Pulled some moves ... and little else
I WAS such a committed clubber that I once embarked on a two-week tour of premier Italian nightspots.
Only one thing shines through the mental mist of that wild, alcohol-lashed fortnight.
There’s no disco in Ferno, Lombardy.
Back home, I took part in Northern Soul pilgrimages to Wigan Casino, glided like a tiger on Vaseline on many famed Midland dancefloors and generally embraced 70s disco fever. Don’t ask me why, it just flared up. That is why when our sister Birmingham Mail newspaper recently ran a nostalgic picture spread on acclaimed Birmingham nightspot Snobs and asked for tales of the tinsel paradise, I did not respond.
“Do you have treasured memories of Snobs Night club?”, the piece asked. I can answer, hand on heart, “no”. That was because I was there, so inebriated on Snakebite – a rocket fuel mix of cider and lager – that I’d often end messy Thursday evenings in a heated debate with the venue’s famed mannequin mask decorations.
My time at Snobs, which moved from its famed Paradise Circus base in 2014, came even before supergroups such as Duran Duran and Blur graced the venue.
The club helped me remove the crippling shackles of low self-esteem. When I first started frequenting it, my confidence was so fragile I arrived at a “fancy dress school disco theme night” dressed as the janitor.
My memories are more tarnished than treasured. They consist of harrowing visions of women looking shocked and appalled as I lurched towards them, stirred into action by the first strains of Chicago’s sickly ballad, If You Leave Me Now.
One young thing had the good grace to provide an excuse for spurning my advances: “I can’t, I’m sweating”.
The others sent me scurrying, crimson with shame, back to the bar with a curt “No thanks”.
One bubble-perm blonde snapped: “I wouldn’t have a dance if you were the last man on earth.”
“If I was the last man on earth, “I slurred, “who’d be playing the crap records?”
I’d walk away from the sticky, neon- lit floor, flushed red by rejection, like a bull elephant shunned by the herd.
On another occasion a woman stared at me from the dance floor perimeter with that unmistakable “I’m taking you home tonight” look on her face.
“Bloody hell, mom,” I protested, stamping my feet in frustration, “you said I could stay out until 11.30pm.”
I “pulled” but once, a lass from leafy Knowle who took me back to her place.
I do remember spying the array of cuddly toys battling for shelf space and scattered over satin sheets and pondering: “Is this woman mentally mature enough to handle a physical relationship?”
After a brief but steamy coupling, she sat bolt upright in the oversized bed, pointed to the Paddington Bear and Winnie the Pooh toys and bellowed: “Any prize on the bottom shelf, take any prize on the bottom shelf.”
For the most, fellow clubber Colin and I, doused in Pagan Man aftershave and sporting silly platform shoes (apt footwear for railway worker Colin), began nights full of hope and ended them with hotdogs and humiliation.
Colin believed the key to finding a sexual partner lay in falsely claiming he was a butcher.
“If any girl asks,” he’d wink while adding a final coat of Pagan Man, “I’m a butcher. Women love butchers. They like the idea of men wrestling with carcasses.”
“And what do you do?” asked Donna while sucking Cherry B and cider – a cocktail that delighted in the name “Legover” – through a straw.
“I’m a master butcher,” announced Colin.
“Looks more like a master baker to me,” giggled her friend, Tracey.
“Every Sunday,” giggled Donna, “we have rabbit. Dad wants to know if it’s cheaper from a butchers or a pet shop.”
“I’m in there,” grinned Colin, as he ordered yet another Legover. Yet again, he wasn’t. She didn’t turn up for their arranged date. Colin, dead rabbit in hand, cut a forlorn figure at the bus stop. I think he also had a pound of mince in his pocket.
Yet floods of emails lamenting the loss of the Dr Who themed nightspot – a place of its time, lord – prove many Brummies found lasting love there. Jayne Stephens posted: “I met my husband in Snobs 12 and a half years ago and we went almost every week together with our friends for years after that.”
Word of warning, Jayne: he’s not really a butcher.
The venue, which has welcomed more than 2.5 million punters during its 41 years, may have gone, but the legendary clubland name has not. Snobs can now be found in Smallbrook Queensway, Birmingham.
The plush new venue has not proved universally popular. Reader Lee Wooldridge had a point when he posted: “Snobs was all about it being a dog hole with great music.”
Being rebuffed by a someone dancing round their handbags in a “dog hole” hurts. But it’s a lot more painful in a palace.
Snobs will never be the same. It was a reminder of a more innocent time when sophistication meant drinking rum and coke and smoking St Moritz cigarettes.