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BBC Radio London
Interview with Mike Corby and
Save Lambs representative Joss Hargrave
7.30pm, 30th March 2005
Emma Jones (BBC): Lambs
closes its doors for the last time early next year. Lambs Club in
the City of London is going to be raised for a nine-storey apartment
building. It was opened by Mike Corby in 1979 and quickly became
the Capital’s premier squash club regarded by many as the Wimbledon
of the sport. Now users of the club are hoping to block the
planning application or at least to convince the developers to
include Lambs Club in its plans. Well, I’m pleased to say we are
joined on the line now by both Mike Corby and by one of the
campaigners to save Lambs Joss Hargrave. Good evening to you both.
Just to start with you Mike, just give us a bit of background to the
history of Lambs because obviously you were right there at the
beginning.
Mike Corby:
Well, I built the club. I built it in 1979, I opened it on October
6th and it was the third club that I built, having
started with London Bridge Sports Centre with 3 squash courts,
Spitalfields Sports Centre with four squash courts and I built Lambs
Club which had nine courts and it quickly became the premier club
really in Europe and perhaps in the world with three glass-backed
courts and one large championship court number 2, where we can seat
about 300 people with side galleries as well.
Emma: So, in its time as you are saying it’s
become world-renowned.
Mike: Yes, totally and utterly. We’ve held
numerous tournaments there. The British Open has been held there
for about ten or twelve years on the trot and we are holding the
British Open here again in October with rounds up to the quarter
finals and then moves onto the Royal Horticultural Society indoor
arena in Westminster with the over-age events continuing at Lambs
Club. But I’ve had almost every great player in the world. In fact,
I’ve had every great player in the world since 1979 and largely
because I too played for Great Britain number one string and so a
lot of these people are my friends.
Emma: In that case Mike, why are you selling
it?
Mike: Because if I didn’t I’d go bankrupt –
what do you suggest I should do, to all the people concerned?
Emma: It’s simply a case of that, that you
can’t afford to keep running it?
Mike: I couldn’t afford to keep running the
club, absolutely not. Squash has been dying – I was Vice President
of the World Squash Federation and I’m also President of the English
Squash Rackets Association so I’m directly involved right across the
board and I’ve kept Lambs going for a long time and, indeed, I
sponsored two British Opens at a personal cost of £80,000 each, each
time. I’ve also financed an enormous amount of players at Lambs and
people should remember all these great people who are now bickering
and yelling about bad things and of Lambs being a problem. Most of
these players are people who have never paid a penny to actually
play at the club. They all want everything for free. The only
people who have suffered is perhaps myself.
Phil (BBC joint
presenter): Mike, we will come back to you on a couple of
issues, but Joss Hargrave is someone who is appealing, well not
appealing you, but he has obviously been affected by this. Joss,
are you happy with this? Obviously you are not happy with this, but
you can’t argue with somebody saying that they could go bankrupt
because there’s no money in it.
Joss: Well I guess the first thing to say
to Mike is thanks very much for your contribution over the years. I
mean, it’s clear to everyone that actually you’ve done a tremendous
amount for the sport.
Mike: Firstly, of all the emails I’ve read on
your web-site, not one person has said thank you to me. Everybody
is saying that great Jahangir Khan and everybody else. I paid them
to play. They didn’t come and play there for fun. I paid them
£1,000 a time to play in my American Express team. People seem to
forget all this and they are going on about these people doing so
much for the game of squash but it’s the entrepreneurs and people
who build squash clubs who are the people you should be saying thank
you to. All these players who come there in fact just live off us
as parasites. It’s what we’ve done for the game, not the players,
you should be thanking me and other people like myself, not the
players who come and play for nothing.
Joss: Did I not just thank you there?
Mike: I just said that in the emails I have
read there is only one comment about me and it’s an interview with
[ ]. Not one person has said thank you. You’re the
first person who has said thank you.
Joss: That’s regrettable. I don’t think
there’s any issue there. I mean if I may speak as someone who…
Mike: [ ] as a parasite so I’m
going to be happy now.
