On May 15th 1980, Switchboard began operating 3 nights a week. Shortly afterwards it put into operation its own training programme (training had previously been done by FRIEND). During 1980 1355 calls were taken.

From 1980 onwards, Switchboard had a coordinator who was independent of CHE and Friend. The first Switchboard coordinator was John Clarkson. In the mid 1960s John was involved as a gay teenager in one of the last trials under pre-1967 legislation. Broadcaster Ray Gosling was then a local journalist and on one occasion he visited CHE to relate how he had to report on the court case. Amongst other things, he told how bed sheets where held up for the court to inspect. John was imprisoned for his "offence".

One of John's first activities as Coordinator was to organise that year's conference for the National Association of Gay Switchboards, which was being held in Nottingham.

1981

Part II Club opens. The name originates in the fact that it took over the building previously occupied by La Chic club. The new club was large, with three bars, dance floor, restaurant and "quiet" area and was fitted out to a high standard.

Unlike previous Nottingham clubs, Part II had a very visible front man in the entertaining form of Ross Smith. For its first two years a good argument could be made for saying that Part II was the best gay club in the UK.

1982

CHE decided to become a campaigning only organisation. The decision weakened it locally and nationally. Most members immediately jumped ship and in Nottingham they headed for NOGSOG, an inelegant acronym which stood for Nottingham Gay Social Group. NOGSOG was set up to take over the social role of CHE and did so successfully for several years.

Though Chimaera, the newsletter, had died with CHE's metamorphosis, NOGSOG produced its own newsletter, which lacked Chimaera's serious articles but retained its amusing side, particularly in terms of collecting silly jokes from a variety of sources.

Switchboard introduced free accommodation files. The files could be used by people to publicise a room, flat or house they wished to rent or by those seeking lesbian and gay friendly accommodation.

Towards the end of 1982 the Evening Post inexplicably allowed Switchboard to advertise once more.

1983

Switchboard gained further independence by installing its own phone line rather than using the Nottingham CVS number. We also leapt into the forefront of high technology by buying an answerphone. The money for these came from a grant of £330 from Notts County Council - the first grant from them.

The on-going saga later to emerge as the OutHouse Project was touched on in the Nottingham Evening Post. "As part of Nottingham's Equal Opportunities Programme, gays could soon have their own council-supported day centre."

By this time, the Hearty Good Fellow had fizzled out as the main gay pub. Its very successful replacement was Gatsby's, behind the Palais. For several years it was often so packed that movement was difficult, breathing was an effort and hearing someone near to you was impossible - so people loved it.

The Bradley family ran a good pub, but as far as Switchboard was concerned, the efforts we made to get them to support us were always turned down. No sales of Gay News here; no benefits; no notices on the wall detailing what Switchboard did. We were told that they had their heterosexual lunchtime customers to consider.

The City Council elections in 1983 saw Richard McCance elected. Richard was formerly a member of CHE, GLF and Switchboard and was then involved with the Labour Campaign for Gay Rights. He did not hide his sexuality; his election stance was that of an "out" gay man. The new Labour controlled Council had a majority of one, which gave Richard some leverage on issues about which he felt strongly.

Gay News ceased publication, to be succeeded by .... Gay News. The Gay News title had been sold and the new version was an amateurish travesty which no one wanted to buy.

Colin Clews assembled a group of local people to start GEM - Gay East Midlands, which was produced entirely by volunteers.  It ran for 9 issues and for a while, after the closure of Gay News,  it seemed to be the only gay newspaper in the country.

The Pavilion club was burned down, probably by  by a disgruntled punter.The club was insured, but those running the club decided not to rebuild. The insurance money was used instead to set up the Pavilion Trust. The aims of the Pavilion Trust were to support gay individuals and organisations in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.

1984

A new phenomenon hit Nottingham. The big once-a-month one-nighter. The first Monday of every month was "The Astoria".

In the 1960s there was a relatively sedate dance hall called the Sherwood Rooms on Collin Street at the bottom of Maid Marian Way. In the 1980s this had become the Astoria (and was later to transmogrify into MGM and then Ocean). The Astoria was a very large heterosexual disco club and they had been prevailed upon to use one of their off nights for the poofters. It was a great success.

Part of the success was due to the music provided by Peter Martine, who later called his nights "Revolution". Peter is fondly known as the "Sleezemeister". Many years ago a TV programme featured "Clarence the cross-eyed lion". Peter Martine is also fondly known as Clarence.

Another acronym emerged in 1984. GLYP stood for Gay and Lesbian Young People. It was a social group intended for those under the age of 26 and continued functioning until 1999. It was founded by Ben Clarke with some help from Switchboard.

