Joan Rivers - Ogden Nash - George Carlin - Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking TV - Groucho Marx - Aaron Russo - Trading Places 1983 - F Scott Fitzgerald - Eric Cantona - Rob the Mob 2014 - Dorian Gray 2009 - The Office US TV - Peter Markie - Ronald K Fried - Phil Berger - Prince Philip - Mark Draper - Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities TV - Adam Curtis TV - How House Music Changed the World TV - Panorama TV - Alex Jones -
I worked in clubs. You passed the hat. The hat wouldn’t come back. Joan Rivers, Comedy Legends s1e3, Sky Arts 2019
To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is. Ogden Nash, England Expects
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that ... They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that. Do you know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And do you know something – they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe ... what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people … and these are people of modest means – who continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all. George Carlin, Who Really Controls America
Working men’s clubs had been inspired by the gentlemen’s clubs. Timeshift: The Rules of Drinking, BBC 2012
The working man would go home to have his tea with his family, and then off to the club. ibid.
I sent the club a wire stating: Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. Groucho Marx, cited Groucho & Me 1959
I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it. Groucho Marx
Two cops came to see – a Captain and a Sergeant – and they said, Mr Russo, we’re sorry if you got hurt that night in the raid but we’re here to tell you if you want to keep the club open it’s going to take two thousand dollars a month ... They burnt me down. Aaron Russo, interview Alex Jones, the Electric Theatre Chicago
The Heritage Club Founded 1776 With Liberty and Justice for All: Members Only. Trading Places 1983 starring Dan Aykroyd & Eddie Murphy & Jamie Lee Curtis & Denholm Elliott & Ralph Bellamy & Don Ameche & Paul Gleason & Kristin Holby & Frank Oz et al, director John Landis
The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs. F Scott Fitzgerald
I didn’t want really to be involved in a normal soccer club. Eric Cantona
My club. My club today. Rob the Mob 2014 starring Michael Pitt & Andy Garcia & Nina Arianda & Ray Romano & Griffin Dunne & Michael Rispoli & Frank Whaley & Burt Young & Yul Vasquez & Samira Wiley & Bill Raymond & Adam Trese et al, director Raymond de Felitta, second robbery
Welcome to my little Hell Fire Club. Dorian Gray 2009 starring Ben Barnes & Colin Firth & Ben Chaplin & Rachel Hurd-Wood & Johnny Harris & Rebecca Hall & Emilia Fox & Fiona Shaw & Maryan d’Abo & Caroline Goodall et al, director Oliver Parker, Harry
Oscar, Toby and I are founding members of the Finer Things Club. The Office US s4e10: Branch Wars, Pam
Besides having sex with men, I would say the Finer Things Club is the gayest thing about me. ibid. Oscar
The Finer Things Club is the most exclusive club in this office. Naturally, it’s where I need to be. ibid. Andy
Andy: Oh, there’s an inner circle. Oh yeah.
Jim: There is no inner circle. Deangelo just prefers to delegate a few things to a few guys.
Jim only says that because he’s in the inner circle. I also say that because I am also in the inner circle. Did you get that, Ma? Your boy, Kevin Malone, is IN the inner circle! Which doesn’t exist. The Office US s7e24: Inner Circle, NBC 2011
The political infighting surrounding Brendan Ingle did not interfere with the development of the St Thomas Centre in Newman Road, Wincobank. Its full title was The St Thomas School of Boxing – now changed to the St Thomas Club for Boys and Girls ...
Come into the hall and see for yourself. There is no escaping its 1930 look, although work is constantly going on to improve facilities; a new shower here, an improved heating system there, all installed as the funds come to hand. As you enter the hall, a plain construction, the eye is immediately drawn to the posters and newspaper cuttings on the walls, the ring at the far end. One notice has been up since the opening: BOXING CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH. Punchbags are dotted all over the place, as are other pieces of training equipment. Any night of the week or at the popular Sunday morning session you will find boxers of all colours, ages and shapes, going through the time-honoured poses – but there are very few poseurs. Basic gear, basic facilities but an atmosphere beyond price. It’s alive with hope where really there should be none, and alive with music to produce the caring, friendly atmosphere typical of its founder. Peter Markie, Club with a Health Warning
Lou Stillman, the grouchy, outspoken man who owned the place – and rarely appeared there without a loaded .38-calibre pistol beneath his suit jacket – presided over his gym on the first floor by announcing through a public address system which fighters were about to spar: ‘Now in Ring 1, Rocky Graziano.’ Journalist Harold Conrad recalls that Stillman was an entertaining master of ceremonies: ‘He would do all the introducing and announcing – and he had a pretty good routine.’ Ronald K Fried, Stillman’s Gym
Stillman sold his gym in 1959. Facing the press, Stillman was less than nostalgic. ‘There’s no more tough guys around, not enough slums,’ he told The New York Times which reported the closing of Stillman’s Gym on its front page. ibid.
But the designation on the exterior – ‘Joe Frazier’s Gym’ – is a good clue that this place is no candidate for the wrecker’s ball. It is, in fact, a kind of boxing landmark, a gym where fighters have been training since 1968, when Cloverlay Inc bought the gym for him. Smokin’ Joe used it well: he became the world champion and, on retiring in 1976 (there was a one-fight comeback, a draw against Jumbo Cummings, in 1981), bought the gym from Cloverlay for $75,000. Phil Berger, The Basis of the Bloodline
Do you work in a strip club? Prince Philip to female sea cadet
I’d like to play for an Italian club, like Barcelona. Mark Draper
America’s frat boys – notorious for hard drinking and even harder partying. Bound by a secret world of rituals and life-long bonds between fraternity brothers. Its members go on to become some of the most powerful and influential people in America. But they are institutions accused of creating a culture of sexual abuse. And brutality towards its new members. Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities, BBC 2016
Thousands of college students pledge allegiance to a fraternity or sorority each year. ibid.
Elite clubs that provide accommodation for their members. ibid.
In 1962 John Aspinall opened his own gambling club, the Clermont Club in Mayfair. Stirling was one of its members. The Clermont was deliberately designed to recreate a time when Britain had been rich and powerful. The set that Aspinall gathered around him at the Clermont were like Stirling disaffected right wingers, men who felt themselves out of tune with the consensus politics of the post-war world: they included James Goldsmith, a playboy and ferocious gambler who was to become a close friend of Stirling’s; the tycoon Tiny Roland who Stirling already knew from his time in Africa; Lord Lucan, a descendant of the man who had led the Charge of the Light Brigade; and Jim Slater, a takeover tycoon and asset-stripper who ran the notorious Slater-Walker. What united all these men was a belief in decisive action: it was this they believed that made Britain great not moderate post-war governments. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set I: Who Pays Wins ***** BBC 1999
Stirling and Avery had dinner with the foreign secretary Alec Douglas Hume at White’s Club in St James’s. They proposed a plan: a group of ex-SAS men would mount an operation to fight the Egyptians but they would do it privately. ibid.