MIKE DOHERTY AKA DOC

My older sister used to take me in there about '77 onwards. And I'm not sure when I stopped going, probably when it became Moriarty's. Whenever that was, that's when I stopped.

I was thirteen or fourteen, my sister was two years older than me and she knew everybody in there. She was in there all the time. The more I started to go, the less she went in. She didn't want her little brother hanging around, so she started to go to the Poly.

Come through the front door, you've got two bays. Then you've got the bar all along the left hand side with an entrance at each end. If you turned right where the accommodation door was you’d got a pinball table, then you got… not a false wall but one up to dado height with crosses on it. And then you'd got two booths, well three booths, but the middle one with the fireplace with that big picture over it. One of the staff did it. A scene with loads of characters from the pub in it. A sort of cartoon. Then at the end you'd got the stairs going down to the gents or up to the ladies. 

I worked in Shetland in ’79-'80 and I came back with shitloads of money. So I bought a Triumph Bonneville when I was eighteen. It was brilliant. I loved it. It was a great bike. I lost the number plate on a trip down to Cornwall. Mick Sparks was pillion, so I wrote WLE 226S on the back of his donkey jacket. It was on there for years. I had that bike for ages and ages, and I had another two Bonnevilles after that. I've got an old 1200 Harley that I still ride now.

We had great times on the bikes. One time we were on the M6 – I'd got the handlebars raised high – and the brake fluid pipe split. When I touched the front brake it just sprayed brake fluid. I'd got sunglasses on, but my mate Steph was on the back of the bike, this brake fluid went straight in his eyes. He was bouncing around on the back of the bike and I was yelling Pack it in! Trying to stay on.

Another time, a mate had a crash down near Wombourne. We all stopped, and there were bikes all over the road. This woman came out of her house and asked 

Is everybody OK? 

Well, we're not sure.

The ambulance is on its way.

Great, thanks.

Which means the police are coming as well. 

And suddenly everybody jumped up and started moving the bikes out the road.  

I was always in court. Speeding, no number plate, something or other… One day, as I was going into the court, the bloke who was coming out was a guy who used to work in one of the bike shops in town. We were both dressed in exactly the same clothes. Black velvet jacket, pair of jeans… our court clothes.

I'd worked bar side in Shetland so when I came back it was just the obvious thing to do.  I worked as bar staff twice in the Tavern. I remember one night behind the bar I’d got a Triumph T shirt on and caught it on something and ripped a little hole there. I've got a feeling it was Carol Burns who put her finger in and kept ripping it a bit more. At the end of the night all I’d got was like a bra top on. Every time I walked past her she ripped a bit more of it off.

At one time on a Friday and Saturday night the Angels would come in and they'd go right down to the bottom of where the pool table was and just tell everybody to go. They would literally empty the pub with one of them standing at one end and one of them standing at the other. Then they'd stand there in the middle laughing at us. Hopefully somebody on their way out’d phone from the telephone box outside, cuz this was before mobile phones.  If they hadn’t, we just had to stand there until the police arrived. It was because M&B wouldn't let them into any other pubs apart from the Giffard, so therefore they made their point by emptying the pub every Friday and Saturday night for about a month or six weeks.

It was a protest, yeah. But it was organised. They'd come in and literally say Right, all out. And anybody who was slow getting out they'd kick them. M&B didn't like the reputation of the pub, they wanted to change the clientele. They killed it literally. And they did the same to the Springhill, didn't they? They purposely didn't want that. The licensing probably had something to do with it as well, and gave M&B a hard time.

I think I did my growing up in the Tavern. I met my wife there and we've been married 33 years this year. It does hold some very fond memories, some good laughs, messing about.