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The spiritual home for all like-minded curryholics! |
The Curry Club
And who'd join a club like mine?
If you’ve got this far – it’s you!!!I founded The Curry Club in January 1982, at a time when there was far less info around. My family had lived in India since 1730, and the food was literally in my blood. I'd inherited a deep-rooted interest in spicy food, curry in particular, and over the years I’d built up a huge pool of information which I felt could be usefully passed on to others, and vice-versa. And if you're frequently asked to cook for friends or to give out recipes or buy them spices, why not make it a club? Everything curry.
It was an original concept, and though it has been much-copied, we are still unique in the full range of things we do, as is shown in the contents list alongside. I say we – my wife Dominique works full time with me on everything curry.
The Discerning
Over 30,000 like-minded people have joined The Curry Club since it began. We have members whose name is Curry or Curries. Some are called Rice and several are named Spice or Spicier, Cook, Fry, Frier or Fryer and Boiling. We have a Puri (a restaurant owner), a Paratha and a Nan, and a good many Mills and Millers, a Dal and a Lentil, an Oiler, a Gee (but no Ghee), a Cummin and a Butter but no Marj (several Marjories though, and a Marjoram and a Minty). We also have several Longs and Shorts, Thins and Broads, a Fatt and a Wide, and a Chilley and a Coole. We have a marchioness, some lords and ladies, knights a-plenty, a captain of industry or two, generals, admirals and air marshals (not to mention a sprinkling of ex-colonels), and we have celebrity names – actresses, politicians, rock stars and sportsmen. We have an airline, a former Royal navy warship, and a hotel chain. Members come from every continent including Asia, but by and large the membership is a typical cross-section of the Great British Public, ranging in age from teenage to dotage, and in occupation from refuse collectors to receivers, high street traders to high court judges, tax inspectors to taxi drivers. There are students and pensioners, millionaires and unemployed... thousands of people who have just one thing in common - a love of curry and spicy foods.Curry Club Membership
Membership from now on is free of charge.Anyone who is on our database as a current member will receive all future mailing information and order form, unless you ask us to stop sending it. Our popular, iconic Curry Club Magazine (see below) the publication of which has become somewhat irregular, will still be published from time to time and mailed out (free of charge) to keep you in the currinary picture. And as always it will rely on information sent in by you. The next edition, No 69, will be out soon.
The reason for the change is quite simply this, the internet. All our lives have changed because of it, mostly I think for the better. However, one down-side is today’s demand for instant communications. The speed which some people expect answers to their e-mail queries defies belief. Back in the slow old days of snail-mail, not much over a decade ago, we could take rather more time to reply. Now I often get grumpy “why-don’t-you-reply” reminders within one day of the original e-mail being sent from people I have never heard of before. And I get about 100 a day to answer, some with complex questions. I’m not complaining, mind you. I relish this two-way communication. But it is sad that many never bother to say thank you, let alone order something to pay for our business. Many of the enquirers are not members, and more and more of my time is taken up answering these queries, time which should be spent writing and preparing the members’ magazine and running cookery courses, for example.
So the answer is to make membership free for all. This does not lessen my workload, but it does mean that I am able to be more flexible, and once again Curry Club membership is value for money. Well, being free, it has to be!!!
