Fibbers at 15

The night before, a sudden death notice was placed on the answerphone: "Hi, this is Fibbers on Tuesday the 13th of August.

Please note, we are sorry that Fibbers is now closed until further notice."

In a letter to The Press, bosses Tim Hornsby and Michelle Hodgen partly attributed their decision to "our continuing poor health".

"After ten years of continuous battles, we simply don't have the physical will and mental strength to go on. From now on we choose life and look forward to spending time with our children and families, " they said.

Both Tim and Michelle and Fibbers are in fine health now, Tim slimmer from steady dieting (and his beard trimmer too), Michelle wiser than ever in her handling of tour managers, staff, whatever.

Fibbers is still benefiting from their knowledge and instinct for running a lively venue and Tim's knack of spotting a potentially good gig.

Glaswegian teen Amy Macdonald, for example, was booked for a pittance two or three months ago with the advice to support her with a couple of strong local acts, yet by the time she played a sold-out Fibbers earlier this week, her debut album had entered the charts at number two.

Tim and Michelle had genuinely intended to walk away from the gig world when the burdens of 2002 peaked with cashflow problems brought on by flooding at another of their enterprises, The Ship Inn.

Yet after only a fortnight, they were at the helm of Fibbers once more, managing it for new owners Channelfly as part of the London company's Barfly music chain, that has since expanded and expanded.

"When Fibbers closed my intention was to retire and to do something else completely different, " recalls Tim. "But then I saw the sort of people initially interested in taking on the premises and I thought, 'I've not done this for ten years to see it turned into that', so I got in touch with the Barfly people and said, 'Would you like me to run it for you?'.

"At the time, I think they only had Barfly venues in London, Cardiff, Sheffield and Glasgow.

Now they're taking over the Jazz Café, ULU, Mean Fiddler, Apollo and Forum in London. I believed in the people who work for the company and I've been proved right."

When Tim opened Fibbers with business partners Graeme "Fibber" Fox and Shaun Wilkinson, they strung junk-shop rubbish around the place and lied about its origins - Tweetie Pie's cage, Freddie Mercury's Hoover - and used floorboards from a house fire, while a strange Irishman slept overnight for a week building the benches.

Two days before opening, a market trolley was rammed through the glass doors at the front. The stage faced sideways with the mixing desk plonked on it, a glitter ball was suspended from the ceiling and air conditioning could take a flying jump.

How different Fibbers looks today, yellow colour scheme courtesy of Michelle, the remnant of the glitter ball to be spotted tucked away in a corner. Air conditioning is now so switched on that on a quiet night at the Piney Gir Country Roadshow this week, you could feel a chill on your neck.

Smoking has been stubbed out too, which is fine, but council bureaucracy led to £20,000 expenditure on soundproofing of the windows, blocking out the light and killing off Fibbers' daytime bar trade two years ago. Not so fine.

Nevertheless, despite the everreddening tape, Tim is perky about Fibbers' present and future. "I'd say we're probably one of the longest-running music venues in the country, and that's even more of an achievement in a city that's not that big and, unlike Leeds or Manchester or Liverpool, isn't considered to be a musical hotbed, " he says.

Ask him how Fibbers has changed over the years, and he says decisively: "I think we know what we are now. For the first ten years, we were everything for everybody: a community pub with a food menu that got reviewed in the papers, and a music venue that we used to open all day.

"That has really dovetailed, mainly due to the soundproofing installation, and we're much more focused? well, we were always focused, but we're now much more focused on the live music. As I said, we now know what we are.

"It seems strange we've been living and breathing this place for so long, and this year there'll be kids coming in who weren't even born when we opened 15 is the minimum age for entry.

"I still love it when a kid comes and says, 'This is my first time in here, and I've been waiting to come in for two or three years'.

How exciting must that feeling be? like when I was a teenager, going to see bands like Roxy Music at the Penthouse in Scarborough."

Barfly may own Fibbers, but Tim still books every headline act.

"And I still love doing it, " says a man who has turned 50.

"I think what nobody realises is we are in a golden era for music; old stuff, new stuff, coming out at an astonishing rate and replenishing itself almost six monthly, which is fabulous now for live venues.

"There's such diversity and it's all so interesting. I don't think there's ever been a boom like this when the calendar is full to bursting with real quality acts."

The trend for downloading holds no qualms for him.

