Hull comedian Lucy Beaumont is backing community moves to save Spiders nightclub after revealing her sadness at its closure. The TV star and stand-up comic, 43, has many fond memories of her visits to Spiders with friends in the Noughties and during her university days.
She has also discovered its fame on her travels around the globe, with people all over the world telling her of their own experiences in the Cleveland Street club – even in the middle of the Nevada desert. Now the comedian, who has made appearances on shows including The Wheel, Taskmaster, The Weakest Link and Celebrity Traitors, has told of her sorrow at its demise, hoping someone will step in and save it.
Lucy, who went to Hessle High School, before going on to Wyke Sixth Form College and later the University of Hull, said it was more like a community centre, safe space and family for the regulars.
The star, who is currently on a UK tour with her Bad at Quiz Shows Good with Weirdos show, said: “It’s really sad. Back then, Spiders was just the place you could get in underage. I probably shouldn’t say that but it was a real coming of age thing, and once you went there you were never quite the same again because it was like no other nightclub.
“And everybody there, everybody who went was pure alternative. Looking back now, in my 40s, I think it was, and probably still is now, a really safe space for young people who were alternative, and probably quite neurodiverse. The music was really eclectic, and it was for everyone.
“I went at a time where Goths were getting beaten up in the city centre. And they were brave enough to go out, and they felt like they belonged. They were all downstairs, and it was like heavy metal or goth, and then upstairs it would go real Motown and 60s, so there was something for everybody.
“I go around the world and if someone says they’ve ever gone to Hull, they know about Spiders. It really is famous, and every student, and I’m talking hundreds of thousands of people, have frequented Spiders, and it was the same. It was their introduction to going out.
“If you were alternative, you felt like you belonged somewhere. And I wasn’t into heavy metal or goth, but we used to go past it to go upstairs. But for those young people, it was really cathartic. And you could see it was almost like a healing process, being in a moshpit and really letting go. You’re talking about people that I think probably were really neurodiverse, and needed that space, and I think Spiders understood that.
“I don’t think it was just a nightclub. I think it was a lot more than that for some people. They found a family, and I think that’s the worry now of it – things have changed and young people now don’t belong to a family, a tribe anymore, like they did with music – then, you wore a uniform, and you belonged to a family, and that music shaped your social life.”
Lucy’s work has taken her all over the world and her distinctive accent frequently triggers chats with strangers about her home city – and she says Spiders has been a common conversation theme.
She recalled: “I was in Nevada and someone heard my accent and said ‘are you from Hull?’. They had a friend at Hull uni, and they’d visited them. And it was years ago, I think it was probably like in the 90s – and they’d taken them to Spiders and it changed their life. They knew all the names of the cocktails, like the Tarantula. They all had weird names, didn’t they, all named after spiders. They were all green. When you were sick, you puked up green sick. If you saw green sick, everyone knew you’d been to Spiders.”
Lucy never worked at Spiders, but has plenty of memories of spending many years as a barmaid at Piper Nightclub, the Haworth Arms and Queens. And she hopes efforts to save the venue and turn it into a community business gain traction, for the staff as well as punters.
She said: “There’s a really amazing pub near New Theatre, the Clarence and that’s really taken off. But they’ve had to put in a tremendous amount of work. But they could really learn from the Clarence, and I would definitely put my name to trying to save it, because I think it is an important venue, and a real coming of age.”
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