Started off in a hotel on Osborne Rd in '77 and then to a guest house on Fern Rd just around the corner, by '78 I was firmly ensconced in Whitley Bay

Just following on from that warehouse to pub conversion on the Quayside I've just had a look on Google Earth and its now called Flynns Bar/Diner and looks about ready for a spruce up again, you know you're getting old when projects that you worked on as a fresh faced surveyor are now being refurbished again or in some cases have been demolished

The University of Newcastle Claude Gibb Halls of Residence was the first contract I worked on when I arrived in Newcastle (a new-build), its right at the side of the motorway and the last time I drove past it was derelict That was the place where some brilliant architect had designed each floor into six roomed self contained units which were let off to all male or all female groups.

Very proper it all was and no mixed units at all, no sir, none of that sort of stuff in The Claude Gibb Hall of Residence. didn't take more than a couple of hours for all the new residents to notice that half of the units had a fire escape door that led from their bathroom to the bathroom of the unit behind, you had a 50% chance of a secret passageway through to the showers of the opposite sex.

I've just been on Google streetview to try and remember the name of the hotel in Osborne Road I used to stay in.
Can't tell because it looks like some garish bar now.

I have a fund of stories from that place.
They didn't do dinner but they did bring a trolley into the TV room at 9pm, laden with cups and saucers, tea plates, an impressive selection of angel cake, battenburg, butterfly buns, buttered currant teacakes and Soreen, and a massive aluminium teapot containing the world's most-tannic tea that could pucker your cheeks just looking at it.
The regulars, who were mostly travelling reps who all knew each other, one of whom used to bring his brown and beige tartan slippers with him, would take smooth and efficient charge of tea and cake distribution, honed by years of practice, one of them pairing-up cups to saucers, another pouring, another passing them around.
They had cake, you'd have liked that.

You always knew who half the clientele would be at breakfast time depending on what day it was but the other half varied all the time.
I remember one morning the dining room being absolutely crammed with opera singers.
They even talked operatically.

A strange place but very friendly.
Fond memories ... I can smell the bleach in the bathrooms now ....

Yes, Osbourne Road has changed an awful lot

I started off in a large white hotel up at the top of the road at £7 a night but after a few weeks my boss found me another place around the corner that he promised was a much better lodging at £4 a night (he was paying of course), it turned out to be a hostel for tramps and the very lowest of the working travelling men, men who laid tarmac or swept floors for a living, £4 got you a bed in a room that had been a much bigger room that had been divided into four with hardboard and 2x2, one week later I found The Fern Guest House which was much more civilised and run by a young woman with a penchant for Leo Sayer and far too much make-up, white face, bright red lips and the most orange hair I have ever seen, it was like being served breakfast by Coco the Clown.

As you say though, when you are a resident in a hotel you get to understand the rota of "Travelling Salesmen", I don't know if the job still exists in that format now but you didn't need a calendar to tell what date it was if Dave from Polycell was in this week

And then I moved to Whitley Bay...

I drank my first pint of Tetleys in 1961 at the tender, and under, age of 16. It was at the “Original Oak” in Headingley where the mild was kept in superb condition and as you drank, the creamy head stuck to the sides in rings all the way down the glass (sleaver of course) this was long before draught Guinness became available.

Mild was the choice of young (and old) drinkers in those days as it was cheap (one and a penny a pint – to one and three– old money!) and not too strong. I later moved on to mixed before gravitating to bitter. But without doubt Tetleys was nectar in those days.

At Headingley ground the old Bowling Club (located where the new hotel is now) also served an excellent pint of “Tets“ where most of the players also drank mild before moving up to the "Oak" on training nights.

This was from the period before “real ale” because then of course all beer was real. Apart from the likes of the disgusting (and southern!) Watneys Red Barrel.

I never really liked Duttons, Hemingways or John Smiths much but have enjoyed foreign beers when out of ‘God’s Own County’ like Adnams, Directors Bitter, and Robinsons and one or two from the west country but only really if they put a decent head on it!

Like others have said Tetleys lost its way many years ago and I became unfaithful with, among others, Youngers No3, Theakstons (and later Black Sheep), Sam Smiths and Timmy Taylors. In the more recent days of the micro breweries I like the blond bitters with a hoppy taste.

So it is RIP Joshua not forgotten but now not missed.

It did in the days of the Memphis Folk Club

You're right BR. Barry Simms the great Leeds hooker from the 1961 Championship days used to be a regular there when it was one of the best pints in Leeds.

Barry not only was a great drinker but he was also a great character.
One story goes...

In the days when pushing in the scrum were allowed and hookers could strike for the ball, in one scrum at Headingley Simmsy had flared the nostrils of the opposition hooker to win the ball. With the ball won and out the scrum broke up and the opposition hooker was heard to threaten Simmsy with some sort of violence at the next scrum.

