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Young people now don’t want Bingo and that . . . Young people now want to be stood at the bar with a bottle in their hand, Budweiser or something like that. That’s all they want. They don’t want entertainment; they don’t want anything. We’ve paid hundreds and hundreds of pounds over the years, and it’s never 242 brought any more in.
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They’re not surviving; they’re going down, and why are they going down? I can answer that in one. I’ve said it before: it’s 243 smoking. Got to give us a smoking room, that’s all we ask.
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Everybody’s changed; their tastes have changed. They have this loud music, and they’re not satisfied until they have it 244 full blast.
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Pubs are struggling. The whole licensed trade is struggling. And if you ask members of the licensed trade why they think they are struggling currently, I’m sure the majority would answer, ‘Supermarkets’. Supermarkets sell liquor, whether it’s spirits or beer, they can sell it far, far cheaper than clubs can even buy it. They are selling it and making a profit from that, and they can sell it cheaper than what clubs are buying. There’s something 245 wrong there.
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A lot of jobs have gone. You’ve only got to take Wheatley Hall Road now. ICI, they’ve gone. They had three to four thousand workers. Crompton Lighting are still there but only just. Burton’s Tailors, Leger Bakery, Harvesters had three or four thousand. The Plant, that had about eleven thousand in its heyday, all those type of people. And it was a continuation of what your father did as well. Your dad went in; you went in; your older brothers went in. Your first drinking hole, really, you went in with your brothers. They 246 looked after you, basically.
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What I’m trying to generate here is a younger atmosphere. Like on Fridays, I’ve got a younger DJ for the night time, but also incorporate where functions can be brought in for a free venue hire and free DJ on Friday evening to try and generate the public back through the door again. Golf clubs found that they were so cliquey that they had four-year waiting lists. What they found was that, as their older members were dying, they weren’t doing anything for the younger generation, and they ran out of membership. They 247 forgot to cater for the younger generation as times go by.
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It gets harder, because as I say, I’m in my eighties, and let’s be fair about it: you’re not up to doing as much as you did when you were forty, or even sixty. What you want is for some younger people to be interested, but they seem to think they’re generating enough money to do without half of these things, but you’re not, you see.