Tony Christie: The forgotten Sheffield nightclub which legendary singer says cost him his pension
A legendary singer has called opening a nightclub at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium one of his biggest financial mistakes.
Tony Christie was born in Conisbrough, Doncaster, but spent his ‘early apprenticeship’ playing in clubs around Sheffield.
The singer, who is most famous for (Is This the Way to) Amarillo, has described his years living in Sheffield, where his three children were all born and raised, as the ‘happiest’ of his life.
But one regret, he explained in an interview with the financial website This Is Money, was deciding to plough his money into a short-lived nightclub in Sheffield.
Asked whether he has a pension, he replied that he has a ‘small one’ but said: “I had to cash in my big pension after I made a mistake owning a nightclub called Christies in the grandstand of Sheffield Wednesday FC's stadium Hillsborough. My royalties are my pension really.”
Where was Christies nightclub?
Christies opened at what was the Ozzie Owl Club at Hillsborough in the late 1970s and is still remembered fondly by many of those who frequented it.
But it sadly didn’t last long, with a DJ who used to work there, and recalled Tony Christie being a great boss, describing how it closed in 1982.
Investing in his own nightclub wasn’t Tony Christie’s biggest money mistake, according to the interview with This Is Money.
That, he said, was turning down the offer to play Magaldi in the stage version of the musical Evita in 1978, due to concert commitments, having sung the role in the original 1976 album.
‘Money was so tight we used to hide from the rent man’
Speaking to This Is Money, Tony Christie described how he got his first job aged 17 in the wages department of a Rotherham steel works but earned more perfoming in clubs at the weekends than he did from his day job. He lasted 18 months there before quitting to focus on singing.
Money was tight at first, he explained. In the 1960s, when he and his wife Sue were living in a Sheffield flat with their first child, he said he could barely afford to pay his band and used to hide when the rent man visited.
That all changed in 1971 when he signed his first major deal with MCA Records and got a huge advance of £90,000 paid over three years.
He used some of that money to buy their first house, a semi in Sheffield, which he said Sue - to whom he is still happily married after 57 years - thought was Buckingham Palace.
Singer sold house to Def Leppard star
A year-and-a-half later they bought a detached six-bedroom house a couple of miles away for £30,000.
He said the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) leader Arthur Scargill wanted that house ‘but we wouldn’t sell it to him’, and in 1983, Def Leppard bassist Rick Savage bought it for cash.
Tony Christie, who in 2021 was diagnosed with dementia, is an ambassador for both Music For Dementia and Sheffield Hospitals Charity.
He described how he is managed by his son Sean, who he said ‘has been looking after me brilliantly’.
And the grandafther-of-seven, who used to have a pilot’s licence and fly to gigs and golf holidays, described his ‘biggest indulgence’ these days as his family.