Its original owner was not to everyone’s taste and nor is the décor, which features a mosaic of the founder, its grouting mixed with his ashes. But fans of the late comedian Bernard Manning now have a chance to own his World Famous Embassy Club in north Manchester, which includes his grainy remains, after his son put it on the market.
Bernard Manning Junior – forever Young Bernard among the locals of the Harpurhey institution, despite pushing 55 – has decided he has had enough of running the club that his father started 55 years ago.
“I’m the wrong side of 50, my kids don’t want to take it on and so I’m hoping to pass it on to someone with fresh ideas,” he said.
The club was opened by Manning in 1959 and, in its heyday, was the place to be in north-west England for its variety shows and performances by its defiantly non-politically correct owner.
Regular shows stopped after Manning retired in 1999 and the club has since been run by his son as a functions and events venue.
After Manning died in 2007, Young Bernard added the unusual mosaic to the front but he has otherwise kept the interior the same as it was, including pictures of his father with Margaret Thatcher, the Queen, Harold Wilson and Tom Jones.
There’s also a shot of the Quarrymen, the group who became the Beatles. “Dad didn’t like ’em,” Young Bernard recalled. “Said they were no good and too loud – ‘they won’t be coming back’!
“It’s like going back into a timewarp – a really great timewarp,” he said. “I’d like to think whoever takes it on keeps at least a bit of the feel, for nostalgia’s sake. I’d be sad if they ripped it apart. I have a very sentimental attachment to the place.”
Young Bernard says the club still turns a brisk profit, despite selling a pint of bitter for just £2 and charging only £70 to rent out the main room on a Saturday night. He is keeping his options open about the venue’s future and will consider offers to buy or let the venue in full or in part.
He insists the Embassy was the inspiration for Phoenix Nights, the hit television comedy series by another Lancastrian comic, Peter Kay. “The last time my dad was in the club was the night Peter Kay performed in 1999,” said Young Bernard.
“Peter was bricking it, as they say – he was so nervous. I think that’s where he got the idea for Phoenix Nights. He came back and sat with my dad and heard all of his stories. Some of them definitely ended up in the series.”
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