Bob
born Mold, Wales 1925
George
born Old Swan, Liverpool 1944
I used to think when I was younger it’ll be fun growing old because the old ones were having a great time. There was a good scene in Liverpool, this was before the clubs started. There were about 5 different gay bars altogether. There was the Stork Hotel in Queen Square that was pulled down in the early sixties and there was a really good bar in there, the Aintree Bar. Then there was the Magic Clock which was excellent, then the Royal Court Bar which was good, then the Old Royal that was another gay bar on Williamson Square next to the Playhouse, that’s where I met Eric, that’s where I worked. The Basnett Bar was on the ground floor by George Henry Lee’s, Basnett Street.
Brian S
born Ealing, London 1930
Eric
born Margate, Kent 1936
George
Bob 1947
It became gay (the Magic Clock), it was simply a lunchtime place for the people that worked round there you know the fruit market and the fish market. But there was this barmaid who was in the Aintree Bar, but she left the Aintree Bar and moved to The Magic Clock. Now we all toddled after her because she was pro gay, she liked the gays because we’re non threatening and she was a motherly figure. She moved from the Aintree Bar to the Clock and we all turned up in the Clock. I remember the manager, it was a husband and wife team in there and they couldn’t realise quite what had hit them. It would have been about 1962. In the Magic Clock there were lots of gay boys with girls names, Cherise was one of them. I had one, when I was young I had masses of hair, and I was called Pompadour. There were a lot of old gays in town years ago and a lot of them were Quentin Crisp types, it was fashionable to be like that in suits and ties with the hair all shooshed up, eyelashes put on, you don’t get that any more. The bar I worked in ‘Della’ would come in, he was a guard outside Buckingham Palace on a horse, he was a great big fella and we used to call him Della, I don’t know his real name. He’d come into the pub dressed in drag and you’ve never seen such terrible drag in your life. But if anybody was in the pub staring at him he’d say ‘who the hell are you looking at’ and the next minute he’d have your eye out. There were a few people in town like that……Sadie, I knew her in the early sixties and she worked in this bar I worked in and she was caught having sex on St George’s Hall steps and she was sent to prison. When he came out he went back to work in the Old Royal for Dolly and eventually in the seventies he opened a club of his own, the Bar Royal in Wood St.
Our Story - Liverpool
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