The early lure of celebrity?

This plastic sign, crudely slotted into a block of wood was my first experience of V.I.P. treatment, aged 9. It was placed on a table, adjacent  to the stage of the Buxton Working Men’s Club where my father would ply his trade every Saturday and Sunday evening. It meant that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES was anyone other than those named on it, plus their respective immediate families, allowed to park their behind at that particular area.

This brazen example of a social hierarchy was open to exploitation; it justified our inherent human right as a family to swan in at any given time before a performance, in the knowledge that our place would be unoccupied and awaiting our arrival. Unfortunately my father was not the egotistical type so we would invariably turn up at the same time every week, and while he set up his kit and did the necessary tweaking and tuning, my mother and I would take our place with a Snowball and Blackcurrant and Lemonade respectively.

In all the years of attendance (about 5 years), I can’t remember a single instance of an interloper causing us any undue distress, so it goes to show that this small plastic and wooden notice served its purpose in the respect of the audience members knowing exactly where they stood. Or sat in this instance.

A lovely piece of history for me that I now own, after it was liberated from the club when he retired from playing. Both the organist and drummer are now both consigned to history. As are a vast number of social clubs, which ever political party they were affiliated to. Happy days.