‘The Big O’ has become so infamous that it even features on Urban Dictionary:
“Ocean Nightclub: A club in Nottingham run by the Lord Andy Hoe. It’s the most desirable place on a Friday night and features topless students both male and female during their famous Baywatch Song.
‘I can’t leave university because I love Ocean Nightclub too much'”
So, naturally, when Her Campus got the chance to catch up with the man behind the legend, we couldn’t say no…
Firstly, tell us a fun fact about Ocean?
Using a bit of simple maths I can work out that over 1 million shirts have been swung to the Baywatch Theme in the Big O…..true story.
Do you remember the very first Friday night at Ocean, what was it like?
Yes VERY well. It was very nerve-racking. I’d actually brought the night down to Ocean from another club which had closed for a refurb (to become Oceana). I’d DJ’d the Friday student night there for about 5 years or so, building it from about 600 people a week to over 2000. I signed up an affiliation with the SU over the summer so was hopeful of success! But it was pretty much back to square one in a new venue, two other promoters/clubs had decided to go against me in competition, one even giving his night the same name…there was a fairly big promotion battle during Freshers’ Week.
This was pre-Facebook so all promotion was good old fashioned leg work, going round halls, posters, flyers under doors, basically bombarding every Fresher! But you literally got no feedback as to how many would be coming as it was also before the days of tickets for student nights! I did all the leg work myself, went round every hall, every day for that week, (and for about 8 weeks after!) I got thrown out of quite a few by wardens too! By the Friday I was absolutely knackered, and had literally no idea how busy it would be…or not. But at 9pm when we opened the doors the queue was down the street. 8 weeks later the other nights had closed down, and we were going strong with a full house every week. This was long before I owned the club though…about 5 years….I ran the night as a promoter for those 5 years before taking over in 2008.
Who parties harder, UoN or Trent?
They both party equally hard in their own ways….Trent Wednesday is probably messier, as a lot drink more before they come down, we turn away more on the door on a Wednesday for being too drunk than on a Friday for sure! Nottingham Uni are probably ‘slightly’ more fanatical about Friday, we probably have about 90% of the same people every week on a Friday (and longer queues), although Wednesday isn’t far behind probably about 75%, that may be down to sports teams playing away etc though.
What is your best memory over the years of ‘The Big O’?
As a standalone event, without question the moment I unveiled the Hoff behind the screen at the end of term last Xmas. I’d been trying to get him to come for years. Literally YEARS! I went and met him at Oceana a couple of weeks before, introduced myself and spoke to him and his nephew (who’s his PA) about Ocean and the whole Baywatch thing. The Hoff gave me his business card….(the best business card I’ve ever seen, matt black with a gold print of his face on the front, I still have it in my office!) so I emailed him the next day with links to some of the videos I’d told him about from Ocean. Literally about an hour later I got a reply from him, saying he wanted to come, so we arranged it for the last Friday of term.
I told him I wanted to keep it a surprise, so asked him not to mention or tweet about it, which he thought was a great idea. Usually venues book someone like him to attract extra customers, I just wanted him to be there and witness the madness of Ocean Baywatch! It was so Top Secret the only people that knew he was coming up until about 6pm on the night were The Hoff, his nephew, me and my wife. I didn’t even tell my General Manager at the club, or my long standing friend and fellow DJ Steve.
I slipped out of the club and picked him up from his apartment just down the road, drove him back and snook him into my office through a fire exit. Then we managed to sneak him round the balcony and behind the screen. I played the video he’d pre-recorded apologising for not being able to come in person, then raised the screen to some ridiculously patriotic American music I’d found…..and revealed the man himself standing behind it….literally the whole place went crazy. There’s a moment on the video where the screen has just come up, the place goes mad and he looks down at the crowd and just breaks into a great big grin and shakes his head in disbelief, his face just says…this is going to be GOOD. After he’d done his bit on stage, sung the song, got his top off and generally gone a bit wild we were back up in my office, he told me it was by far the best club gig he has ever done, and that he’d done thousands. It was without question amazing.