In Rugby the Tory led Council stated:

1985

Switchboard now operating 4 nights a week. We had become aware of AIDS in the early 1980s and in 1985 Switchboard was involved in helping Nottingham AIDS Information Project with its training programme. Ignorance and misinformation led many people to call us in fear. They thought that they must have AIDS because they had one of the many everyday symptoms linked with AIDS. Young people on the verge of coming out sometimes thought that AIDS spontaneously generated if you were gay. Hysterical newspapers implied if you were gay you had, or would get, AIDS and that others could catch it from being close to you. Information on AIDS and safer sex has been an important part of our work since that time.

The Council set up lesbian and gay Equal Opportunities sub-committees equivalent to those for ethnic minorities. Two part-time workers, one lesbian (Jo Fraser) and one gay man (Ben Benson), were taken on at the Equal Opportunities unit. The Tories weighed in with comments about wasting rate-payers' money while failing to acknowledge that lesbians and gay men paid rates too. There was once again discussion about opening a lesbian and gay centre as soon as possible.

Richard McCance started a local lesbian and gay freesheet first called "Gay Nottingham", then "Metrogay" and finally "Outright". At first just a double-sided A4 sheet, it eventually expanded to 16 pages with a circulation of 5000.

 Nottingham Switchboard hosted the National Association of Gay Switchboards' Conference. It included a social get-together at Part II. The next day Part II Club closed down, which left a hole in the Nottingham social scene.

Other venues half-heartedly tried to fill the Part II gap. The Casablanca was a tiny club on Greyhound Street and soon became known as the Khazi. A club in the Lace Market turned gay for a few months as did the Catacombs on Byard Lane, but both failed to catch on.

The outcome of this was that many Nottingham people realised that for the first time in their experience the gay scene was better in other cities. The traffic between Leicester and Nottingham and Birmingham and Nottingham started to go in the opposite direction.

1986

The Bradley family stepped in by opening a club on St. James' Street. It went through several name changes, getting marginally less tacky on each transformation. Club 69 ... L'Amour .... Nero's.

In December 1986 some members of GLYP joined others to protest outside the home of Staffordshire Tory Councillor Bill Brownhill. The Councillor had said that all gays should be gassed. 12 of the protestors were arrested and locked up over Christmas, but all charges were later dropped. Sometime later, one of the people arrested received compensation of £30,000 for the way she was treated by the police.

In 1986 Switchboard received a letter from Rev. A. Beeby, who claimed he had cured someone of AIDS.

There was another small step towards the elusive lesbian and gay centre. Switchboard had affiliated to what was called the Nottingham Lesbian and Gay People's Centre Cooperative Society, which later saved a lot of ink by changing its name to the OutHouse Project.

1987

Switchboard started operating on Tuesday nights, bringing us to 5 nights per week. The Gay Bikers, a nationwide group, had a secretary who lived in Nottingham. The group asked to use us as their mailing address in exchange for a yearly donation.

Switchboard was involved in a lesbian and gay exhibition in the front window of Angel Row library. The exhibition was repeatedly vandalised, though volunteers regularly replaced damaged exhibits.

The local elections brought the Tories back into power. The lesbian and gay sub-committees were immediately closed down, the Equal Opportunities Unit was reorganised and the lesbian and gay workers had to work out their notice.

The Salutation Inn made it clear that Switchboard was no longer welcome there for its monthly General Meetings. This soon worked to its advantage when they moved to the Admiral Duncan, which was then tentatively moving towards being a gay bar.

Switchboard was given a week's worth of Public Service Announcements on Central TV. We were told that the PSAs would go out sometime after 10 pm, but before midnight and we were required to have the phones staffed, rather than rely on answerphone messages.

Monday night was normal until 10 pm. Then calls stopped. The PSA was broadcast at 10.30 pm and immediately both phones started to ring. As soon as the phones were put down after a call was taken, they rang again. This continued for 90 minutes before there was a pause between calls. Calls carried on more slowly until 2 am. This was repeated the following night, except that the hangover of calls from the previous night started as soon as we began operating at 7 pm.

A Lesbian Centre was opened on October 16th within the Women's Centre on Chaucer Street.

On November 12th the first issue of The Pink Paper appeared. This was the first national lesbian and gay freesheet. Since then, others such as Boyz, Axiom, APN, and Midland Zone have appeared. Yes, they are full of advertising, but unlike the free papers pushed through our letter boxes, the editorials, articles and letters often provide good reading before they reach the waste bin or the bottom of the budgie's cage.

1988

The possibility that Section 28 might pass into law led some people on Switchboard to campaign against it. Switchboard volunteer Richard Scholey wrote letters to many Peers to try to sway the vote. This precipitated a call to Switchboard from Lord Longford, who wanted clarification on some of the points in Richard's letter.

Surely not the Beverley Sisters?

The campaign failed and Section 28 became law in 1988. A fortnight after Section 28 became law, the Nottingham Trader banned our advertisements. Whether they believed the new law applied to them or whether they just wanted to show what an upright and moral free paper they were was never made clear.

1989

Nothing at all happened in 1989

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