Good Luck To My Best Mate Keith

My best mate, Keith Beardmore, has gone into hospital, today, for major surgery.  All our best wishes are with him, his wife, Jayne, and their son Tom.

I first met Keith, in 1975 when we were both doing a Day Release, Business Studies course, at Cauldon College.  It was a year after the Miners had defeated Heath's Tory government, and Keith was working for the NCB, while I was already a shop steward, at Royal Doulton.  He was sitting with his mates during a break, while I was sitting on my own, reading a revolutionary journal.  It was that which was the opener for conversation, but it soon transpired that we had a shared interest in Northern Soul, and the Golden Torch.

Within just a few years from that, I was best man at his first wedding.  Not long after, his wife's grandmother, who lived on The Gower died, leaving a house that we went on holiday to.  As Keith remarked some time later, "its a wonder we don't all come down with Yellow Jack", given that it was even colder and damper than the old terraced house I grew up in.

In the 1970's, and early 80's, Keith supplied me with dozens of cassette tapes, he'd recorded of Northern Soul, and Funk, from the 20,000 or so records he had as singles or LP tracks.  After my kids were born, I missed out on going dancing for some time, other than in the house, doing dives forward rolls over the furniture.  But, when Dave Evison, started his Sunday Northern Soul show on Signal Radio, I was a regular listener, whilst Keith with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Northern Soul, was winning the weekly competitions with incessant regularity.

It wasn't long before, we were out on the floor again, going to Keith Minshull's birthday party at the Clough Hall Inn, just down the road from where I lived, where we met up with a number of other people from our past, and some from the present, like Andy Myatt, whose son was in the same class as my son at school.  Soon, we were going regularly to the Keele All-Nighters, which we did for most of the 1990's.

In the last ten years, although Keith lives half the year in Spain, we have continued to see each other most months at Moorville Hall, and kept in touch via e-mail.  So, after half a century of friendship, I know that Keith will face his current challenge head on, and come out on top.  See you soon, mate, and we'll be back "Out On The Floor".