A close second was the night we did the sing-along to Let It Go, with the video & lyrics up on the big screen. I’d posted on Facebook that I was going to do it, and the feedback was generally pretty good…… Then on the night, just to see pretty much every person standing watching the screen and singing along was ridiculous….that sort of stuff just ‘shouldn’t’ be done in nightclubs. Disney Karaoke at 1am?
My other highlight is the weekly Friday Erection section. Which if you haven’t experienced it is basically about 30 minutes of me playing classic pop ballads at the end of the night, accompanied by 1000 or so drunken students singing their little hearts out to each other. To watch the passion in their faces as they sing/shout/scream to each other is priceless. Again, it’s something that doesn’t really have a place in most ‘normal’ nightclubs. Only in Ocean!
And your worst?
I don’t really have a particular ‘worst’ but the thing I probably dislike the most is the occasional time we get any violence of any sort. To be fair, it’s very rare. The odd scuffle on the dancefloor, or fall out between friends (usually over a girl) is about all we get thankfully. I like to see Ocean as a place you can come and have a good time, have a laugh, not be pretentious, and not give a toss about what anyone else thinks about your dancing, or the fact your screaming along to Enrique’s ‘Hero’ at 3.25am. There’s no place for fighting amongst the Ocean Love!
We love the fact that you interact with Ocean fans, how many messages do you get a day?
The whole Facebook thing just happened organically really, Originally I started to get messages about lost property etc, then students adding me, then the last 5 years or so it’s just gone mad. I do like it though, I get to know a lot of the students through their posts, and them me. I also keep in touch with a lot of graduates on there, pretty nice to see them all growing up, getting married and having babies, the last couple of years that’s happening a lot, makes me feel VERY old! How many messages? To be honest I’ve no idea, just LOTS. I reckon I probably get through 400-500 on a busy week at a guess! I used to answer them all pretty much as I got them, but it got to the point where I was pretty much on and off my phone or iPad all day most days. So now I leave them a few days, and do them 2-3 times a week and work back through them all. It does take hours though. I can go to my office computer at home on a Friday afternoon at 2pm thinking I’ll crash through them all in no time…and I’m still sat there at 7pm. Drives my wife mad….I think she thinks I’m just up there Facebook stalking all day, so sometimes I sit and do them in the kitchen, just so she gets to hear the little noise every time a new message comes in, and she knows I’m actually doing ‘work’.
And what’s been the strangest?
I’ve had a lot of strange messages to be fair, very often when people send them at 4 and 5 in the morning after a night out. Then there’s the usually obvious ‘Frape’ messages, telling me that the club is either ‘the best club they’ve ever been to’ or a shit hole….(to be fair it’s probably a bit of both!) or that I’m either a wanker or a legend, and that they want to either kill me or marry me! My favourite strange request though was the guy recently who asked if I could send a card to a couple who were getting married who met in Ocean about 7 or 8 years previously….so I went one better and sent a framed square of the ‘old’ carpet, which obviously they’d met on. They then posted a photo of themselves on the wedding day in full attire, holding up the framed skanky old carpet.
What’s the most shocking thing you’ve seen on a Friday night?
Probably the guy & girl who were getting a little bit amorous up on the balcony a couple of weeks ago, thinking no one downstairs could see them, except pretty much the whole downstairs can see ‘that’ corner. After much kissing and groping (standard in almost every nightclub) the girl stepped over the line and decided she was going to ‘pleasure’ said gent using only her mouth….so we very quickly put a stop to it and suggested they should go home if they were at that stage of the evening. We have no problem with people having a cheeky snog etc…but that was definitely over the line of decency and acceptability!
Any other juicy stories to tell us?
Far too many! Every other week there’s a story to tell, usually my wife gets them about lunchtime when I roll out of bed, but my favourites also tend to get a (usually sarcastic) post on Facebook like some form of public shaming. One day I’ll go back through them all and write a book!
Finally, do you have any more sneaky surprises lined up that we should watch out for?
Not at the minute, although I wouldn’t tell you if I did, remember how Top Secret I was about the Hoff?
All photos courtesy of Andy Hoe.