A recent photograph of the Starlight Club in Little Harwood prompted Looking Back regular Eric Nolan to get in touch with his recollections of the famous old venue

Your mention (LT's Looking Back) of the Starlight Club / Unit Four Cinema at Little Harwood coincided with me coming across the attached programmes for the Oct.'70 films for Brierfield, and which mentions Blackburn would be opening soon.

Notably, the list of films just highlights how many good films were about at that time.

In it's days as a nightclub I well remember going to see Freddie Parrot-Face Davies, whom I noted had a very expensive suit on, no doubt best London-tailored, and was asking the audience for a word or topic which he would then make up a joke about. There was a lull in getting another word offered and he was chastising his audience, so I chirped up with "weightlessness" (not at all quite sure where that came from!).

Not surprisingly, he was stopped in his tracks and unable to find a joke to go with it, so he continued with his act, but kept coming to look at me (sitting on the front row at one side of the stage), and muttering "weightlessness !", which of course would then draw more laughter from the audience.

After several minutes however, he again came and stood in front of me and had a joke at last, linking weightlessness and his wallet !

Of course this got an even bigger reaction and loud applause from the audience.

At the Interval, when having a drink at the Bar with my pal, he appeared with his drink and came up to me and said "You little bu**er" - needless to say laughing as he said it.

In those days, the main acts (and often supporting acts) would swap over at the Interval and be driven to either Brierfiled or Blackburn for the second half of the show.

Of course, Freddie was well-known roundabout that time for his TV advert for Thwaites Ales, which he said with his staged lisp, as in his catch phrase "I'm thsick, thsick up to here ! ".

I also saw Bert Weedon appear there, although he was a bit wooden on stage couldn't half play the guitar (and also had a top quality suit on too) !

When it was the Starlight Cinema, I used to go to the Saturday morning free picture shows for kids, coming in on the bus from Langho with my sister. Cowboys and space films seemed to be the types we noisy kids loved best! There'd be plenty of cartoons as well.