"There's more music out there than ever before, it's just not in hard copy form. Although the industry bemoans that change, just as the football authorities moaned that live football on TV would damage attendances, I disagree.

The more music that's out there, the more it propels people to find out more, and it's never been better overall for live music."

Looking to the future, Tim and Michelle are enjoying Fibbers more than ever. "Michelle comes up with the feel of the place, looks after the staff, sorts out the designs, while I go around booking bands and growling at people, " says Tim.

"Just keeping booking great bands and people will come. That's my motto."

Tim Hornsby and Michelle Hodgen's Fibbers fact file

Name: Fibbers

Occupation: Long-running York music venue, once independent, now part of Barfly chain

Where: Down the steps, lovely Stonebow

Born: August 14, 1992, on site of former Fazers and Ellington bar

Run by: Tim Hornsby, Michelle Hodgen

Named after: Tim's original business partner, disc jockey Graeme "Fibber" Fox

First night: Six York acts, headlined by the Goosehorns

Early days: Diverse themed events from thrash to Northern soul; local acts Shed Seven, Chris Helme's Chutzpah, One Stoned Snowman and early version of Mostly Autumn. Sunday lunchtime blues; Sunday evening comedy; Monday quiz nights; big band jazz

First big signed act: Zodiac Mindwarp, followed by Bert Jansch, Chumbawamba, Doctor And The Medics

Yes, they did play there: The Lightning Seeds; Red Dwarf star Craig Charles; Labi Siffre; Everything But The Girl; Dodgy; John Cooper Clarke; Inspiral Carpets; The Fall; Kula Shaker; Albert Lee; solo Lloyd Cole; John Martyn; Nils Lofgren; Levi advert bands Stiltskin, Babylon Zoo and Freak Power; Coronation Street's Kevin Kennedy; Brookside's Paul Usher

Yes, they have played there too: Travis; The Libertines; Babyshambles; Kaiser Chiefs; Graham Coxon; Franz Ferdinand; Editors; The Kooks; Maximo Park; Fratellis; Mel C; Bloc Party; Spiritualized; Snow Patrol; Gomez; Klaxons; Take That's Mark Owen; The View

This year: Punk legends The Damned on an April Sunday afternoon; chart virgins The Twang, Kate Nash, The Hoosiers, Amy Macdonald

Tim's worst ever line-up: Babyshambles; Selfish C***; Towers Of London

Most unusual acts: Transsexual Jayne County; ex-boxer Champion Franny Eubanks with his blind drummer

Worst behaviour: The Others; The Fall's Mark E Smith for "being tipped out of a taxi at ten o'clock and still performing brilliantly"; Rock Bitch's X-certificate exploits

Shed Seven at Fibbers: Came second then third in early days of Fibbers Battle Of The Bands

Coldplay at Fibbers: Tim misspelled their name as Coalplay. Singer Chris Martin made his own tea, pretended to be new member of bar staff and sat cross-legged doing caricatures of York band that Coldplay were supporting. Coldplay's set was watched by "about 15 people"

The Coral at Fibbers: After twice postponing gigs, the Scousers finally made it at the third attempt ...for 19 minutes

Missed opportunity number one: Tim turned down Oasis. "They had no profile, nothing, and I thought £250 was too much to book them. That was sad, but you can't win everything. You have to make instant judgements, so there are times you'll miss out"

As when...missed opportunity number two: The Strokes. Tim was out of the office when assistant promoter decided pre-booked show by local band should hold sway as "they're usually quite good"

Tim's best Fibbers gigs: Desmond Dekker; Love's Arthur Lee; Arthur Brown; Stereophonics; Keane; Kasabian; Arctic Monkeys; Psycho Groove Muthas; Jason Feddy; Aimee Mann; K T Tunstall; Shed Seven; The Kooks; Badly Drawn Boy; Sam Brown; Imogen Heap; The Killers (whose drummer taught Tim a neck massage he still uses)

Fibbers' best moments: Saturday/Sunday afternoons; chip butties; coffee; Jon Strong; Blueflies; Jason Feddy and the great staff

Fibbers' worst moments: No money; no time off; difficult tour managers; coffee; having to close down on eve of tenth anniversary in August 2002 with cashflow problems. "I don't feel Fibbers is dead, but just sleeping, " said Tim at the time. He was right

Fifteenth anniversary line-up: The Zico Chain, Ghost Of A Thousand, Flood Of Red, on Tuesday; £6 advance, £7 door