MY SHOUT ... with Ivor Thurston
Your humble correspondent and the Valley pub now known as The Tempo Hotel go way back. As a young man of the world who thought he had seen most things, it came as quite a shock some Sunday afternoons way back when the place was called the Hacienda, when I could never understand why such a handsome-looking woman, albeit rather a tall one, was standing beside me at the urinal.
You saw some funny things at the Hacienda. Later as a member of the fourth estate plying my trade at the nearby and now defunct Sunday Sun and Daily Sun newspapers, I and the current Mrs Thurston enjoyed many afternoons at the downstairs bar at what had then become the Dooleys Hotel, inbetween subbing stories, enjoying the music of a great Brissie band called Pop Properly. How they never made it to the big time has always been a mystery. Lovely, lovely chaps. I wonder if any of them are still alive.
In fact it was in that very bar, that some readers might remember had a rather open feel to it with lattice work fronting McLachlan Street, that a dear friend had taken me for a quite drink the afternoon of the day my mother died. He wanted to get me away from the sad subject of death for just a short while, and I was grateful to him for that. I don’t think I had even finished my first Pimms Dakota with citrus peel when an out-of-control car coming down McLachlan hit a cyclist and pushed him through the front glass doors of the shop on the opposite corner of Brunswick Street. The ambulance came ... and stayed, and my friend, trying to be helpful, said something like “They’re not rushing him to hospital so he must be alright.”
We found out later that there was certainly nothing the ambos could do for the poor bugger. My dear ma died in her home, more or less of old age, and went entirely the way she wanted to go. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was also at Dooleys that we journos all gathered to drown our sorrows when the Daily and then Sunday Suns set for the last time. A sub-editor mate of mine and I got tangled up somehow giving each other a teary farewell hug, and we fell to the floor in what was then Tom’s Bar.
In a flash, the lovely Mrs Tom, Jan Dooley, was hovering above us warning that we’d have to leave if we “didn’t behave ourselves”. Personally, I thought with all the money we’d spend there over the years as journos, and given the circumstances of the night, we would have been entitled to take the pub with us when we finally left. That was Dooleys. Tom and Jan have long moved on, as has the Patrick’s Day march, and in recent times the pub became the Valley Hotel – its original name by the way – when it was run by the gaming-oriented Lassiters.
But now I am delighted to say that the new owner is one of my oldest and dearest friends Steve Hammond. Steve’s and my missus’s families hail from just about the same county in the Pommy part of Ireland, but that’s by the by. Aficionados of hotel purchases and mega makeovers will know that Steve, originally a property developer, has been in pubs in a big way for some years now, and his past acquisitions have included the Transcontinental, the LA up at Caxton and probably the jewel of them all, the Regatta. His company still owns the Chalk Hotel at South Brisbane, and many of us know the amazing place that became from the shell of the then Railway Hotel.
So would it be a safe bet that something big and rather spectacular is going to take place at the Tempo Hotel? Most likely, but at the moment he’s happy to make moderate changes as he refurbishes the main bar upstairs, renamed the Main Event, and that downstairs bar of Pop Properly fame that I mentioned before, that has become the Stage Door.
The good news for music lovers is that the Tempo Hotel will once again become a major live music venue with something for most musical tastes, while still catering for all the pub things that regular day patrons need – like cold beer and good, cheap tucker. “We want to keep a traditional pub in the Valley because there are really not that many pubs left,” he told me.
But live music will be the key with Steve promising that the venue will become a “one-stop spot for live music”. “My focus has always been simple. Everyone can have a drink at home; they must have a reason to come to a pub.” He plans to build up the pub’s live music reputation over the next 18 months, with work to be done on the main rooms. “It’s got some fantastic rooms for live music. We’ll change it so it’s workable. Watch this space,” he said.
So why the Tempo? It turns out that Steve’s father and a partner had a venue just outside Belfast in their 20s called the Tempo Ballroom. Had some big-name entertainers through its doors too, as you do. On a family trip back home, Steve made some inquiries into the whereabouts of the stained glass panel bearing the pub’s name. He’s entitled to take it as a lucky omen that he found the whole shebang still more or less in one piece but discarded and virtually forgotten behind a stained-glass business in the village. It’s been reframed and repaired, and is on its way to Australia, where it will take pride and place in some part of the Tempo Hotel.
