Showbiz giant's vintage memories of The Vine
When a load of police officers rolled up at a top 1970s Shropshire nightspot one Saturday night, they were not coming to enjoy the disco.
"All hell broke loose," remembers Sam Shrouder, who as "St Sam" was the disc jockey at The Vine in Newport.
"Initially I assumed that there must be an escaped murderer in the building. But no, it was a police raid on The Vine Club.
"They wanted me to tell the punters to stay still to enable the police to take their details and count them. There was no chance, as people were as uncooperative as possible. They eventually left to the boos of all the people still there.
"What was the point of all this? They had brought a coach of 50 policemen from outside the area plus a van full of dogs at great expense, to achieve what?"
The net result, he says, was a conviction for a case of drunkenness, but nevertheless the writing was on the wall. Police had long been sending in undercover officers and the climax came when they applied to revoke the club's licence. But according to Sam the management team pre-empted it by selling up two days before the case came up - although a contemporary newspaper report more prosaically says the club was taken over.
Sam, who went on to be one of the leading lights in the Apollo theatre empire, as chief executive of Apollo Leisure rubbing shoulders with stars and royalty, has now written his autobiography, called "Play It Again... Sam."
He had been working at Aberdeen's ABC Bowl when he got a phone call from mates Dennis Mountford and Terry Harrison to say they had found a venue that they could run together - a night club in Newport.
