Blast Off - The one great constant in my life

Blast Off was the one great constant in life from my late teens all the way up to my 30s.

No matter what else was going on in the world, the bars opening and closing, the bus fares going up and the inexplicable success of NDubz, you could always rely on Saturday night at the Civic Hall.

• Campaign to save Wolverhampton's Blast Off! gathers pace

• Go mad for it - Save Blast Off!

It's been a fiver to get in for as long as anyone can remember. And it is as much a part of Wolverhampton's heritage as Sunbeam cars, the Wolves or Fred, the old tramp who lived on the ring road.

Nowhere else could you get proper rock songs played through the giant speakers.

Nowhere else would those of a nervous disposition suddenly flee to the edge of the room to escape the mosh as everyone jumped around to Song 2 by Blur. This was the place where nights were made or ruined by the decision of a DJ to add Common People by Pulp to his playlist.

If he made the sensible decision to unleash Jarvis Cocker's anthem on the assembled crowd, he was guaranteed to drag everyone back from one of the side corridor bars or from the plush, if old, chairs dotted around the room.

Then again, for those who embodied Suede's Beautiful Ones and had managed to pull someone in the dark, there were plenty of discreet corners.

Blast Off was my spiritual home – the thing that would get me through the week in the troubled days of sixth form and the only thing I ever needed to tempt me to come home on the train from university. It could have been Armageddon outside, I'd still have caught the 535 from Codsall at 8.20pm to go to the Moon Under Water, Royal London and then Blast Off.

Eventually my friends and I were at the stage where we didn't even to ring each other to discuss the plan. The text message would just read 'Blast Off' – more of a command than an invitation – a bit like Thundercats ho!

We were safe at Blast Off. We were all the titular Creep that Radiohead would whine about. But unlike in the song, we did belong there.

Looking back on it now, it all seems a bit odd that this haven of drunken fun and Britpop was actually something put on by the council. Normally anything with the fingerprints of local government that was intended to entertain the 'yoof' was so compliant with 'health and safety' that you'd almost imagine the sale of any form of alcohol would be banned.

Blast Off was very sensible and safe without ever losing its cool. It was all about doing its own thing.

While the trendy clubs - Atlantis, The Beach etc – and where are they now? – went through the nineties insisting everyone was wearing proper trousers and shiny shoes, Blast Off had decided anything goes.

I finally packed Blast Off in when I realised the other clientele were getting so much younger than me.

And that was nothing to do with the big black-clad door men letting their standards on ID checks slip. But no-one else ever knew how to dance with a gangly wrist to Common People like me.

Apart from Jarvis himself.