Have any of you lot ever been in a late night establishment? People do not even drink in them anymore. They get tanked up at home with supermarket deals and then the venues have to deal with it afterwards.

Believe me Dally, and I spent the 70s and 80s in some of the roughest of rough pubs in Newcastle and Whitley Bay - bouncers on pub doorways were unheard of, some of the clientele of The Haymarket would have given any bouncer a good knuckle sandwich if he suggested they couldn't pass with trainers on.

And the strange thing these days is - the pubs without bouncers are generally the ones where there is never any trouble.

I have been fairly familiar (cough) with Leeds pubs for a number of decades and I can't recall one with a bouncer on the door until, at the earliest, the very late 80's or maybe even 1990's.
I also worked in Newcastle in the mid 80's and I don't recall bouncers on pub doors then either.
(Not even in the genteel surroundings of Gateshead and Felling, as Mr Chicken will, I'm sure, agree )

Clubs, on the other hand, ah well ... different story.

On Manchester, I cannot comment with accuracy, as I didn't get a passport until my mid-thirties.

Ah Felling and my days inside the Felling Cosa Nostra, the days when anything could be "got" for you and available for delivery in the tap room of The Vic the following evening.

Those were the days

And the idea that The Vic should need a bouncer for its clientele is hilarious, you could get your dental arrangements re-arranged in there just "because" and were expected to say thank you afterwards - good job I was a personal friend of the Gibsons or I may not have kept my boyish good looks all these years...

Really? How often do you see such disaster zones, on a weekly basis?

Yup from both sides of the counter too.