Tales From The Bar

I am fortunate enough to have a job behind the bar at a nightclub in Leeds town centre. You will most likely have been to this club, probably when you were a fresher and looking to get as drunk as humanly possible.

This club also hosts one of the most popular ‘local’ weekday nights, when the fake tan gorillas move on force out of Castleford and Wakefield descend on Leeds to get obliterated and fight. So how do these nights compare? Is it the students or the locals who are intolerable to serve?

A healthy dose of vitamin D

Let’s start with a couple of clichés. Everyone thinks that students are cheap cunts who don’t spend any money. This is true. Some students will baulk at the outrageous price of 80p for a Sambuca, and then complain that it isn’t filled up enough. No double vodka measure is big enough for these cheap bastards. This tends to be especially true, naturally, for Met students.

Of course, every now and then you’ll get some chief in his best All Saints gear flashing his daddy’s American Express and buying bottles of Grey Goose. This Charles Morris type will then proceed to give its contents away to girls and then carry around the empty bottle all night, a type of Chelsea-esque peacocking technique seemingly perfect for picking up money grabbing bachelorettes.

Students seem to hold the idea that if they go out on a local night they WILL get beaten up. This is also largely true. Locals on a local night get on just fine with each other. They seem to understand each other, like a school of dim-witted fish swimming about aimlessly.

It is only when you throw in a posh, brash uni student as bait that they seem to be driven into a blood frenzy. Nothing incites rage in your typical Yorkshire gym monkey more than an overly drunk student trying to steal his women. These locals are very territorial you see.

Locals also seem to prefer their narcotics. It is common to see men with their bottom jaws jutting out like cash registers, reaching for the lasers and sipping on glasses of water. At least they’re friendly, which can’t be said for a lot of the groups of “lads” from Devonshire.

Getcha gurn on

Overall, despite being a student I’ve got to say I prefer the local nights. I get more tips, will have better chat with the customers and not be shouted at by an aggressive posh girl for getting a Cherry VK instead of a Tropical. I don’t have to deal with pompous Voodoo promoters or a group of freshman popping their club cherries. I don’t love the locals, but they sure as hell don’t get on our nerves as much as students!