Joss: The thing is I’m not someone that’s a
parasite I mean I pay my subscriptions, I have been a member there
for the last eight years and I’m very much speaking on behalf of all
the members who actually do use the Club on a day to day basis and
actually pay quite a lot of money to be members. Clearly, we have
enlisted the support of the big names in squash just because we need
to publicise our action here and that’s the best way to do it.
Emma: Mike, obviously you have clearly been
very influential as far as squash in this country is concerned. You
are now saying that you just simply can’t afford for Lambs Club to
stay open. However, I’ve been speaking to Joss and a couple of the
other people campaigning today and they said that if you’d just let
them know you were having problems, there are so many wealthy people
who use that Club, they would’ve bought it off you.
Joss: That’s right Emma. To be honest we
were very, very disappointed that we weren’t at all asked our
opinion on this or even given an opportunity to bid.
Mike: Can I just say, who are you Joss?
Joss: I’m a member of the Club.
Mike: How can I know every member and if they
are interested, if you don’t actually speak to me?
Joss: Well, to be fair Mike, you sold the
Club without telling anyone.
Mike: But why should I tell anyone?
Joss: Because it’s the biggest and best
squash club in the City.
Mike: Interrupts.
Joss: Can I just speak Mike - you keep
interrupting me. The point is there’s been many publicised
sell-outs of big sporting institutions across the country over the
last few years and it’s actually very common for the members to be
given an opportunity to save their club by putting in their own
hard-earned cash before the owner sells out to a developer to put up
122 flats in the middle of Islington next to the Barbican which is
the last thing that anyone needs isn’t it?
Phil: Mike, can I ask you, you said
earlier that there was no money in squash, did you mean there’s no
money in promoting squash and squash tournaments, or there’s no
money in actually facilitating opportunities for people who want to
play squash. Is there no money to be made from having members and
charging people to play squash?
Mike: No.
Phil: Why’s that the case now because…
Mike: Who am I speaking to now?
Phil: This is Phil in the studio.
Mike: The situation is this. A squash court
is 72 feet long and 22 feet wide. It is also up about 2 feet high.
In that area I can put a mezzanine floor and have two floors. On a
squash court I have two people playing for half an hour who might be
paying say a £1 each. On that same space an aerobics centre or
studio on the ground floor can take say 10, 15, 20 people and on the
gymnasium floor above I can take 10, 15, 20 people in half an hour
and each of them paying the same amount of money to join. The
[economics] just stands there for the eyes to see. It’s impossible
to make it. Unless we start charging people £20 an hour or half an
hour to play, or increasing their fees, its just economically not
strong enough or possible to make it work.
Joss: I think that’s one of the points
Mike. Actually the people who use that Club might prefer to raise
the fees a bit, but the point is we weren’t actually given an
opportunity even to know what was going on.
Mike: Well my experience Joss is that people
do not put their hands in their pockets. My experience is that they
are not interested in helping. I did go and see a number of
banks.…. If I’d been looking at it as a businessman I’d
have closed it twenty years ago. It’s very simple, if I was looking
at it as a businessman, I wouldn’t have wasted my money on
sponsoring the tournament. If I was a businessman, I wouldn’t let
every international player on my courts free.
Joss: I think that’s why we are very
disappointed Mike because we knew you could’ve sold out decades ago
and we just assumed that you never would because of your love of
squash and your position as President of the SRA and the fact that
you’ve just gone for the Presidency of the World Squash
Association. We just thought you’d never do this.
Mike: Well, first of all, it’s an assumption
alright and if in fact you assume things it’s perhaps because you
are all prepared to go for a soft and easy ride Joss. I’m not
blaming you or anybody else. All that would have been nice is
perhaps people to help me, encourage me. Do you know that all these
people who have played in my club free have never even sent me a
Christmas card. These are the difficulties I have. Why on earth do
I want to go out and speak to everybody, because I don’t believe
anybody’s going to help me. If you want to help me Joss, it would
be very nice. Call my secretary on Monday or whenever you like and
let’s have an appointment and see what we can do. I have sold it
honestly to a good company who are going to develop it because there
is need for houses to be built or flats to be built in the area. It
was a pure economical decision based on the fact that I wasn’t
taking enough money to keep my chain of clubs called The Fitness
Exchange going. It’s very, very simple.
