Harrythedog

Used to go from 1975 until 1979, with the Doncaster & Rotherham crowd and met up with a group from Rochdale. I have got a number of photos and a cassette from the Friday night Wheel & Torch night. As i remember at that time walking around generally taking photos was frowned upon, and if someone wandered about with a cine camera, i know for certain that they would have been warned off in no uncertain manner.

I remember well hearing this for the first time on a saturday night at the Casino. I knew then that the game was up and the sooner the Casino shut the better.

I ran this event for a number of years along with Russ White & John Phillips from Doncaster. What a fantastic venue. This was a growing venue, until the local residents complained about the noise, and the council cut the closing time down to 11.30. With people travelling from Manchester & the East Coast we viewed that the event could not continue with such an early finish. The music policy was a mix of oldies and rare underplayed oldies, which was a brave format at the time as most of the venues were playing predominantly oldies. In fact quite a few big records today were first played at the Welfare. I cant say we had any complaints about the format and the music policy was accepted and embraced by the knowledgeble crowd. The regular DJs were-John Hurst,JohnPhillips,Russ White & Neil Toplis. The guests we had over the years were top DJs such as Andy Rix-Saus-Derek Greenhoff-Bub-Chalky-Pincher twins- Mark Biknall-Rodger Banks- Gary Spencer and many others i cant remember at this present time. It was that good Rob Thomas never missed one(never paid as well). Somewher i have a video which was taken at the xmas all dayer, which was a packer. Will have to hunt this out. Fantastic memories of this fantastic venue.