The Benefits of Membership

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

● 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 newsletter, Resign!, reporting on the Club’s activities, detailing forthcoming events and carrying articles of interest to Members, usually including a written version of the previous month’s talk—see below. For back copies see the online archive. (You’ll notice that early editions were called simply The New Sheridan Club Newsletter; the modern title comes from a running gag within the Club, wherein Members are constantly threatening to resign or demanding the resignation of others.)

Until April 2022 Resign! was monthly, but Clayton Hartley, who had edited it for some 15 years, sought to hand over the reins. The new editor is Oliver Lane whose plan is for it to appear three times a year, in broadsheet format, as a sort of Proceedings of the New Sheridan Club, while a new monthly email newsletter will cover the essentials of important news and forthcoming events. Oliver even proposes to produce a printed version for those who would like one (for an extra fee of £10 a year). To discuss this, or to get involved in helping to produce the magazine, email resign@newsheridanclub.co.uk.

● 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, usually a lecture on something nicely obscure, but alternatively it might a musical performance, or perhaps a demonstration of some arcane and largely useless skill. Members are encouraged to do a Turn (no pressure, though) and some are repeat offenders. The entertainment may sometimes come from a guest speaker or performer.  

● Preferential access to other Club events: We run a vigorous a programme of parties, 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 meetings. Our twice-yearly big parties are the talk of London (well, isolated pockets of London) and so far we have been able to keep entrance free for Members. We also arrange such things as film nights, picnics, pub quizzes, excursions and get-togethers with other organisations.

● 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.  

We have also branched out into Club Scarves, fashioned from stout wool in three lengthwise stripes, black, red and silver. The ordering of these is handled by Club Member Charles Henry Wolfenbloode: the last batch cost £36 each including UK delivery (£40 for an EU address, £43 for USA or Canada). Charles can also handmake mini-scarves for toddlers at a price of £8 including UK postage. Get in touch if this would interest you.

For Her Majesty the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 we decided to make our own commemorative mugs. As we are aware that not everyone in the Club is a royalist, our hand-drawn silk-screened mugs are playful rather than po-facedly monarchist, channelling both Eric Ravilious and perhaps Ronald Searle. The mugs were given free to all Members—we still have a handful left if you fancy one, though if you would like us to mail it to you there will be a delivery cost (£3 within the UK, more overseas).

There was even official, limited-edition New Sheridan Club rock (the confectionary, not just pieces of shale). We had this made up for our "Kiss Me Quick!" party, a celebration of the great British seaside holiday. In keeping with tradition it was peppermint flavoured and had "New Sheridan Club" written through it (see photograph below). The silver stripe was even metallic. Only a hundred sticks were ever made and I'm afraid they have all gone, but I'm going to leave the picture up because I was quite pleased with them…