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Clubber's life for me |
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Neal Guppy has been organising York's social life for so long, he
has transcended living legend status. He's become a city landmark.
"People who go away to university or to find a job come back and
they say, 'we know there are three things that are going to be here in
York: the Minster, the Bar Walls and you'," he says. "My response to that is the other two are
dead." Neal, by contrast, is full of life. His
somewhat younger than the Minster, and far more youthful than his 62
years, energised as he is by his passion for people. It is 40 years since he launched
his first social club. Today, Guppy's Enterprise Club on Nunnery Lane is
thriving, and Neal asserts that he is enjoying himself now as much as
when he started. His entrepreneurial debut came on April 7, 1961 when he organised a dance at Clifton Cinema Ballroom. The young people of York had been making that perennial complaint: nothing to do. Neal was never one to sit around moaning, so he booked the ballroom and started promoting the dance. It is a night etched on his mind - and in his neat record books. They reveal that room hire was £7 7s. Other outgoings included two tins of salmon (15 shillings), ten bottles of squash (£1 10s) four jars of poster paints (4s 8d) and a five shilling tip to the caretaker. He set up a club, charged 40 members five shillings admission for the 8pm - midnight dance - and made a loss of £3 15s 3 1/2. It didn't put him off. His next event was a jive party at the Woolpack on Peasholme Green (now home to London York Fund Managers Ltd). This smaller scale affair turned in a profit, despite his having to pay a fee to the gram operator - the term DJ had yet to be coined. The Clifton dances "started with just records. Very soon we got young people, largely from schools, wanting to perform with live bands. This was at a time when Shadows-imitation bands were forming. "One of the first groups I booked was called The Morvans. On the first occasion they came for free, on the second I paid their transport, thereafeter I paid fees to groups. I realised that pop groups were an up-and-coming thing." Other bands he booked in those early days included Steve Cassidy and the Escorts, Gerry B and the Rockafellas - featuring the man who later found TV fame as Dustin Gee - and Roy and the Zeroes from Pocklington. His Woolpack jive parties were the forerunners of discotheques, a word he couldn't use until 1963 "because people would have laughed at me - using a French word would have seemed pretentious in those days." "I used to programme the music so that it would slow down a bit in tempo about half an hour before the evening ended, then slowly the tempo would edge up so the last one was manic. It was great - you got that sense of excitement when it finished." From that day to this, Neal has always restricted entrance to his events to club members and some guests. It allows him to keep control, and offer security to women. When the club began, he asked for suggestions for a name. The most popular two responses were The Pudding Club and the Stork Club. He chose the third choice: The Enterprise Club, which suns it up nicely - a club for its members' enterprises. When he reminisces about his life, it becomes apparent that he has made a habit of forming clubs. As a child he was mad-keen on aeroplanes, and set up a model aircraft club at Archbishop Holgate's School. He left school to join the Bristol Aircraft Company as an apprentice aeronautical engineer but became homesick and realised "it was people I wanted to deal with not machinery". Neal returned to York and enrolled for teacher training at St John's College. Then National Service intervened. He was far from a model soldier and rebelled against the "totalitarian regime". But even in the Army he set up a club - devoted to, of all things, classical music. On returning to civvy street and training as a teacher, he took a post at Derwent Secondary Modern. In 1962, while still teaching full time and he opened his first permanent premises for his club at 56 Walmgate. He put on live groups and discos in the cellar room: York's Cavern Club, he called it. The ceiling was only 7ft high: Neal remembers with grimace accidentally bashing his partner's head during an energetic jive session more than once. He would publicise the club with posters at the main student hang-out, the Stonegate Coffee House (now Mulberry Hall). The club took up so much of his time that he gave up teaching in 1966. Nine years later Neal bought his present premises, the former Britannia Inn on Nunnery Lane. It is a deceptively large building, boasting umpteen rooms in which all manner of activities are pursued. Pass through the bar, and you come to a back room boasting a table football machine. On this the skills of two university table football champions were honed.Upstairs is a large spacious dancefloor, where Neal still takes jive classes. A smaller room dominated by two huge speakers, is where the York Classical CD Club listen to recordings. Guppy's Enterprise Club, better known simply as Guppy's, is home to an astonishing range of pursuits. The York Computer Club and the Argosy Club may be long gone. But they have been replaced by such as: York Movie Makers; Ted Heath Music Appreciation Society; York Poetry Workshop; and York Esperanto Club. Stored in a locker are the models used by the War Games Society, and the equipment of the Amateur Radio and Plastic Models societies. During the day, York University and the W.E.A. host adult education classes at Guppy's. On a higher floor is Neal's bedsit. His 65 hour working week involves being doorman, barman, bookkeeper, and dance teacher. His main role, however, is as the enthusiasts' enthusiast: to "act as a catalyst to enthusiastic people", whatever their passion. His philosophy is that his club will never be subsidised. To earn a living he takes the admission fee and a cut of the bar takings, and runs a removal buisness. Neal salutes all those who have helped him make the club work, includung ex-wife Kay and his partners since. I hope to fall down and die while I'm working ," he says. "I hope that will be more than ten years away. Fifty years - that's my aim. Otherwise it can' t be called a club of any longevity." |
