Dirty Stop Outs Guide to Working Men’s Clubs - rise and fall of clubland's golden era revisited in new book
The incredible rise and fall of this cultural phenomenon, which also made household names of Marti Caine, Paul Shane, Bobby Knutt, Charlie Williams, Bernie Clifton and more, is revisited in fascinating new book, Dirty Stop Outs Guide to Working Men’s Clubs, from retro specialist publisher Neil Anderson.
BUY NOW: Dirty Stop Outs Guide to Working Men’s Clubs, an A4, full colour coffee table book, costs just £29.95, is published by Dirty Stop Outs and is available from book shops and at https://dirtystopouts.com/products/dirty-stop-outs-guide-to-working-mens-clubs.
Back in the day, Working Men’s Clubs thrived with smoke-filled concert rooms and the rich aroma of beer and malt.
They were lively venues where camaraderie flourished over pints, live music, and bingo nights. The air buzzed with laughter and the hum of local bands.
But as industrial decline set in and modern entertainment took hold, these once-vibrant bastions of community spirit began to fade. Today, many clubs are demolished or lie shuttered, relics of a bygone era. The echo of those packed, noisy bars lingers only in memory, and in this charming new book - a must buy for anyone anchoring in he past or wanting to know what it was really like when clubland was king.
The original mission was simple: provide the Victorian working man with the means to improve himself and stay out of the pub. By fostering an alcohol-free environment enriched with middle-class values, the goal was to cultivate a more harmonious home life and reduce spiralling cases of domestic violence.
It’s fair to say the Victorian minister who conceived the first Working Men's Club would have turned in his grave at what the movement became: a multi-million-pound supplier of subsidised alcohol, years spent fighting to ensure women remained second-class citizens, and early educational pastimes like libraries replaced by entertainment spanning Bernard Manning to Sunday lunchtime strippers.
Despite its faults, the Working Men’s Clubs were a much-loved national institution that peaked in popularity during the 1970s.
Sheffield became a northern epi-centre for clubland with over 150 thriving venues in the era.
Neil Anderson’s new Dirty Stop Outs Guide to Working Men’s Clubs celebrates this golden era of a movement that helped to create some of the UK’s biggest light entertainment stars of the time, with many of the so-called ‘turns’ becoming TV’s latest superstars, including Sheffield’s legendary funny girl Marti Caine.
Suddenly the club stars were performing to millions in living rooms everywhere.
The Comedians TV show put the spotlight on many. laughter makers of the era, including Russ Abbot, Jim Bowen and Charlie Williams, Britain's first well-known black stand-up comedian, famed for his catchphrase, "me old flower",delivered in a broad Yorkshire accent. He went on to host the TV game show The Golden Shot.
Double acts Cannon and Ball and Little and Large also came from the clubs circuit - it replaced the theatre variety shows journey which had made stars of by then established icons, the likes of Morecambe and Wise.
But with four million people a week visiting the Working Men’s Clubs in their heyday and the institutions attracting some of the biggest names in entertainment, there really was only one star of the show – the bingo.
The annual club trip took tens of thousands of kids to the coast every year – for many youngsters, it was their only visit to the seaside.
Sheffield based Neil Anderson, author of Dirty Stop Outs Guide to Working Men’s Clubs, takes a UK wide look at clubland and how it united the nation. He said: said: “I think it’s vital that this massive part of British working club history is celebrated and preserved. I had the pleasure of interviewing scores of entertainers, patrons, committee members, and more for the book, and it made me realise just how little is left of the movement today.”
It was teetotal social reformer Reverend Henry Solly that formed the Working Men’s Club & Institute Union (CIU) in 1862. Its motto was simple: “Recreation hand in hand with education and temperance.”
Neil added: “By the 1970s it’s fair to say the movement was probably shifting more beer per week than half the pubs in the UK.”