When the time came for the next scrum down Simmsy started to limp and asked Colin Tomlinson (2nd row) if he would go into hooker for the next scrum. Well Barry went to loose forward and just as the ball was about to be put in Simmsy popped his head out and said to the ref ( Mr Clay I think) just watch this...pointing to the front row. Ref Clay bent down and watched between the front rows as the ball was put in. A loose arm with clenched fist was swung up into Tomlinsons face from the opposition front row.

So Ref Clay had no hesitation in sending off the offending hooker.

As he left the field Tomlinson was heard to say "why did he do that Barry?"

Maybe if Tetleys had created a decent lager they could have survived in their own right. Skol was terrible, and xxxx not much better. And Carlsberg is probably not the best lager in the world if you drink it in the UK.

Like previous posters have touched on, I suppose the shutdown was inevitable with the accountants looking at economies of scale now. Other examples of consolidation are Speckled Hen moved to Suffolk from oxfordshire a few years back, and Ruddles brewed in Taddy. Drinking habits have certainly changed starting with lager in the 60's/70's to WKD today. ( the WKD adverts trying to promote an alcopop as blokes drink is very confusng for me) Look how many Tetleys pubs have closed in the last 10 years due to the influx of new bars in Leeds city centre, and supermarkets offering cheap booze so people stay in more.

I used to enjoy a pint of "Mix" in the early 80's which my dad put me on to. It was half a Tetley bitter and half a Tetley mild for the benefit of people under 45. RIP "TETS"

All this talk of early drinking days took me back to those marvelous days in the early 60's when life was less complicated.

Together with 5 or 6, 16 yr old friends we had all just left school and started work the week after and had planned to make our first visit to a pub to spend some of our first weeks wages.

We had discovered this pub called the Myrtle Tavern in Meanwood that served draught cider and most importantly wasn’t so fussy about underage drinkers. Perhaps because it was a bit out of the way and needed the revenue.

Anyway we got into the habit of a session every Friday night which meant a long walk from Headingley and away from being spotted by neighbours and their like. The trick was to arrive early doors when the landlord needed the trade, be confident with a positive remark about the weather and of course to smoke a pipe!

Once inside this original ‘theatre of dreams’ we would occupy a very small “snug” where we could close the door on any disapproving looks from the locals. Here we would drink black velvets made with the excellent draught cider because as novice drinkers we had not yet acquired a pallet for beer and needed a bit of sweetness. However the taste disguised the strength and we never quite managed to drink a full round despite regular and determined practice. I never remembered the long walk back home to Headingley

We had each bought a small pipe (mine was a very small - perhaps a toy? - Sherlock homes type) in the naive hope that this would disguise our spotty, underage faces, as we entered the pub.

I remember on one occasion we were in the snug each with the customary black velvet to hand. The door was closed and through the obscure (further obscured by piper smoke no doubt) glass panel at the top of the door we observed to our horror the outline of a policeman’s helmet!

Without a word being spoken, and in a time period that could be used to define a split second, we all took out our pipes and lit up and puffed away with bellowing clouds of smoke and sulphur fumes. The door opened and after what seemed an eternity it closed again. As none of us dared look up at the open doorway I can only assume that either the amount of smoke in the small room obscured all of us from view or perhaps it was the blurred outline of the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ pipe seen through a Whitechapel ’pea souper’ that persuaded the Constable that he was not needed.

"And you tell the young uns that today and they won't believe you!"

"probably"?!

In the same vein, Pol Pot was "probably" not a terribly tolerant man.

Ah The Myrtle, I was a Bay Horse man myself.

And you'll kick yourself when I tell you this but The Woodman in Headingley was always a youth club in the 1970s as was upstairs in The Oak, I had my first illegal pint in The Oak and wore an RAF trench coat which still had some badges on it in a belief that it would make me look older, I needn't have bothered as there were kids in there getting served from the form below us at school

my first time to be served in a pub was the christmas of 1962 I was 15,and I had left school the previous Easter.I was working as an apprentice painter and decorator A,M youngs and son LTD chapel Allerton,any we were working at a tailoring factory in call lane opposite THE WHITE SWAN[MUCKY DUCK]so christmas eve we finished at lunchtime and I followed the blokes into the pub,one bloke said "good god lad you dont look 14 never mind 15"any way I managed about
2 and 1/2 pints of mild and went to the loo at the back outside ,nearly fell down the open cellar someone got hold of me and took me back in.going home I had to lock myself in the corn exchange toilet till I sobered up.
I remember the late Denis Goodwin taking over that pub a couple of years later

I remember that.
I had a pint of it at the White Cross in Guiseley ... at least I think it was there.
It was a very short-lived experiment, bitter drinkers didn't like it because it the flavour was like a lager ... and "lager" drinkers didn't like it because it wasn't ice-cold or fizzy.
Personally, I didn't mind it that much but it was a bit too light.

I can't remember what it was called either.
Unless it was actually called White Cross and I tried it somewhere else ...