‘Quintessentially English’ club for over-55s in Worthing has been an absolute smash

Good old-fashioned fun with old-fashioned values is what The Glamour Club offers, to help bring older people together to have a good time.
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Guests dress in their finest clothes, with dickie bow ties and feather boas all the rage.

Janice Moth, owner, launched the club in the autumn as a Saturday afternoon event between 12pm and 3pm.

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She said: “The Glamour Club has proved to be an absolute smash. It was something people wanted, they had been waiting for and it’s here to stay.”

Janice Moth, founder of The Glamour Club, and volunteers with sponsor Promedica24 and Worthing town crier Bob SmythermanJanice Moth, founder of The Glamour Club, and volunteers with sponsor Promedica24 and Worthing town crier Bob Smytherman
Janice Moth, founder of The Glamour Club, and volunteers with sponsor Promedica24 and Worthing town crier Bob Smytherman

She thought of the idea when she was sitting at Kuala Lumpur Airport in 2016, on her way back from a ten-month trip around South East Asia.

Having worked in mental health for more than ten years, she had a good understanding of how chronic loneliness can be and, reflecting on her fantastic trip and thinking about how lonely she had felt at times, decided to do something about it when she got back to the UK.

Janice said: “Our table hosts will treat you like kings and queens for the afternoon, you will be waited on hand and foot. They will chat to you and you will make new friends easily.

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“You can choose to just sit and watch the guests and table hosts dancing, or join in with the hand jiving, do the cha-cha-cha, modern jive, the waltz or your own freestyle.”

The Glamour Club is aimed at ages 55-plus but all ages are welcome. Guests are served a high tea by table hosts and a live entertainer sings favourites from the 1940s to 1960s.

Janice started with It Socks to be Lonely Sometimes, a company she set up in 2017 as a companion service, tackling loneliness head on in Worthing and the surrounding areas. She came up with the name because her son Jannick, a contemporary dancer, had told her about a piece of art on a wall in Brooklyn.

She explained: “Someone had stuck one lonely, colourful sock on the wall and as people heard about it, they added their own lost and lonely, colourful socks and the wall became a spectacular piece of colourful and meaningful art.

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“Jannick danced with one sock in an avant guard venue in London with one sock and the piece was called It Socks to be Lonely.”

The Glamour Club followed, for people who wanted a night out in the day, eating, drinking, dancing, singing and making new friends. Janice wanted it to be quintessentially English and in a beautiful venue, near bus stops.

Janice said: “I thought that this may be a fantastic prescription to cure loneliness. It’s a bit of good old-fashioned fun with old-fashioned values. It is run entirely with volunteers, who not only spoil the guests rotten but have an absolute ball themselves.”

The Glamour Club, sponsored by Promedica24, is holding an Easter Bonnet and Top Hat Ball at Ferring Village Hall on Saturday, and a Mid Summers Day Ball in The Barn at English Martyrs RC Church in Goring on Saturday, June 15. Tickets are £10.

Find The Glamour Club on Facebook, email [email protected] or telephone 07861715918 for more information.