Joss: From what I gather you’ve been paid
£4M for this Club which in our view is somewhat of a low price and
apparently this money has been ploughed into your other
investments.
Mike: No, it hasn’t. You’ve got that totally
wrong. It went to pay off my bank overdraft and if I hadn’t had
paid that I would’ve gone into receivership. What’s your advice
Joss?
Joss: I think the point is….
Mike: What’s your advice Joss, should I have
sold it or not?
Joss: I’ll come back to my original point
Mike which is that we are just disappointed that we weren’t given an
opportunity to help you out with this…
Mike: Well Joss, not half as disappointed as
I am now hearing of all these people who are suddenly coming out of
the woodwork prepared to help. That’s absolutely fantastic. Why
don’t you all come and see us and I’ll be able to go and see the
developers and maybe we can buy it back. Now if one wants to buy it
back, there’s not one word in the 3 or 4 or 5 websites save Lambs
Club ever mentioned to me. Not one of you have actually said
anything in the thing about myself. I find that rather
disappointing. It’s as if in fact I was obliged to provide you Joss
and various other people with facilities to use without any thanks
to me for me and my welfare.
Emma: Mike, you are saying at this point let’s
cut to the chase because we are coming up to 8 o’clock. Are you
saying at this point that now that you know that the squash fans are
so concerned about closing the club down that there might be a
possibility that you could change what you’ve done with the
developers already and that they might have the possibility of
saving the Club?
Mike: I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying
come and see me and I can go and see the developers and we can have
a discussion. I know them very well. They are very nice people.
Emma: What do you think will be the likelihood
of them turning it around. Or of there still being a squash club
there?
Mike: At the end of the day money talks. If
somebody can come up and raise some cash and we can do a deal with
them, provided that they are not out of pocket over money etc and
they don’t lose any money on it, they are business people and that’s
the whole reason I sold it Emma. I didn’t want to sell it. It’s
been part and parcel of my life. I’ve got a museum there – I’ve put
my whole life into that place.
Emma: Mike Corby, thank you very much for
joining us this evening. Just a last word from you Joss, just
hearing what you’ve heard from Mike tonight – does that give you any
more hope of somebody whose hoping to keep the Club alive?
Joss: Well to an extent definitely because
it’s certainly on our list of potential action points to try to
approach the developers directly or in conjunction with Mike now
that we’ve had some sort of dialogue with him. Maybe a compromise
solution is the answer in terms of getting the planning application
changed to incorporate some squash courts as well. I don’t know,
but it is interesting and we will take you up on that Mike to
actually sit down with you and I just hope it isn’t too late. One
thing before you go Emma can I just give a plug for our website
please?
Emma: Yes, of course.
Joss: It’s
www.save-lambs-squash-club.co.uk. On there, there are various
links to various press articles and also to the planning office at
Islington Council where I think we are on about 50 objections to
this already, but obviously the objections have got to be done for
proper planning reasons including loss of amenity because the loss
of a sport’s club is directly in contravention to the Islington
Council policy on sport and also with the fact that squash is coming
up to be potentially an Olympic sport by 2012 and with our own
Olympic bid, Lamb’s is absolutely crucial to that and it would
really be a travesty if it was to go. I hear what Mike’s saying and
it’s with some degree of sadness that I hear that, but we will
continue to fight this and hopefully in conjunction with Mike
himself.
Emma: Excellent. Joss, thank you very much
for joining us this evening. Joss Hargrave one of the people
campaigning to keep Lamb’s Club in the City of London alive. It’s
going to be closing early next year if plans go ahead and Mike Corby
who has been instrumental as we were saying in so much that’s been
good about squash in this country. He’s saying unfortunately it’s
just not financially viable for him to keep it alive, but there are
some very wealthy people who play squash there and they have been
saying to me today that if they had the opportunity maybe they
could’ve bought the Club off him.
Phil: John in Balham has contributed to
the whole debate: “It’s impossible to get a squash court in London
outside of regular working hours. We need more not less”. Well
you heard some good news there – there is possible salvation for
some squash at Lamb’s if the two parties can get together.
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