Big on live music, a hangout for local bands.
Owned by Enterprise Inns but is up for sale according to the latest CAMRA magazine, which means it is under threat.
I been here! See more in my gigography.
Was West Cliff Shades, bars connected to the West Cliff Hotel until 1979 when it was modernised as The Happy Frenchman. Operated as an unpopuler nightclub in 1992 called The West End
Battle of the Bands type thing for Sellindge Festival.
Be there to witness the best local bands battling it out for a spot on the main stage at Sellindge Music Festival 2009. On 22nd January, SMF presented Heat 1 of the Main Stage Talent Tournament to a packed venue in Folkestone, and saw The Little Philistines and Burgundy making it through to the final.2009-02-10
Sellindge Festival are doing a "battle of the bands" type thing to pick local bands to play there, first heat is at the Frenchman on the 22nd of January. More details from the press release follows. Nothing rude about Zoo Thousand / Red List this time.
The Frenchman has a WII console! Brilliant, played this afternoon. I am quite new to this modern technology, but we had a few good games of bowling and tennis, for free, at the pleasure of the landlord. More pubs should do this.
Not that I've spoken to anyone or anything, but I see these gigs coming through on the listings: Thu 5th Oct 2006 Heroes Fri 6th The Sharpee's (should that apostrophe really be there..?) Sat 7th Clacket Lane TBC Fri 13th Turmoil Sat 14th Mary's Dog (that one's right)
that's all my theories out the window then... From mrgig.com:
The Happy Frenchman is soon to be up and running again under new management!2006-09-22
Loads of history of West Cliff Shades (now The Happy Frenchman, but for how much longer..?) at westcliffshades.co.uk, what a great site.
This history of West Cliff Shades, which seems to have been turned into The Happy Frenchman, and from the description that goes with their picture (which must be quoted from the original picture source) seems to indicate that The Happy Frenchman [em]is[/em] "The Executive Club" / "The Radnor Club". What do you think?
Someone sold a postcard here of The Radnor Club, for 22 recently. Unfortunately the picture of isn't loading...
what a shame about what happened,another sign that folkestone is going down the toilet even further!!!! :(
I saw Sugarmilk on Saturday night at The Happy Frenchman, and wasn't really impressed. The singer's got quite a strong voice in the karaoke fake emotional style, and the band can play OK, but there was something annoying about them. The soundcheck going on too long and being too intrusive was annoying, the shout outs to the crowd were annoying (it's not Vegas), and some of the material was annoying. It's hard to review (or even care about) a covers band really, particularly when they do songs that there's no merit in covering really like Song 2 and Smells Like Teen Spirit. About three songs in things looked UP when they announced a song hilariously called "Every time you come you'll see my face you bitch", and it was actually quite good, but then we got back to the covers again.
A guide to eating and drinking in Folkestone, Sandgate, Hythe, and the surrounding area... Do you remember when this was the top ranking result for Folkestone Restaurants? All independent, unfortunately unpaid, never spiteful...
See a full list of Folkestone restaurants and bars, browse our reviews...