Change Is - Bath Lane

Several clubs occupied a building on Bath Lane over the decades but none were as weird as Change Is, opened by local hypnotist Romark in 1969.His psychedelic vision included moving floors and a hallucinogenic light show. "Chicks" were admitted for ten-bob and "Fanciers" for a quid, and according to the adverts, "Shades Must Be Worn". The club was bankrolled by celeb Bob Monkhouse, who ploughed all his TV earnings into this money pit and even worked behind the bar. On the brink of bankruptcy, he claimed that Romark had hypnotised him.

There were plenty of changes in the following years. It reopened in the 1970s as a discotheque called Bloomers, and a gay club called The Casablanca briefly relocated there from the Haymarket in the Eighties. It attempted to move upmarket as the members' club Hobo, and then slid spectacularly down market as the Speakeasy, tempting in the punters with cheap drinks, strippers, and anything else deemed necessary to keep the place going. The building was demolished in the 1990s.