Phoenix Nights (filming location)

Here I am off a main street in Farnworth, Bolton at St Gregory's Social Club where both Series One and Two of television series Phoenix Nights were filmed. It was closed up that sunny Sunday afternoon though there was a social club nearby which was open and busy. A couple of sad loser dudes stood outside watching me take photos and some could have appeared in the series. After all humour is mostly about losers, failure or people being stuck in the wrong profession.

The series were first transmitted in 2001 and 2002 and I can remember them well, both written by Neil Fitzmaurice, Peter Kay and Dave Spikey. There’d never be a southern version of Phoenix Nights as its Northern. Southern (especially cockney humour) is sharp "Flash Harry type" stuff where northern humour has a lugubrious, bleak, fatal, thwarted flavour about it, pitted with telling silences, dryness, skiving, beer, deadpan melancholy, and mothers-in-laws. Can you imagine Ben Elton writing a southern version of Phoenix Nights?

Phoenix Nights orbits the wheelchair user Brian Potter (played by Peter Kay) who fights life’s losing streaks. His first two clubs failed - The Aquarius flooded and The Neptune burned down and he tries his best to make The Phoenix Club more popular than the big rival The Banana Grove. The humour buzzes around a gallery of characters for whom most things seem to go wrong. The games room called the "Jocky Wilson Suite" sums up the ambience of the place.

Peter Kay says a third series has been written but is too busy to film it. Would it be as brill? Sometimes too much time passes for something to retain its initial magic but I’d love to see another series.

The club is on the left…

…and on the right…

Around the back…

Round the back…