It's 10am on a Friday morning, music is playing and a keep fit class is in progress as I arrive at the Thomas Wilson club in Gateshead.
A notice board with posters about upcoming live music dates and plans for Easter catch the eye and the next impression is of lots of doors leading off a long corridor to far more rooms than you'd expect from having seen the outside. The club - full name Thomas Wilson Working Men's Club & Institute - at the top of Chowdene Bank in Low Fell has been part of the community now for more than 100 years and it is keen to mix enough of the traditional with the modern to ensure a lengthy future too.
It hasn't always had its Tardis-like interior - which includes a huge concert room, a lounge, TV room - currently decked in black and white bunting following the busy day of the Wembley final - and a long bar which leads to an outdoor beer garden. The club started out as basically a hut, with a stove in the middle, and part of the original clubhouse roof still can be seen in the concert room which was built over it, says chairman Jeffrey Humphreys who is showing me around.
