#iworkedhere Cinderella Rockerfella's 1985

This is a recent picture - the club is now closed and TO LET and has some weird vinyl hoarding above the door. I worked there as a barman while I was at college which was possibly the club's heyday, or possibly it never had a heyday. This is Guildford after all.

I wasn't supposed to take any other work while I was doing my course, but I found it impossible to sustain my student lifestyle without some supplementary income. It was loud and trashy and I loved it.

We had a panic button behind the bar that would summon the bouncers who would then drag out anybody who was looking a bit shouty. One girl who worked there thought it was funny to just press the button when it was getting too quiet for her. She didn't last long. Neither did the guy who told me it was easy to make a bit of extra money by ringing rounds up low on the till and popping the difference into your tip jar. I knew this wasn't a viable strategy as my previous employer had warned me about doing it before I even started. "Just don't be tempted" she said "if you need more money, earn it. If you short change the till, we'll know because we check the sales against the stock". I didn't know whether their management information was actually that good, but I didn't want to risk it. The guy at Cindy's found out how good their stock control was because he was fired the day after he told me about his little scheme (and not because I snitched!).

I was 20 that year and we were cruel. The over-25's night was known as Grab-A-Granny (over 25!). I admit I took advantage of the generous supply of lonely older young ladies who thought scoring a young guy behind the bar was a thrill. I took me a while to get over myself. Oh dear.

The big hits of that year that I associate with that time included "You Spin Me Round" by Dead or Alive, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears but most of all "Nineteen" by Paul Hardcastle - they played that over and over and over.

At the time, the licensing laws meant that the pubs shut at 10.30 so that's when things kicked off for us. People would get hammered in the pub and then come to us, get a bit leary and get hammered by the bouncers. In the end, I found I really couldn't do a late shift there and get up for college in the morning, so in a rare show of commitment to my art, I chucked the job in and lived on chips and baked beans for the rest of term.