A SMALL piece of history from Huddersfield’s legendary Builders Club is looking for a good home.

Ken Clarkson, one of the committee members of the club when it was the most famous music venue in Huddersfield in the 1960s, took one of the chairs as a memento.

Now he no longer has room for it in his new bungalow.

“Here’s the chance to sit and contemplate the past in the last of the leather barrel chairs from the old club,” he says.

Remember the Builders’ Exchange Club in Wood Street?

Anyone of a certain age will and those too young can only dream of those halcyon days when folk, country, blues, jazz, rock and disco all happily cohabited together and Huddersfield had an incredibly vibrant music scene.

The club opened as a prestigious establishment for businessmen in 1889. By the 1960s membership and income were dropping and The Singing Jenny Folk Club was invited to use it as their home.

Ken was then a member of Sweet Poteen folk band. He and wife Sue became involved with running the club, which expanded into an incredible music venue.

Wishbone Ash, Thin Lizzy, Lindisfarne, Judas Priest, Mike Harding, Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, The Fureys and Planxty were among performers who appeared, as well as great local bands.

The place was frequently packed to the rafters.

Access to the club was down an alley and into a courtyard. On busy nights you banged on a door and a panel slid back and you were inspected before admittance.

Paul Simon (before he met Garfunkel) knocked on the door one night and offered to play for £25.

“Sorry, mate,” he was told. “We don’t pay anybody that sort of money.”

Anyone who wants the chair should contact Ken by email at kenclarkson46@btinternet.com

Anyone with Builders Club memories should send them to me.

Phone loss phobia, the latest curse to hit us

I HAVE just learned a new word; nomophobia.

This is the fear of being without your mobile phone and, apparently, 13m Britons suffer from it.

Poor souls.

If they lose their phone or the battery runs low or they have no credit left they are quite likely to rip off all their clothes and go running round the Marks and Spencer food hall screaming for help.

Please do not be alarmed.

Use handy products to cover their embarrassment.

For men, a bag of frozen chips would be most useful in ensuring modesty and bringing a little reality back into the male brain cell.

Have you ever heard anything so daft?

Not the frozen chips, but suffering from nomophobia?

Apparently, Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie confessed they take theirs to bed. So do millions of otherwise sane people.

Well pardon me if I find nomophobia about as unusual as ablutophobia (fear of washing) or Walloonophobia (fear of Walloons) and a whole lot more strange fears you can find on www.phobialist.com

But I come from a generation when to make a private phone call to a girlfriend meant going to the red box on the corner and feeding four old pennies into the slot.

For this modest amount you could be connected all night (and I frequently was) as long as you could ignore the rants of anyone else waiting outside who wanted to make a call.

Yes, I possess a mobile phone, which is for emergencies and is mainly switched off. If I lost it I would not be reduced to a gibbering wreck. So if you see me running around Marks and Spencer’s food hall with no clothes on it will have nothing to do with nomophobia.

And don’t forget: frozen chips. They work every time.