Whether your era was La Parisienne, Club Indigo or Onyx, a night out at ‘the Priz’ was a rite of passage for generations of us who grew up in Folkestone.

The seafront nightclub was the heartbeat of the town’s party scene for almost three decades, but eventually the sound system fell silent and the dancefloor cleared for the final time.

Then, just months after the party was over for good, the building was hit by a suspected arson attack, eight years ago today.

My memories of the place have grown hazy with the passing of the years. This was – thankfully – an age before camera phones.

I am sure many revellers of this vintage are quite happy that the worst drunken excesses, and heinous crimes against fashion, live on only in fragmentary flashbacks and long-exaggerated anecdotes.

At the turn of the century, Folkestone was a very different place to the trendy, gentrified destination now beloved by DFLs and a staple of breathless broadsheet features exulting the arty vibes, fancy restaurants and flash new apartments.

There was nothing ‘cool’ about Folkestone, but we still managed to have some of the best nights of our young lives.

A typical Friday night would go something like this. A spot of pre-drinking at a mate’s house, then on to Spoons where the gang would assemble, before trying to round up all the various stragglers for the walk down to the Priz.

Then, for those of us not yet turned 18, the lottery of trying to get past the bouncers. More often than not, in my case at least, a forlorn hope with a baby face and a distinct lack of anything remotely resembling facial hair.

But once we’d all hit that all-important birthday, and had the ID to prove it, what a blast it was. Sticky carpets? Alcopops in a range of lurid colours and sickly-sweet flavours? A crowd that seemed to consist of just about everyone you went to school with? Yes to all of them.

Whether throwing shapes to dance tracks in the main room, or revelling in the cheesiest hits of the decades next door, it was always a top night.

In preparation for writing this nostalgic love letter to the Priz, I asked around a few of my fellow old-timers for their recollections of nights out.

A significant number of these stories were not fit for printing in a family publication. One involved a well-refreshed reveller downing pints through a sock. A heavy night, by all accounts, and made worse by the fact he had school in the morning.

Many fondly recalled the chap in the gents who would be offering a range of fragrances for a freshen-up, along with some cheeky catchphrases that were very far from politically correct.

Talking of the aroma of the place, there seems to be a consensus that things were better before the smoking ban, when the overwhelming fog of cigarette smoke did at least have the benefit of masking the smell of hundreds of sweaty clubbers. Even if you did wake up the next morning smelling like an ashtray.

One of the more bizarre anecdotes centres around a missing red t-shirt. Apparently, a group of pals had a game where if they found themselves in the gents at the same time as each other, they would swap their tops. One lad became separated from his favourite t-shirt, and was extremely irate when he woke up the next morning to discover that it was presumably lost for good.

In fact his friends have held it hostage for more than 15 years, sending pictures of it from all over the world, even at one point convincing comedian Michael McIntyre to pose with it. It may be a very silly in-joke, but in such daft things is the memory of nights out at the Priz kept alive after all these years.

For evidence of how much the place meant to so many people, I suppose you only have to look back to 2018 and what would have been the club’s 30th anniversary.

More than 800 people flocked to a party to mark the occasion, with DJs from the club’s heyday returning to spin tunes that would have been the soundtrack to so many great nights down through the years.

By the time the nightclub – by then operating under the Onyx name – closed for good in 2015 you could argue its demise encapsulated how Folkestone was being transformed.

The neighbouring Rotunda amusement park had already gone, and the regeneration of the seafront and harbour was starting to pick up pace. A new Folkestone was starting to emerge, probably for the better, but certainly for some there is still regret that this much-loved part of the town’s past was lost forever.

When fire tore through the old place on March 8, 2016, demolition of the building was already in progress. As the former club was being torn down, someone left a bunch of flowers there with a note that read: “You were everybody’s second home and last resort all at once.”

That just about sums it up. The Priz was not the greatest club in the world, but it was ours and we loved it. What we’d all give for one last big night out.