PROTEST!!!
Ok, so it was a club, not a pub, but this is my proudest ever moment in a drinking establishment...

When I first arrived at University, I was thrilled to see that the Union nightclub was actually really rather good. I've seen many others which appear to just be a space in the Union building where someone's jerry-rigged a couple of lights and speakers, but not this one. No, this was a proper three-floor, bloody good quality club (despite being full of students).

At the start of my first year, every Tuesday was rock night. This involved all three floors being open, great music, live bands, the works. Then, throughout the year, bit by bit it began closing down. First the bands stopped appearing. Then the top floor shut. Then the basement floor (the big, proper dance-floor) shut, leaving only the middle open.

Now, in fairness, it had been waning in popularity and presumably it was not economically viable to keep it as it had once been. But it was damn annoying.

Finally, the end of the year came around, and EVERYONE who had ever been piled into the one little floor that was left open, for a big goodbye rock-out. The place was absolutely rammed. People were going nuts. Everyone was having the time of their lives...

... when the sound cut out. Mid-song. And the flourescent 'bugger off home now' lights came on. An hour early.

Everyone screamed in animalistic outrage, and turned to the DJs, though it soon became clear that they had no warning.

It was the bastard management. They'd been systematically stripping down my favourite night of the week, and now they were denying us our final hour. Well I wasn't going to take it! Not any more! I was going to show them what I was made of!

I sat down.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I did this more as a joke than anything else. But then my mates sat down. And then the guys next to us... and next to them...

And before you knew it there were hundreds of us. We were chanting, singing, ripping posters off the walls (using the ones advertising it open til 2am as placards). It even got to the point where I was sat on the DJ desk leading the chanting: "Fascists! 2am! Fascists! 2am!"

Fascists? Really??? Oh well...

But we obviously did something right, as they eventually relented and let us have one last song! Result!

Four years as a student and that's the only protest I ever took part in.

Oh, somehow I not only avoided getting banned, but the following couple of years the management went out of their way to help when my band arranged live music nights. I often wonder what they would have said if they realised who we were...
(HarryTheMole whatever's on my finger is going in your mouth, Fri 6 Feb 2009, 16:51, Reply)