1960s Wakefield band Jack O Diamonds looks back at playing on TV and at the ABC Cinema

The demolition of the ABC Cinema has taken a Wakefield musician right back to the late 50s and early 60s when his band made an appearance on a TV talent show before returning to play at the Kirkgate venue.

Terry McEvoy has been best known to many people as a popular Normanton butcher over 54 years until his retirement in 2012.

But before that he was one fifth of skiffle band Jack O Diamonds playing bass alongside Terry Webster on guitar, Patti Brook on vocals, Dave ‘Brad’ Bradley also on guitar, and Phil Bonner on drums.

The band formed for a school Christmas party before playing the working men’s club circuit around the city.

After an accomplished performance auditioning for a talent show in Leeds the group landed a slot on the Carroll Levis Discovery Show in 1960.

Terry, 79, said: “It was the X-Factor of its time.

"We never got to see the TV performance because it was broadcast live. We just got the train home and had all these people the next day saying they saw it.

"They taped a microphone to my bass to make it louder on TV, which I thought was brilliant.”

A week later they made a triumphant return to Wakefield for a gig at the ABC Cinema on Kirkgate, which was then known as the Regal.

Local bands were invited to play on the Friday alongside the film to bring teeangers in for the evening show.

The band had played the Regal twice before, but after the Caroll Levis show the venue’s promoter wanted to get them back immediately as returning musical heroes for the city.

After demolition on the historic venue began just last month Terry decided to get the band back together to share some old pictures and take a new one with the Express.

On the band’s future after their last Regal gig, Terry said: “We called it a day because the guitarists and singer had a taste and wanted to go to London to make a name as popstars, while me and the drummer were about at our limit.

"We didn't have a bust-up, they just wanted to be popstars. I stayed in butchery and Phil stayed in the motor trade.”

Patti died in 2020 and Phil died last year.

In the years that followed, Patti toured the country as a solo artist, making appearances with The Shadows and The Beatles, as well as recording a cover of Cliff Richard’s The First Lesson in Love for the 1961 musical film The Young Ones.

Brad was in the group The Diamond Boys and Terry Webster was in The Rockin' Berries.

Back in the city, Wakefield’s ABC Cinema is largely rubble after opening as the Regal in 1935.

In its day the cinema could hold 1,594 guests and had a full stage 26 feet deep behind the 43 feet wide proscenium.

After it closed in the late 1990s there was 20 years of debate about what was the best thing to do with the building.

An organisation with ideas about how to regenerate old Art Deco cinemas from the era had thoughts on how the ABC could be turned into a new venue for bands, as recently as two years ago.

But ideas to regenerate the building were considered to be financially unviable and it was acquired by Wakefield Council later that year.

Permission was granted in early 2022 for its complete demolition as part of the regeneration of the Kirkgate area.

The site is now levelled with plans for the area to become a temporary green space while councillors consider designs for a new development.

It is expected new homes will be built where the cinema was.

But, finding a new venue, Terry McEvoy played in a set at Westgate Common Working Men’s Club last Friday evening that was, in part, a tribute to Jack O Diamonds.

A video is available at the top of this story.