The Nightingale was born
1969
After the ‘Queen Victoria’ closed, there was a barren period in
Birmingham in respect of club life. ‘La’ (Laurie Williams) approached me one night in the
Imperial Bar and told me he had found a backer who wanted to put up
the cash to start a gay members club, he had £600.00 pounds to help get
it off the ground, they had their eyes on an Indian restaurant come
club called the ‘Nightingale’ in Camp Hill, owned by one Isaac Butt,
who was the owner of the first club we used to use in five ways, and he
was going bankrupt. ‘La’ asked me to get my crowd of mates to come and
help get the place cleaned and ready for our use.
I was
introduced to ‘Derek Pemberton’ who I had seen at the Queen Victoria,
he was the backer with the £600.00. A great deal of hard work was done
by what I can only call a ‘gallant team of people’ who gave all their
evenings mostly straight from their day jobs to come and clean and
repair the rooms at Camp Hill, most nights we worked right through and
only just made it to the Bulls Head pub opposite for a couple of pints
before going home.
From 1970 ‘The Gale’ at Camp Hill was a
success from the very start, packed every weekend and good attendance
mid week, run on the same basis as we are now (1983). The original
membership came from the people who had helped prepare the club being
42 in number; all these stalwarts are to my mind as important as each
other and should share the credit if any is due, for without their hard
work and support it would never have happened. Purely for the ‘Midland
Link’ member’s information, approx 3 months after the ‘Gale’ was in
full swing Paul Smith and the present secretary, Charles Sewell, came
in on the scene became members and got themselves much involved in the
affairs of running the club.
Contributed by: Michael Dunn