Candlelight Club is snuffed out

END of the road... Ken Naylor sits in his office surrounded by his memories

Ken calls it a day — and warns that town’s nightlife is ‘finished’


THE flame of Oldham’s famous Candlelight Club will be snuffed out for the last time on Boxing Day, as owner Ken Naylor calls time on a career spanning more than half a century.

The man responsible for bringing top entertainers to the borough in the 1960s, and helping Oldham earn its name as the entertainment epicentre of the North-West, has finally decided to call it a day.

And he will bid a sad farewell to a colourful career which saw him bring the first strippers to town, and become embroiled in a mud-wrestling fiasco which cost him his entertainment licence — but which he won back on appeal.

Ken, who has run the town centre Candlelight Club for 45 years, blames “the establishment” for rules and regulations which he says signal the death knell for clubs far and wide.

“Nightlife in Oldham is finished,” he said. “I predict that by the end of 2009, Oldham will be a ghost-town as far as nightlife goes. I’m not naming names, but I hear on the grapevine that I will be the first of several people packing it in in the new year.”

The controversial figure has spent his life bringing the best shows of the day to the town, and he said it will be a sad day for him as he sees his empire come to an end.

“I admit I am absolutely gutted,” he said, from the cramped office he occupies at the Candlelight, where photographs featuring everyone from Bill Haley and Bob Monkhouse to Freddie Star and Billy Fury occupy every available wallspace.

“My son James has worked with me for nine years, and I would have been content to step back and let him carry on,” said Ken.

“I always had the vision that when I died, it would be his legacy — that he would still be here looking after the club which has been my life.”

He added: “Twelve months ago we were working to around 250 to 300 people on Saturday nights, now it’s less than 100.

“It’s down to a number of things, partly the credit crunch, but also to 24-hour drinking, the smoking ban, and the fact that Oldham was forever on ‘Cops with Cameras’.

“That was someone’s daft idea, which made it look like people who dared to venture into Oldham would get their head kicked in on Yorkshire Street or be thrown into the back of a police van after being arrested.

“Then there are the barriers on Yorkshire Street. If I was new coming into Oldham and turned into Yorkshire Street to see barriers and police on every corner, I would turn straight round and go home”.

Ken is urging all past customers to join him for his farewell in the Candlelight Club, in Fountain Street, on Boxing Day night.

The club will then close for a month, and reopen after renovations as a pub/restaurant with an upstairs function room, with James in charge.


What are your special memories of the Candlelight Club? Send your stories and pictures to Marina Berry, Oldham Evening Chronicle, PO Box 47, 172 Union Street, Oldham, OL1 IEQ, marking the envelope Candlelight, or e-mail marinaberry@oldham-chronicle.co.uk. Don’t forget to attach any pictures to go with your story.