Memories of the venture youth club.

Memories of the venture youth club.

Being young

Bob Hughes talks about the Venture Youth Club and Ray Gosling.

East Midlands Oral History Archive

Interview with Bob Hughes for the East Midlands Oral History Archive. Uncatalogued.

East Midlands Oral History Archive

1960s

You may use this item in accordance with the licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/

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English

Oral history

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3 min 51 sec

128 kbps

At The Venture, for example, it was only me and one other guy that were young, 15 or 16. All the rest were teddy boys, real tough guys. They had winkle pickers with buckles on and chains, and flick knives and goodness knows what, but they weren't aggressive towards me. I was merely an observer, I think. It must have been open for a few months before I noticed it when I was walking home one day and looked inside and I saw that they had an espresso machine. I could smell the coffee. I mean that was... The only other place I knew in town was Brucianni's that had an espresso machine. There were actually people in there having fun. I could hear all this music coming out. The Cincinnati Fireboard, you remember? I forget who sang that, but we... time of Elvis, you know, I mean, and Roy Orbison. So, I was intrigued, so I just went in. I never bought anything, just sat there and realised this was a very, very good place. And then money didn't seem to be an issue about charging people for drinks, etc, because they were just helping themselves. But that was a nice environment. There weren't very many girls that went there. And I didn't really go there late at night. There's quite a lot of seedy people that crept in there that weren't youth. And that's what happened to the place in the end. Some drunks went in there, maybe 1961, and smashed the place to pieces. And I happened to be there because it was daytime and it was winter and very cold. And then all these guys in overcoats, they're all drunk, came and smashed the place up for no apparent reason. They went in like they had a cold room or a big fridge and they were throwing all these hamburger patties all over the road and then the cops came and they arrested all these fellas and took them away. It was... I've seen worse at the clock tower on Friday night but apparently it was so serious that the sponsors of the Venture pulled the plug on the place, and also the Leicester's city council were opposed to it from the very beginning, which I didn't know. They thought it was a breeding ground for sex and violence, I suppose, I don't know. It's a shame, because he was really trying hard.

What did people think of Ray Gosling at the time, as far as you remember?

The problem was, because he was gay and basically homosexual activity was illegal, then I don't think he was liked at all. There was a lot of gay bashing going on, as you'd probably know. So they were gangs of teddy boys or something similar, bashing gays up in the toilets in various parks. And so, it was a no-no to even tell anybody that you were gay, so it was a secret activity.

How well known was it that Gosling was gay?

Everybody told me that he was gay, but I couldn't... I mean, what's an ignorant kid looking at one man to another and saying, There's any difference between Ray Gosling and any other man? He was, what I thought, very well-spoken, refined, articulate, and all the things that you'd probably want to be myself, you know, somebody to look up to.

Colin Hyde

Bob Hughes

East Midlands Oral History Archive