The History Boy

A tale of Old York. Do read on...

Meet Neal Guppy. Owner of Guppy’s Enterprise Club which has been running since the late 60s. I first met him in the early 70s when his club was still on Walmgate and then he had to move to where it is now on Nunnery Lane.

What sort of club? Hard to categorise; music, dance, coffee bar, beer and wine, gigs, whatever… It was a place where you could go, have a great time and know that the people you met were pretty OK too. Essentially Neal and “Guppy’s” were about as indie and underground as you could get in York – then and now!

Haven’t seen him for years and happened to ride past the club and Neil was painting the door. I stopped and it was a case of “R! How are you doing? Come in, let me show you round…”

He’s 75 and still teaches jive and he’s just so much full of energy. He told me that when he was 70, he had bowel cancer and insisted on his surgery being sorted quickly so he could get back to jiving without making a “mess over all the ladies who might throw themselves at me!”.

After that, he reckoned to celebrate and bought a two-man Canadian canoe… “Give me a call R, and we can go out!”.

F***ing Guppy’s (as it was fondly known) has an awful lot to answer for. It’s where J and I met. The rest is history…