Spotlight on… BRADFORD LIVE
Photo credit: Trafalgar Entertainment
The end of August 2025 saw the official opening of the huge, refurbished venue in Bradford, now known as Bradford Live, with a family open day to explore the venue, The Bradford Big Bash with the Limelight Orchestra on 28th and then a sold-out show of the Prat Pack on the 31st starring Bradley Walsh, Brian Conley, Shane Ritchie and Joe Pasquale, recreating the aura of music and comedy originated by the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Junior, Dean Martin and other stars of the 1950s and 60s. This long-awaited reopening is a great tribute to Bradford Council and the local community who campaigned to save the venue for so many years. It can now accommodate 3,000 people seated or 3500 standing in a vast auditorium that will fill the gap for a medium-sized live music and events venue located between Leeds and Manchester.
The History of Bradford Live
The Bradford Odeon was the third biggest cinema in the country when it was built in 1930 and the first to be purpose-built for the Talkies. It was a 3318-seater art deco cine-variety theatre which became known as the Gaumont in the 50s. The building was an iconic venue with two distinctive turrets at each end of the curved front elevation with elaborate decorative plasterwork adorning the auditorium and other areas including a grand ballroom and 200-seat restaurant. It hosted the Beatles in 1967 and the Rolling Stones twice in 1963 and 1965. In 1968, it was subdivided into a multiscreen cinema and then abandoned and closed in 2000.
After it closed in 2000, plans were drawn up to demolish the building and redevelop it as a hotel, offices, and apartments. This generated local opposition culminating in a thousand people taking part in the July 2007 protest event. The redevelopment plans were killed off, with Bradford Council buying the building back from redevelopment agency Yorkshire Forward for £1. The campaigning of local people has successfully turned this special but derelict building into a regional live entertainment venue.
Lee Craven (whose parents had their first date at the cinema) and his friends Kirsten Branston and Chris Morell worked tirelessly as volunteers to lead that campaign to reinstate the building as an entertainment venue and were instrumental in many of the design features and decisions taken in the redevelopment process.
The refurbishment eventually cost £50m with architect Tim Ronalds Architects, structural engineer Price & Myers, and main contractor RN Wooler. Not much of the originally art deco plaster work remains but they have created a large modern space for comedy and music that should serve the people of Bradford and wider Yorkshire community well. The funding was provided by West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Bradford Council, and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The venue was due to open in September 2024 as NEC Live and form part of the 2025 Bradford City of Culture but when NEC withdrew, a new operator had to be found and the Trafalgar Entertainment Group stepped in to open the venue in August 2025.
Photo credit: Thomas Gadd
PR and Communications Manager at Trafalgar Entertainment, Dave Bradbury, explained: “Bradford Live is simply stunning, and you can clearly see the love and attention to detail that has been poured into this venue. There are so many beautiful features including the glorious Ballroom with its art deco decoration, the tearoom with original ornate windows or the Boiler Room Bar – which houses the original boilers that heated the building.
“Bradford Live will help to grow the market for live entertainment in the region - complementing existing venues such as the Alhambra and St George’s Hall. We see ourselves as part of the cultural landscape for Bradford. We passionately believe that audiences deserve the very best and we’re committed to making all our venues welcoming, accessible and central to the communities they serve. We fell in love with the venue from the moment we stepped inside, and we know audiences will feel the same. We can’t wait to share Bradford Live with everyone – it belongs to the people of Bradford, and the wider region.”
The Venue Tour
We visited and toured the venue for the Prat Pack, the sold-out Gala event to celebrate the reopening, the night after Bill Bailey’s sold-out performance as part of the City of Culture programme. It was incredible to see the queues outside to get in an hour before the show with so many keen to have a look around, prompted by memories of visits to the venue when it was a cinema. There was a real sense of excitement that the venue had been restored, aided by the amazing, curved screen on the front of the building promoting the shows and, on the night, the history, as well as used as an advertising hoarding.
Once inside, they could not fail to be impressed by renovation which carefully blends old features with modern facilities in a harmonious way with subtle nods to its history. The plasterwork on the front of the Circle balcony only exists for half the span, reminding visitors of how the interior was subdivided in to separate screens and plasterwork lost to the staircase that was required. The brick work of the auditorium is left bare, but the air conditioning units have been blended in as an “art deco “ feature and even with a full house, the temperature was pleasantly cool. The legroom too is very generous allowing audiences to move to their seats without requiring the row to stand and there are good uninterrupted views from every seat of the stage, accepting that in a three thousand plus seat venue, some people are sat someway from that stage.
The Boiler bar in the basement has made a feature of four old coal burning boilers while creating a new hospitality space. The main foyers are spacious with long bars, good provision of queue management systems and an undreamed-of level of toilet provision that you are unlikely to see in any other venue in the country. The effect was that when the Act Two bell rang, most people had returned to their seats having been served and used the facilities!
