martins, before starting at a fashion firm. Shortly afterwards, he left to open a nightclub. He hasn't looked back since.
"I met him in 1981 at his first club – Planets – in Piccadilly," says Alice Shaw, his long-time friend. "Boy George was the DJ, though this was before he was famous. The atmosphere was distinctly Sallon-esque: open to everyone so long as they were interesting. All his clubs were like that, even the famous Mudd Club. All sorts of outrageous characters would be there." Her favourite memory of him, however, is rather more personal. "When my cat died, he turned up on the doorstep with smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels," she recalls. "He fed me them for an hour, saying I must be in shock. Then he found a shovel and buried the cat for me."
Shortly after I visit Sallon in hospital, he is discharged to convalesce at home. When I phone him two days later, he is "dragging himself round a car boot sale with friends". In the background, I hear him haggling over a postcard. Thankfully, as they say, you can't keep a good man down; in Philip Sallon, the old London still exists. It is just a matter of time until he is out and about again in Soho. In the meantime, I can only wish him – and London – a speedy recovery.
• This article was amended on 3 May 2011. The original version referred to the Mud Club, owing to an editing error.
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