For one of Nottingham's smallest live music venues The Bodega certainly has a lot for the walls to whisper about, including rumours of a secret spiral staircase which is apparently hidden behind its office.
Staff are understandably a little sceptical about that one but they can say with certainty Gavin and Stacey's Mathew Horne would use the upstairs to practise while they were closed to punters.
The Burton Joyce-native is certainly not the only star to grace the 220-capacity venue's stage before finding huge success and fame, with The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, The xx, Scissor Sisters, Florence and The Machine, The 1975, The Libertines, Coldplay and Mumford and Sons all passing through during its 20 year history.
We asked the venue's promotions manager Sam Keirl to share a few of his favourite interesting nuggets about the live music venue.
- Mat Horne used to practise his comedy on our upstairs stage before we’d open
- Apparently there’s a secret spiral staircase hidden behind our office wall that goes down into a lagoon (we’re sceptical on that one…)
- London Grammar played their first set of fully-original material on our stage years ago
- Lewis Capaldi played in our downstairs bar in 2017 as part of Dot To Dot, to around 100 people
- Our first show was in November 1999 and since then we’ve hosted the likes of Coldplay, The White Stripes, Mumford & Sons and Florence + The Machine on our small stage, to name just a few
- In 2007, we changed from The Social to The Bodega
- Although we’ve been in our current form since 1999, the building was previously known as The Bodega as far back as 1915.