Another beautifully restored feature of the building is the Ballroom with large glass windows overlooking the city and delightful pastel shades of plasterwork recreating the ambiance of the original but with modern conveniences including its own dedicated toilet facilities. The new extension houses a modern kitchen facility that can cater for diners in the Ballroom for events. The extension also houses new offices for the operational staff and a practical store for the stalls seating when it converts to a standing venue.
The Prat Pack
Of course, the packed house had come not just to peek inside the building and relive memories but also to see the star turns. The Fab Four make a big point of being friends for forty years and of appearing together in the 1993 Royal Variety show to emphasis their experience, pedigree, and longevity.
Bradley Walsh leads the show, demonstrating he is a classic entertainer in the mould of those who have gone before like Frank Sinatra, Bruce Forsyth, and Eric Morecambe with a great singing voice, good comic timing and banter, and an authentic personality that charms the crowd. The music includes classic tunes like ‘My Kind Of Town’ , ’Almost Like Being in Love’, ‘Luck Be a Lady Tonight’, ‘When You’re Smiling’, ‘One For The Road’, and a touch of Elvis with ‘The Wonder of You’. They are backed by an excellent fourteen-piece band.
Brian Conley, taking a night off from playing Doc Brown in Back to the Future in the West End, partners well with him constantly teasing about how Bradley looks and walks and delivering his own brand on anarchic slapstick comedy including fire eating and songs such as “It’s Delightful’ as well as joining the boys in a comical ‘Me and My Shadow’.
Photo credit: Thomas Gadd
Joe Pasquale adds his unique voice (“Squeaky” to his friends) to the show with his own carefully honed ridiculous routines and gags involving balloons, rubber gloves and a toilet roll attached to a leaf blower. He also shows his artiste skills with a portrait of Judy Garland painted live while telling gags and bouncing off the other three! As he said on the TV interview for the show, the whole aim is to make each other laugh on stage and it certainly looked like they were succeeding!
Shane Ritchie, having a night off from playing Alfie Moon in Eastenders, made up the foursome adding his version of ‘Mack the Knife’ and ‘Mr Bojangles’ as a well as a few of his own amusing stories.
It is good old fashioned music hall (adult) entertainment and as Bradley laments, there is “no next generation learning how to perform” like these four do, and as Brian adds wistfully “variety is not dead, but it is on life support.” Yet for three thousand people on the night and for many more on their tour earlier this year, they proved themselves great entertainers in a three-hour show.
You do not have to wait long to see three of them in pantomime with Brian in Milton Keynes in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Joe in Swansea in Aladdin, and Shane in Dick Whittington in Plymouth. You can, of course, see Bradley nearly every night somewhere on TV!
Coming Up
The initial programme announcements are full of exciting shows attracted by the scale of the venue. For comedy fans, there is Bradford Live and Laughing in October with Phil Wang, Ed Gamble and Lou Sanders and Lucy Beaumont who all impressed on the TV show Taskmaster. Followed by The Fast Show in December and Dead Ringers in January.
For music fans, three mammoth Yorkshire rock bands co-headline an exciting one-off show on 13 December as the venue plays host to Wool City Rockers featuring New Model Army, Terrorvision, and Paradise Lost. Then there’s Jingle Bells Jukebox (5-20 December), Elf the Musical, Rob Brydon and His Fabulous Band - A Festive Night of Songs and Laughter, and a sold-out gig from Kaiser Chiefs in February. For dance fans, there is The Varna Ballet Company in February and in April 2026, Diversity.
For children, there is Justin Fletcher Live in November and Bluey’s Big Play in December. And if you have never seen Slava’s Snowshow, this unique immersive experience simply has to be seen to be believed whatever your age and runs from 27-30 November.
Marketing Lead of Bradford Live, Raj Todd, told us how she felt: “Walking through the doors for the first time was quite the defining moment and the Trafalgar team are thrilled to be the new custodians of this magnificent venue. Lee Craven and the team at Bradford Live and Bradford Council have done a tremendous job transforming this wonderful building into a modern, world-class destination, whilst honouring and preserving its stunning Art Deco heritage. It has been lovingly restored and stands as a symbol of Bradford’s creativity, ambition, and cultural pride.
“We view Bradford Live as the beating heart for the city of Bradford. We know that this venue has been part of the local community for over 95 years and everyone who is local to Bradford tell us their story and what this venue means to them. There is a rich history that has been woven into the fabric of the restoration, and we are playing our part of the next chapter for Bradford Live.”
Bradford Live is an impressive story of community and council working together to save a regional venue and it will need the local community and perhaps the wider Yorkshire community to support the events there over the coming years to really succeed. It fills a gap between the small regional playhouse seating less than 1000 and the large arenas seating over 5000 for Comedy, Music and Spoken word and will be an attractive venue for any artiste to book providing the audiences turn up as they did for the opening night to create a wonderful night out. We urge you to visit this venue because as the boys sang on the night, “it’s delightful” and “when you’re smiling” the world outside seems a better place.
Nick Wayne
Nick has been involved in Producer and Venue Organisations for twenty-five years, seen over 1200 productions, visited over 160 of the UK Venues and invested in over 30 West End Productions