Time for another instalment in my occasional series about my time working in the Top Rank Gaiety on City Road in Cardiff, as a late teen. These tales span a period of the late 1980s to the early 1990s, a time before internet and camera phones, so many of the tales from that period are conveyed only by word of mouth. There is no photographic evidence, and these memories are preserved here just for the fun of it for anyone who may be interested in the culture and goings on at a small old-fashioned bingo hall in Cardiff.
So, let’s get a bit salacious here, and I will tell you about the secret room that was ‘allegedly’ the love den of staff at the club. For the sake of clarity, and the removal of all doubt, I was not that Lothario member of staff (as much as I maybe wished I had been). From what I could piece together, the events in question happened a long time before I started working there, and I’m not sure which people were involved. It’s probably just as well as whoever it was, there was a definitely a seedy air to the tales I heard, very Carry On film…
The Gaiety itself was a distinctive building, it had originally been a roller rink in its earliest days, then it was extended upwards and turned into a cinema, before being converted into the bingo hall that I knew it as. This meant there was the old fashioned cinema style layout of downstairs and a balcony level. At the top of the balcony level was the old projector booth. You can see the filled in windows that the projector beam would have shone through on the photo here.
So the old projector room was tucked away at the back of the hall, with an entrance at the rear, if memory serves, it had its entrance away from the public areas of hall. It wasn’t used for anything during my time, except maybe storage. But the room had life before that, and from the tales I heard, it was a bit of a love nest.
The stories varied depending on who was telling them, and as I said, they maybe should have been taken with a large pinch of salt. I was told that the room at one time held a mattress, and not much else. Well, a mattress you say, could someone have been sleeping in there? How do I put this politely? No, not sleeping, but that other horizontal activity that is helped along with a good mattress. Yes, in the past, the Gaiety had its very own knocking shop…
I was told that the main session intervals would see members of staff and customers disappearing for a little bit of alternative fun with bingo balls (groan). It was explained to me by longer serving members of staff that the caller and managers had a rota going on who got the room next. It sounded like it was a veritable conveyor belt of illicit rendezvouses and dalliances going down in that makeshift boudoir. Given the average session interval was about 15 – 20 minutes, things had to be happening at a hell of a pace…
Now, you have to wonder what the attraction of the caller and manager were that they had the need for a secret room. Did customers think they’d get the numbers called for them to win? Was their minor celebrity status (in the club at least) enough to woo the ladies? Who knows, and as these were different times, it’s hard to picture those sort of shenanigans going on in one of your modern mega clubs. I suppose there could be a spare broom cupboard in action somewhere across the country…
