Battle on to save Full Monty club

IT FEATURED in the closing moments of one of the biggest British films of all time.

Now campaigners who hoped to prevent the demolition of a Sheffield working men’s club where the The Full Monty finale was filmed have penned an open letter urging the city to fight the loss of such locations “more often, more loudly, and in bigger numbers” – while the developer says he has repeatedly offered to work with the community.

The Shiregreen Club featured in the 1997 film starring Robert Carlyle and York-born Mark Addy about unemployed steel workers preparing to perform a male striptease.

The club, where the men perform their act in the film’s ‘big reveal’ final scene, is set to be bulldozed to make way for housing after it closed in 2018, when its president Terry Wake called it “the end of an era”.

Campaigners have attempted to make it an Asset of Community Value (ACV) after gathering almost 1,500 signatures to a petition and want to create an arts and events space but expect to this week be told that this has been unsuccessful.

Peter Eyre, of developer Eyre Investments, said that internal demolition has already started.

He said: “If they called me tomorrow morning with a serious, meaningful proposal that worked, that they could substantiate, I would sit and talk to them all day long.”

This came after members of the theatre and interactive arts company Bare Project wrote an open letter to the city – which features 10 names from Yorkshire’s creative industries – following the loss of several other working men’s clubs.

Names included producer and theatre-maker Linda Bloomfield, director Malaika Cunningham, designer Bethany Wells, production manager Tom Robbins and producer James

Ashfield. Theatre director Ali Pidsley, producer Sarah Sharp, director and writer Ruby Clarke, producer Sam Dunstan and theatremaker Joe Boylan have also leant their support.

The letter reads: “We are calling on the council, local residents and the wider Sheffield community to come together in objecting to these closures, more often, more loudly, and in bigger numbers.

To stand up and say ‘no, not this time’. This needs urgent attention.

“Of course, affordable and social housing is much-needed and vital too, but there are no guarantees the accommodation built on these sites will be either of those things. “There is a world in which it is possible to build more houses without erasing our brilliant, vibrant city’s heritage.”

Efforts to make the site an ACV, which would make it subject to extra protection from development, have so far been unsuccessful.

Mr Eyre said he has been in talks about alternative ideas for the site and has offered meetings and viewings, but has not been taken up on them. He added: “There were lots of people making noises but nobody’s come to me with a serious intention.”

It is another Yorkshire film location that could be lost, after a building in Scarborough, used in Little Voice, was also previously pulled down.

We are calling on people to object to these closures more often.

Campaigners who want to save the Shiregreen Club in Sheffield.