A North Shields cocktail bar and restaurant has become the focus of welcome attention from punters after a video showing a woman wedged upside down behind one of its sofas went viral.
TwelveTwentyFive on North Shields’ Union Quay has been making headlines across the UK since the video of Lindsay Clark being pulled out by her legs by staff after getting stuck head first behind the sofa, was posted on social media.
The incident happened mid-afternoon on Easter Sunday when Lindsay was celebrating her friend Julie Jackson’s birthday at the bar with a bottomless prosecco brunch. But instead the occasion went bottom’s up for the 40-year-old from North Shields when she ended up head first as she tried to retrieve a friend’s coat which had slipped behind the seat.
Read more: North Shields bottomless brunch goes wrong as waiters pull stuck woman out of sofa by her ankles
Lindsay’s friends were on hand to capture the moment, which has since been shared thousands of times across social media platforms and made news headlines across the country.
It’s not only put Lindsay in the spotlight, but shone a light on TwelveTwentyFive, which has seen a steady increase in footfall since news broke of the hilarious Easter Sunday brunch fiasco.
Thomas Mallinson, 20, who along with fellow staff member Will Thompson, 19, helped rescue Lindsay said: “We’ve had a lot of people coming in asking if this is the bar where it happened, what the carry on was, and what were the party doing? They’ve been asking things like ‘was it a big deal? Was she injured?' A lot of people have also thought it was a spoof, but it definitely wasn’t.”
Thomas, who has worked at TwelveTwentyFive - which opened on North Shields Fish Quay in summer 2020 - for two months, said he was in a room at the back of the bar when Will came to get him mid-afternoon on Sunday. “Will said someone had got themselves stuck behind a booth. I came out, looked over to the table and just saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind the booth.
"We were pretty busy and the whole bar was stood watching, and there were a lot of people laughing around the table We were told a jacket had gone behind the booth, she had gone to get it, leaned over, slipped, and got herself really wedged.
“It took Will and me about 10 minutes to get her out. Her friends had tried to help and they weren’t getting anywhere, so Will and I stepped in as we were sober.
"The lady was really firmly wedged. All we could do was get her by the legs and drag her out. It was the only way we could get to her. If we hadn’t been able to get her out it would have been a fire brigade job.”
Initially Thomas said he had thought “What the heck is going on here? I’ve never seen anything like it and I don’t think I will again. But it’s brought really positive attention for the bar. I reckon in future there’s going to be a lot more people wanting the brunch and to see where it happened.”
TwelveTwentyFive is the second North Shields Fish Quay bar and eatery to attract national attention in less than a year. Hollywood legend Harrison Ford was spotted dining at the Ship’s Cat in June last year during a break in filming for the fifth Indiana Jones movie, much of which was shot in the North East.
