OK I know I am a really sad old git but this place is a tomb of memories for me.

Has she finally lost the plot completely I hear you cry? Nope. How can it be that an Ask pizza place can be a tomb of memories for me?

Well, it’s simple. Believe it or not, this is the greatest music venue London has ever seen. It was called, in a stroke of genius for its simplicity ‘The Venue’ and I don’t know how long it existed but in my heyday it was the BEST gig venue in London.

You see, it was ‘The Venue’. Home to all of the best gigs that graced the fair streets of our capital city for the 70s and 80s. I must say, I don’t know much about its history so don’t know when it started having live gigs and equally I don’t know when it finally closed its doors on the music scene.

One of its ‘best bits’ was that Mickey Pearl (Q-Tips bass player) was the stage manager and as such, me, Claz and Shaz got in free every time we wanted to go there – we’d turn up at the back door, proclaim ‘we’re on the guest list’, a sticker stating we had ‘access all areas’ was stuck to our chests and we would go on to have the time of our lives.

I have seen so many bands here, most notably for me the Q-Tips. It was at a Q-Tips gig at the Venue that I met Claz, who stuck a note into my hand saying that if I wanted to sell any of my pics of the gig, she’d like to buy some…..I had an M series Pentax, with a Vivitar ‘flowerpot’ telephoto lens stuck to the front and she was next to me in the front row.

Mick used to arrange it so that his pals all got tickets with 001 on them so there was no fighting between us as to who had 001/002/003 but we never used the tickets anyway because of our ‘access all areas’ passes.

I can remember being appalled at Mr Swing – a huge man whose act was sticking swords through his cheeks and breathing fire – it was so repulsive we sat down in front of the stage, with our backs to him and watched the horror on the faces of the audience rather than watch the act. We saw Big Country, INXS, oh boy – too many acts to remember.

The VERY best bit was one New Year’s Eve, when we’d had the great pleasure of seeing ‘Them Q-Tips’ and then going to the upstairs bar (the room through the window in the photo) for the after show party. The band were serious soul fans and there was Sam and Dave, Otis Redding and all of our heroes belting out music way into the night. At one point, I was deep in conversation with the lush Paul Young, having a serious conversation about how he wanted to use my photos of the band on the inner-sleeve of their forthcoming live album (which ended up being done on a budget ‘posthumously’ so it ended up with a plain white inner sleeve). He was looking into my eyes and holding my gaze in a VERY sexy way, when Claz, Shazbop, Mickey, Tony, Nicky et al conga’d past me to the strains of Love Train……they were clamouring us to join in but we resisted and carried on the conversation. What a way to see in what must have been 1981 or 1982 – can’t remember which.

His gaze was, for many years of my life, the ultimate one, only surpassed by the even more lush DMs...

The venue itself was knocked down later and only this, the beautiful foyer remains. There is now a Home Office building where the stage once stood. Very sad indeed.

However, they can’t knock down memories – The Venue, a pub round the back by the stage door called the Captain’s Cabin – these were places where I have memories to cherish. It’s a tomb of memories.

Last year, more of Maureen's old tat.....if quite nice old tat on that occasion!