Youth club deploys a bit of Do-Re-Mi to send teens packing

Published on Thursday 27 August 2009 22:15

"SO LONG, farewell, auf wiedersehen, goodnight".

For people of a certain age, having Julie Andrews accompanying you as you leave a night out might seem a pleasant end to the evening.

But for those who are "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" today, hearing the singing nun pipe up is a rather abrupt way of being told the party's over.

Youth club organisers in Inverness make sure their hall is alive with The Sound of Music each night after discovering numbers from the hit musical encourage youngsters to leave the premises quicker.

Staff at the Hilton Community Centre were having difficulty dispersing teenagers, who were reluctant to leave when the youth club ended at 10pm on Thursdays and Fridays.

But things changed when they started belting out My Favourite Things, Do-Re-Mi, So Long, Farewell and other Rodgers and Hammerstein hits from the classic musical.

Hearing songs from the 1965 film, it seems, is too much for the youths, who now quickly flee.

Gillian Simpson, the centre spokeswoman, said: "We were having a few problems at exit time. It was probably from simply stopping their enjoyment.

"But we all have beds to go to at some point, and this seems to be working quite satisfactorily," she said. "It's proving quite successful. They go 'oh no', so we no longer have to encourage them to leave."

Classical music has also been deployed, including The Ride of the Valkyries by Richard Wagner, and nursery rhymes are being kept in storage as the final sanction if necessary on the hard-core loiterers.

John Finnie, SNP councillor for Inverness, said the fact that teenagers were unwilling to leave was a tribute to the success of the club, which regularly caters for about 80 people and lays on sporting, musical, educational and computer facilities.