The Flamingo, Blackpool's first gay club

A club with a past

When Basil Newby took the lease on the Flamingo in 1979, it was not a place anyone would have called glamorous. The club sat on the top floor of a building on Talbot Road, right across from Blackpool North station, and its regular trade was the town's sex workers and their customers. When the new owner turned up, some of the regulars assumed he must be running a brothel.

Newby had other plans. He kept the name, because he had been warned it was bad luck to change it, and reopened the Flamingo as Blackpool's first openly gay nightclub. Until then the town's gay life had made do with a couple of bars. Now it had a proper club, open late, with a dancefloor and a name people could whisper to their friends.

Getting the doors open

It took nerve. Newby was turned down for investment by a brewery as soon as it heard the plan, and he felt he had to keep his sexuality quiet in front of the licensing magistrates, at a time when a gay man could be judged an "improper person" to run licensed premises. The money came from the sale of his Chapel Street shop and help from his father.

The first weeks were hesitant. Faces appeared at the windows as passers-by tried to work out what kind of place it was. Within a couple of years, though, the queues outside were four deep.

What it was like

The Flamingo's great strength was that it was never only for one crowd. Gay men and lesbians danced alongside straight locals who simply liked the music and the atmosphere, and visitors came from all over the country, many of them arriving at the station across the road and walking straight in. Over time the club spread through more of the building and could hold up to 2,000 people.

Women who went there as young clubbers have remembered the Flamingo and the Flying Handbag as places that felt safe, which was not something every Blackpool nightclub could claim. Photographs taken between 1991 and 1995 show a scene the photographer remembered simply as party time, with everyone from pretty young fashionable things to the traditional leather-clad and dungaree-wearing regulars. A selection of those pictures was shown outside the Grundy Art Gallery in 2022, and they are some of the best visual records of the club in its prime.

The stage was a big part of the draw. Over the years the Flamingo hosted Grace Jones, Divine, Lily Savage and an early Take That, along with many of the biggest dance and pop names of the 1980s and 1990s. Newby later said the Flamingo was the love of his life, and that the club would always be the place where it all began.

The Flying Handbag downstairs

Newby later bought the ground floor of the same building, where a pub called the King's Arms became the Flying Handbag. The two venues were linked by internal doors, and the Handbag worked as the quieter, chattier half of the complex, a place to catch your breath before heading back upstairs. Together they made the station end of Talbot Road the centre of the scene.

Hard years

Not everyone welcomed the club. In the 1970s, Newby has said, flying a gay flag in Blackpool would have got your windows smashed, and the mood did not lift quickly. During the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s, engineers refused to come in and repair the Flamingo's boiler because they were frightened of catching the virus. The club kept going through all of it, and for many people it was the one place in town where they could be themselves.

Compulsory purchase and the move to Queen Street

In the early 2000s Blackpool Council drew up its Talbot Gateway regeneration plans for the area around North station, and the Flamingo's building was in the way. The council bought it under a compulsory purchase order. Newby called it the biggest regret of his career.

In January 2006 both venues moved. The Flying Handbag opened in a new building on the corner of Queen Street and Lord Street on 20 January, and the Flamingo followed a week later, moving into the upper floors of the old Odeon cinema on Dickson Road, the building that already housed Funny Girls. Its entrance was on Queen Street. At its new home the Flamingo spread over several floors, with multiple bars and two dancefloors, and the block became a self-contained gay village of its own.

The old Talbot Road building was demolished in 2007. A supermarket now stands on the site. One shopper, Newby likes to tell people, once realised she was standing on the old Flamingo dancefloor while doing her weekly shop. He has argued that a blue plaque should go up there, because performers including Grace Jones, Divine and Lily Savage played on that spot.

The final years

The Odeon-era Flamingo carried on as one of the town's biggest late-night venues for more than a decade. It stayed open seven nights a week, Christmas Day included. But late-night trade was changing, and the 2010s brought problems.

In July 2018, after a police review, the council suspended the Flamingo's licence for four weeks. The panel heard concerns about late serving, too few door staff and drinks being carried in from the neighbouring Buzz bar, and it asked for more CCTV and a stronger management structure. Newby, who had by then been in the trade for decades, was stung by the criticism and saw the closure as a chance to relaunch. Within a couple of months his company went into administration, partly because of a tax bill left over from the original compulsory purchase, and the licence suspension had also hit takings.

The brewer Thwaites took over the venues in January 2019, and that August Newby bought the Flamingo back along with Funny Girls and Buzz. In June 2019 the club hosted a semi-final of an international drag and cabaret contest as part of Pride weekend. By the early 2020s, however, the Flamingo no longer ran as a gay club, and it is now remembered as a closed venue. When Funny Girls was sold in 2025–26, the building's upper floors were described as a separate nightclub unit.

Why the Flamingo still matters

The Flamingo was the place where Blackpool's modern gay scene started. The bars and hotels that grew up around Talbot Road, Queen Street, Dickson Road and Lord Street followed in its wake. Newby has said there were no gay hotels in Blackpool when he opened it, and that they arrived afterwards to serve the crowds it brought.

It also proved something to the town. A gay club could be a big, successful, mainstream business that drew visitors from across Britain, and it could do so in the heart of a working-class resort. Every later step, from Funny Girls to the council's Be Who You Want To Be quarter, built on that.

Share your memories

If you danced at the Flamingo on Talbot Road or Queen Street, worked there, or have photos, flyers or membership cards tucked away, Blackpool's community heritage projects would love to hear from you. See our guide to heritage projects and archives for how to get in touch.