The Batley Variety Club was a variety club

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 in Batley

Batley

Batley is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, England. It lies southeast of Bradford, southwest of Leeds and north of Dewsbury, near the M62 motorway. It has a population of 49,448 . Other nearby towns include Morley to the northeast, Ossett to the southeast...

, West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire

West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It was financed and co-founded by the late Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

 showman and businessman Peter Fleming, and James Corrigan. It had a cparity of around 1600 people, and when it opened offered cabaret and a dinner for 6s6d (six shillings and six pence

Penny (British pre-decimal coin)

The penny of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, was in circulation from the early 18th century until February 1971, Decimal Day....

). At the peak of its success, the club was said to have 300,000 members. It closed in 1974 and the contents were auctioned off. It has since reopened, however, as the "Batley Frontier Club".

The Variety Club of the 1960s was a step up from the traditional Working Mens Clubs, usually carpeted and with a meal included in the price of admission. The Batley club was fitted plush velvet benches installed in a circular "pod" that could seat five coules, with an open end facing the stage, Hundreds of these pods were arranged in tiered rows. Food was also served, typical fare being "chicken-in-a-basket

In a basket

In a basket, basket platter or basket with fries is a restaurant menu term that refers to a sandwich or other main-dish entrée that is served on top of a basket of an accompanying foodstuff, usually french fries. The "basket" is usually either made of plastic and lined with paper, or is simply a...

".

During its heyday the club staged concerts by performers including the Bee Gees

Bee Gees

The Bee Gees are a musical group that originally comprised three brothers: Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. The trio was successful for most of their 40-plus years of recording music, but they had two distinct periods of exceptional success: as a pop act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and as a...

, Shirley Bassey

Shirley Bassey

Dame Shirley Bassey, DBE , is a Welsh singer. She found fame in the late 1950s and was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century"...

, Tina Turner

Tina Turner

Tina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards and her achievements in the rock music genre have led many to call her the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the...

, Tom Jones

Tom Jones (singer)

Sir Thomas John Woodward, OBE , known by his stage name Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer.Since the mid 1960s, Jones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel – and sold over 100 million records...

, Roy Orbison

Roy Orbison

Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...

, Eartha Kitt

Eartha Kitt

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby." Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the...

, Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

, Morecambe and Wise

Morecambe and Wise

Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, usually referred to as Morecambe and Wise, or Eric and Ernie, were a British comic double act, working in variety, radio, film and most successfully in television. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984...

, Alvin Stardust

Alvin Stardust

Alvin Stardust is an English pop singer and stage actor.-Career:...

, Jim Bowen

Jim Bowen

Jim Bowen is an English stand-up comedian and TV personality. He is best known as the host of the ITV gameshow Bullseye, which he hosted between 1981 and 1995.-Early life:...

, Dusty Springfield

Dusty Springfield

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...

, Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" and "Blood Pressure", two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also borrows characters and plot elements from other Runyon stories, most notably...

, The Brotherhood of Man and The Grumbleweeds

The Grumbleweeds

The Grumbleweeds are an award winning British comedy band, performing music and comedy. They were mostly popular on radio and television in the 1980s.-Career:...

.