Membership

There are three categories of Membership of the New Sheridan Club, based, in true gentleman’s club tradition, on how far away you live from the Club’s epicentre, which is London, England. The Club Regulations go into far more tedious detail about the definitions, but broadly speaking they are:

Town Membership

This is for those who live more or less in London. It costs £15 a year.

Country Membership

This is for those types who reside in the sticks or in various overseas dependencies. It costs £10 a year.

Abroad Membership

This is for those unfortunates who have to live somewhere foreign. You only have to pay £5 a year. God knows, you need all the money you can to spend on exotic drugs to numb the pain of being away from Blighty.

So what do you get in exchange for your cash? In the first instance you get an exciting Membership Pack:

• A handsome and pleasingly old-fashioned enamel lapel badge, bearing the Club’s logo. There’s a daguerrotype of one below.

• A Membership card proving you exist and are a Member.

• A fistful of NSC calling cards. These simply have the Club’s logo and web address. The idea is that you can hand them to inquisitive strangers who stop you in the street or on an omnibus (usually after closing time on a Friday night) to ask how it can be that you are so exquisitely attired and carry yourself with such élan and rakish hauteur. It happens, and the NSC calling card does the job of spreading the word without anything so risky as handing out personal details to drunken strangers.

• A copy of the Club Regulations. Fascinating reading.

Moreover, Members are also the lucky recipients of:

• A monthly e-newsletter detailing forthcoming events and other news and information of interest to Members.

• Free entry to NSC monthly meetings. These are traditionally on the first Wednesday evening of every month in a handsome wood-panelled upstairs room in a London pub. We drink booze, dress properly and chat animatedly, jabbing each other with our pipe stems for emphasis. In addition, each month there is some sort of Turn, be it a musical performance, a lecture on something nicely obscure or perhaps a demonstration of some arcane and largely useless skill. In fact all Members are expected to be willing to do a Turn, though the entertainment may sometimes come from a guest speaker or performer.

• Preferential access to other Club events. At the time of writing the Club is relatively young, but we intend to have a programme of various shindigs, bashes and beanfeasts, many of them at weekends, to make up for the fact that coves living outside Town might find it hard to make the Wednesday meeting.

• The NSC Members’ Portrait Service. If you look on the Contact page you will see the Committee Members’ official club portraits. We make this service available to other Members too—you can see the results so far on the Portraits page. There is no fee for this, though if there’s a rush you may have to wait until the Committee can give you their full attention.

The idea is to find a suitable painting that somehow represents how you see yourself, or would like to be seen; then we photograph you in a similar pose and interpolate it into the original painting using Science. Ideally find a painting or photograph into which you would like your likeness to be syringed. As long as we can get hold of a reasonably high-resolution copy of the source image then we can do the rest. And if you can’t quite think of the right picture to start with, have a chat with the Committee and perhaps we can suggest something.

• Further merchandise: additional or replacement badges are available (to Members only) at a price of £3 each, though Members are requested to respect the fact that this is a badge of Membership and we would rather you didn’t hand them out to non-Members.

You may also purchase the magnificent bespoke NSC club tie. It is all silk, has equal broad stripes of black, red and silver, with a discrete “shadow weave” NSC logo repeating along the black stripe. They are a snip at £15 (plus an extra £1 for postage if you would like them mailed to you or £2 if you live somewhere desperately foreign). If you fancy such a piece of neckwear, please contact Mr Hartley though, as with the badges, they are available to Members only.

Overseas Guests of Honour

Believe it or not we have a number of Members who don’t even live in Britain. I imagine they join up to a certain extent out of solidarity, but it is the Committee’s intention that on occasions when foreign Members do manage to make it to Blighty, and London in particular, the club will treat them as guests of honour, endeavouring to arrange entertainments for them, scattering them with garlands and composing epic poem cycles glorifying their exploits. This has so far happened a grand total of one time; and a great success it was. Sir James M. III is still finding rose petals in his hair and the poem was serialised in the Mail on Sunday.

Newsletter Contributions

Although it isn’t a requirement of Membership, Members are encouraged to submit articles, reports and observations to the monthly newsletter. We may even produce a Best Of volume after a while.

As you can see, being a paid-up Member has all kinds of enticing benefits, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll chase you away with a stick if you haven’t actually joined. In fact non-Members are very welcome at the monthly Club Nights—your first visit is free and after that there’s a footling £2 charge each time.

The New Sheridan Club is a non-profit sort of wheeze. The Committee are simply facilitators and the Club accounts are available for inspection. The money taken in fees is simply to cover costs, such as room and equipment hire, stationery, making the lapel badges, etc. If it turns out we’re taking more money than we need, then we’ll lower fees or buy all the Members something really nice.

If you rather like the sound of all this, get in touch and we can give you any further information you require, send you an application form and tell you about forthcoming events so you can come and dip your toe in the water.