Judith Nichol first started clubbing in the early 1980s, at the tail end of the New Romantic era. ‘I used to go to The Beetroot in Soho…All the big names were there, Sade, Blue Rondo A La Turk, Spandau Ballet… On the table you’d find cards from The Grey Organisation advertising warehouse parties for the ...
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Richard Brunskill joined the Story Palace team at an LGBT celebration event that we held at the end of September 2017. We tapped into a rich seam of narrative history centered on The Bell pub on Pentonville Road (Now called Big Chill House, and serving a rather different demographic). The Bell was a hugely important ...
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Nazmia, born in 1979, was part of the group that put on Ladyfest London, a feminist music festival, in 2002 at The Garage in Highbury. The original Ladyfest took place in Olympia, Washington in 2000 and inspired a continuing global movement. Nazmia also curated films at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (now BFI ...
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Séamus Rea was born in 1956, in Northern Ireland. He moved to the King’s Cross area in 1980, and has lived there ever since. Moving to King’s Cross represented an escape from the oppressive atmosphere that he had grown up in, as a young gay man. “It was an amazing, liberating experience to move to ...
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Jarlath O’Connell vividly remembers one particular night that was held at The Bell: Jo Purvis’ Sunday Tea Dances. Here he opens the doors and takes us inside. A cocktail bar? In King’s Cross? I mean, there were crack-whores giving blowjobs for a fiver in the stairwells and the doorways. The idea that people would come ...
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Mark Cawson has lived in the King’s Cross area for over 30 years. Moving into a large squat on the Hillview estate in the early 1980s, he found himself living in a community of like minded people. ‘It was a huge mix. There were a lot of creative people, circus performers, writers, musicians. The Pogues ...
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Sarah Walker first came across the English Collective of Prostitutes at the North London Polytechnic, where she was studying English, in the early 1980s. In May 2018, Sarah and I sat down to record her memories of the ECP occupation of the Holy Cross Church in King’s Cross in 1982. Sarah talked about the political ...
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Amy Lamé (b. 1971), founder of legendary gay club Duckie, ended up as a resident of King’s Cross when she married a vicar, Jenny. The flat in Bloomsbury came with her wife’s job in the Anglican Church. Amy discovered it once housed orphaned girls from the Foundling Hospital, who were training as domestic servants. The ...
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A podcast opening the door to the Bell, an iconic lesbian and gay pub of the 80s and 90s. Kings Cross. A run down part of London, haunted by addicts, homeless people, sex workers – and queers, drawn there by the music and energy of one pub. The Bell. Situated on Pentonville Road, this shabby ...
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I meet Paul Allchin at the British Library to talk about a night out in King’s Cross with ex-partner George Duff. The conversation moves from the night out to the roles we play in the lives of those we are closest to. It feels like we are a million miles from the small room at ...
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Christopher Watson was born on Christmas day in 1941. We met him in his house on Packenham Street, where he has lived for over 40 years. We discovered there a host of characters who have accompanied Christopher through the pubs, clubs and drag balls of King’s Cross and Soho from the 1960s to today. When Christopher ...
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Chrissie Joyce and Denise Spence first met each other at The Bell, a pub and venue on Pentonville Road during the 1980s/90s. With a shared Northern Irish heritage the two women had left Ireland seeking to escape – in Denise’s words – a climate of ‘drink, violence, religion and hate’. Gravitating to the King’s Cross ...
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Central Station is an unassuming pub, down a side street in King’s Cross. After work it welcomes the office-crowd, with its friendly atmosphere and free pool. After dark the blackout blinds come down, and the burlesque cabaret dancers step out. The basement houses a fetish club that Duncan Irvine – co-owner and manager – is ...
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Jim MacSweeney moved from Ireland to London in 1982 to do a drama course, and found a world that felt 20 years ahead of the place he had left behind.By his own admission, he wonders whether he came for a drama course, or to deal with his sexuality. The move proved to be both a ...
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Andrea Smith was born in 1966, and adopted as a baby. She grew up in Manchester, and moved to London in the early 1990s. The knowledge that the people who had raised her were not her blood family sparked an ‘existential quest for self’ in Andrea that took the form of meticulous research into her ...
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Jane Penton was born a Kiwi, but having an English grandfather allowed her to move to the UK during the eighties. Over the ten years that Jane was in London, she spent time living and squatting around Somers Town, an area of King’s Cross behind The British Library. I spoke with Jane via e-mail last year, ...
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Eileen was born on Christmas day, 1954. She was reportedly due ‘before or slightly after’ Christmas, and her mother hoped she’d stick to that appointment, not wanting the new arrival to interfere with the festive jollities. But baby Eileen was eager (or else reticent) and arrived on the 25th, and luckily, everyone was glad. For ...
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Huw Arfon Williams was born in 1959, and came to London in 1983. We meet him to discuss gay London from the 80s onwards, in a stylish members’ club in Soho. It’s a fitting place to meet Huw, who is a stylish man, but when he declares that the sartorial choices he made in the ...
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On May Day 1980 a boy from Manchester and a boy from Plymouth arrived in London. They were Martin and Berni of Movements and had met in Plymouth a year earlier when Berni was a student and Martin was a local. They had been involved in local gay and anti-Nazi activism movements. They also shared ...
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Growing up in suburban Surrey was a far cry from the edgy world of King’s Cross in the 1980’s. Sue Smallwood escaped what she describes as the back stabbing environment of rural England to experience something altogether different. Despite it’s reputation as a dangerous place filled with prostitutes and drug pushers – Sue found a ...
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