Being stood up but a cigarette held the key to meeting another girl - the dating scene at Rugby's old Granada

You have a date for half past eight tonight. Some distant bell starts chiming nine… girl don’t come.

Remember that tune? Yes, of course you do. It was back in 1964 and singer Sandie Shaw was not only riding high in the charts with her second single, but also appearing on television shows such as Ready, Steady, Go!

At one stage, it seemed that she was on the telly all the time, standing in those shoeless feet of hers, and belting out the latest number in that trademark thin, reedy voice.

Meanwhile, back in Rugby, this tune had become the soundtrack of my young life. How I waited. And then waited some more, either outside the Granada Cinema or leaning on the railings around Rugby Clocktower.

But girl don’t come…

I suppose this was the case for more people than is generally admitted. You arrange a date, and the other person agrees. On the day of the assignation, you would wash, soak your whole head in some disgusting aftershave which stung like hell if it came into contact with a facial spot, put your best togs on, and then head for the designated meeting place.

But girl don’t come…

Whenever I think of the Granada and those cold, grey granite steps, I recall the times I was stood up. It’s the same with Rugby Clocktower.

The Granada was demolished a few years ago, but the Clocktower is still standing, and therefore serves as a reminder.

But girl don’t come…

It must have been a bad patch I was going through. Well, it was the only patch, if the truth be told. Aged 15 or 16, I had impossibly exaggerated expectations about dating girls.

You’d go to the Granada on a Saturday night, see Sean Connery in Dr No or Doris Day in Move over Darling and you’d think to yourself – yes, this is how it is. I want a date. Now!

I will be Churchover’s answer to James Bond or, failing that, Rugby’s response to James Garner, Doris’ main squeeze in the latter film.

But girl don’t come…

Maybe it was the spots. Yes, I can understand that. Perhaps I should try to date a spotty girl. That might work. But you never see spotty love interest in films, do you? I should have realised.

The worst thing about being stood up was not just about being rebuffed.

There were other considerations, too. First, there was the waste of an evening.

You might have been waiting for half an hour, kidding yourself that she’d missed the bus, her bike had suffered a puncture, or that there had been an emergency, such as a cat eating her pet hamster alive as it played on the living room carpet.

But sooner or later, the grim reality would have sunk in. You’re being dumped, old son.

A distant bell chimes eight o’clock. The cinema goers have long filed into the Granada, and even if she does eventually turn up, you’ve missed half the film already. So it’s time for a reality check.

And yes, you’ve guessed… girl don’t come.

Like many of Rugby’s young people during the 1960s, the Granada was the place to be with your latest flame. That’s if there was a ‘latest’ – for some of us, just the faintest flicker of light might be something.

Not so long ago, I was talking to a former work colleague of mine who, as it happened, is from Rugby. I merrily described how the cinema was not only a place for young people to gather on the pretext of watching a film, but also how lads like me might also ‘meet’ girls already inside.

Suddenly, I felt the cold stare of disapproval. What? You picked up girls in the Granada?! Why, yes. You’d sit behind them down at the front, offer a Gold Leaf, and then – if accepted – you’d vault over the seats and join them.

Oh dear. How do you explain to a younger person in this age of Woke that back in the 1960s, such encounters were entirely innocent, it being a time much less censorious than the present?

Mind you, my friend Mick Lucas and I were once banned for doing precisely this. Not only that, but manager Charlie Field found out my address, and wrote a letter of complaint to my father. Boom.

But I was not alone. For those were the games that Rugby youngsters often played back then, and I daresay there will be some couples now celebrating decades of married life, who will have met in the Granada.

Or even outside, waiting on those grey, granite steps that could so often prove to be cold as well, especially if your date for the night had decided to wash her hair instead of meeting you.

Oh yes. As Sandie Shaw once observed:

You’ve been stood up

Tears fill your eyes oh whoa

You hurt inside

You wanna die oh whoa.

John Phillpott writes about the Granada in his books Beef Cubes and Burdock and Go and Make the Tea, Boy! both available from booksellers and on the internet.