From the clubhouse: The ‘secrets’ of the club committee meeting

YOU’RE in a privileged spot right now.

On the inside, in the know, walking down the corridors of power. I’m going to reveal the secrets of the club committee meeting.

Prepare to be underwhelmed.

I had a warped vision of how a club committee operated – an image borne almost entirely from a Channel 4 documentary I watched in 1994.

The Club – you can still catch it On Demand – was a fly-on-the-wall expose of Northwood, in Middlesex.

The cameras picked up everything – the fight of women members to get the vote, the hilarity of a club dinner with its million toasts and the ceremony of the annual drive-in.

What really caught my eye was a board meeting.

It was a drama-laden affair where one of the members was rounded on for…well even now I’m not quite sure and I’ve seen it about 30 times since.

What actually happened was irrelevant. It was the impact the high-powered argument had on my juvenile brain that was important.

This looks exciting, the teenage me thought to himself. I want a bit of that.

Reality hits home

As vice-captain of Sandburn Hall, on the outskirts of York, my childhood dreams have come true and I’m a fully fledged committee person.

Reality has also come home to roost. For the committee meeting is hardly the nest of intrigue you’d expect.

At our last one (and without breaking any confidences) we spent our time talking about defibrillators and a new clock.

Our head greenkeeper filled us in on the latest changes to the course and we debated ways to get the membership to stay and socialise in the sports bar after the upcoming Christmas Bottle competition.

All very important, you’ll agree, but nothing that would produce a drum roll to end an episode of EastEnders.

That’s the point, I suppose.

It’s not the political point scoring factory you might think. It’s just a group of people doing their best to run a club. That’s an ideal worth being a part of, isn’t it?