Trimdon Labour Club closed

"DO you remember the act we had when Neil Kinnock opened the club in 1993?”

says Peter Brookes.

“It was the comedian Bobby Knoxall, and his first joke, it was racist, really racist, and I remember Glenys Kinnock saying ‘we chased that sort of humour out of the valleys years ago’.

“But the funniest thing was Neil. He was leader of the Labour Party and he’d given up smoking. He kept sneaking into the lounge and saying ‘have you got a tab, lads – but don’t tell Glenys, she doesn’t know’.”

Last night was that sort of night, the sort of night when an era ends and the memories flow.

After 17 years in the international spotlight, Trimdon Labour Club closed.

The last act was singer Sue Allen from Trimdon Station.

“We’ve got to get our priorities right,” secretary Paul Trippett told her, “so you’ll be on after the bingo.”

With the club goes a little piece of North-East history.

During the heady high days of New Labour, the club became known around the world as the base of Tony Blair, the local MP. Every word of his speeches and every step of his victory celebrations was beamed live from the concert room stage by the satellite trucks parked on the green outside.

Some days, there were so many broadcast dishes, domes and masts that it was impossible for the local pigeon club to drop off their birds in their wicker baskets so they could be collected for a big race.

It was from that stage that, in 1994, Mr Blair announced he would be standing for the Labour leadership. It was on the same stage in 1997, amid extraordinary joyous scenes, that he accepted a landslide had swept him into Downing Street. And it was from the same stage that, in 2007, he announced he would be standing down as Prime Minister.

It was to the club, with its plush green seats and a plaque on the wall saying “Bullsh*t Corner”, that he brought French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin for a beer.

It was to the club payphone that a trans-atlantic call was once made.

“I remember that the lass behind the bar shouted out ‘is Tony Blair in?’,” says John Burton, Mr Blair’s former agent. “I asked her who it was and she said ‘someone called Clinton’. I had to go in to Tony, who was in a room with a constituent who had real problems with the NHS, and tell him the US president’s on the phone.”

“Tony had to come to the corner of the bar to take it,”

says Mr Brookes, the local county councillor who, along with Mr Burton, was one of “the famous five” who first supported the unknown Blair in 1983. “He shouted across the room ‘the President sends his best regards to everyone’ and a great cheer went up.”

But those were different days, before the smoking ban, before cheap supermarket booze, before every home had Sky TV, before British culture changed and people opted to stay in rather than go out.

“It’s affecting everywhere,”

says singer Sue Allen. “Clubs would normally put on a duo or a trio, but now they can only afford a solo act. You go back to a place where you played the concert hall a year ago and find you’re in the lounge. It’s a common trend and it’s a shame.”

Young and old alike were in for the final night, from the chap who won £5,000 by putting a fiver on Mr Blair becoming Prime Minister after meeting him for the first time in 1983, to the Scotts, the unsighted newly-weds whose “blind date” wedding at the weekend turned them into celebrities.

The local Labour Party took on the club, which was founded after the First World War, when the working men’s committee ran into difficulties.

“The place would have been boarded up so we’ve breathed 17 years of life into it,” says Mr Trippett. “We started with £350 and we’ll probably go out with £350, so we’ve come full circle.”

When The Northern Echo revealed three weeks ago that it was to close, the club enjoyed one last bow in the media spotlight with radio and television descending to record the ending of an era.

“At the weekend, they showed a comedienne on the stage joking ‘having you seen the dressing rooms – no, neither has the cleaner’,” says a chap at the bar.

“I thought it was funny, but my wife didn’t – she happens to be the cleaner.”

The club reopens today as a pub, and without the political baggage that brought it international fame.