The Batley Variety Club was a variety club in Batley, West Yorkshire, England. It was financed and co-founded by the late Yorkshire showman and businessman Peter Fleming in partnership with James Corrigan. It had a capacity of around 1600 people, and when it opened offered cabaret with an inclusive dinner for 6s6d (six shillings and six pence). At the peak of its success, the club was said to have had 300,000 members. It closed circa 1978 and reopened as the Crumpet night club. It closed again shortly afterwards and its contents were auctioned off. It has since reopened as the "Batley Frontier Club".
The Variety Club of the 1960s was a step up from the traditional Working Mens Clubs, usually carpeted and with a meal included in the price of admission. The Batley club was fitted with plush velvet benches installed in a circular "pod" that could seat five couples, with an open end facing the stage. Hundreds of these pods were arranged in tiered rows. Food was served, typical fare being "chicken-in-a-basket".
During its heyday the club staged concerts by performers including the Bee Gees, Shirley Bassey, Tina Turner, Tom Jones, Roy Orbison, Eartha Kitt, Louis Armstrong, Olivia Newton-John, Morecambe and Wise, Alvin Stardust, Jim Bowen, Dusty Springfield, Guys and Dolls, The Brotherhood of Man, Ken Dodd and The Grumbleweeds.
Famous quotes containing the words variety and/or club:
“A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Of course we women gossip on occasion. But our appetite for it is not as avid as a man’s. It is in the boys’ gyms, the college fraternity houses, the club locker rooms, the paneled offices of business that gossip reaches its luxuriant flower.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)