Intimate shows, forgotten club nights, electric opening shows and more: Fun facts you didn't know about Birmingham's O2 Academy and Institute

Boasting names such as Twenty One Pilots, Tom Odell, Chase & Status, Bruno Mars, Amy Winehouse, Duran Duran, Madness and more - the O2 Academy and Institute have delighted music fans with a variety of events.

But how much do you actually know about the venues themselves? Here we have compiled a collection of fun facts and quirky anecdotes about the Birmingham venues:

1. The O2 Academy hasn’t always been in its current home on Bristol St; its former location was in Dale End, when it opened in 2000 as Birmingham Academy, before relocating in 2009.

2. O2 Academy Birmingham resides on the site of The Dome Nightclub, only three steps of which now exist.

3. The launch of O2 Academy Birmingham in September 2009 was an almighty affair with four days of celebrations and an exclusive event the night before opening. Home grown talent was the order of the day, with gigs from Editors, The Streets, The Twang and Ocean Colour Scene, who also opened the Dale End venue.

4.The pre-launch event of the O2 Academy was held at the iconic Selfridges building after the shoppers had gone home. Ocean Colour Scene played an exceptional acoustic set to an excited group of fans who had won tickets to this one of a kind show. Frontman, Simon Fowler, said it ranked amongst one of the strangest places they had played.

5. Some of the fastest selling shows at the O2 Academy have been the Sex Pistols with Johnny Rotten re-joining the band for the first time in 32 years and Them Crooked Vultures, the supergroup made up of Josh Homme, Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones.

6. Two Door Cinema Club and Bombay Bicycle Club have both made their way through all the three rooms at the O2 Academy AND sold out all their shows. Impressive!

7. In May 2012 Black Sabbath played to their smallest audience in years with an intimate homecoming gig at the venue. It was the band’s first show in the city for 13 years.

8. The Digbeth Institute, now the O2 Institute, was officially opened in January 1908, where it started life as an institutional church, and boasted a cafe, reading room and various rooms for entertainment and assemblies where it hosted a number of school classes and societies, making it a vibrant epicentre of the local community.

9. The much-lauded Godskitchen, Atomic Jam and Sundissential club nights have all held residencies at the O2 Institute, which helped to make it a favourite nightlife destination for an entire generation.

10. The O2 Institute has hosted some of the biggest names in music over the years from Pink Floyd and Bauhaus to The Cure and The Cramps, who according to author Dick Porter, ‘almost blew the roof off’ during their gig in 1979.

11. The famed ‘Jug O’ Punch Folk Club’ was held at the O2 Institute on Thursday nights in the 1960s, where it became the UK’s most popular folk nights attracting the likes of Pete Seeger, Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell through its doors during its 17 year reign. The weekly event was ran by Ian Campbell, the father of Robin, Ali and Duncan Campbell of UB40 fame.

12. The exterior of the O2 Institute boasts six hugely impressive figures, which either hold a book, musical instrument or a purse and are all a mighty 1.65 metres tall. The figures were designed by John Evans of Gibbs & Canning, a company that made every statue at the Natural History Museum.