Rupyal restaurant, Stanningley, July 2019

On a swelteringly hot evening in sunny Stanningley, our band of hungry brothers assembled for the next instalment of curry club. Our man Anthony ‘Dockers’ Dockray was the host for the evening and had opted for meeting at the Waggon & Horses public house with the meal planned for 9.30pm on the dot (yes dad) at Rupyal Restaurant.

All were suitably attired in summer gear, shorts and sunglasses aplenty, a rare appearance at any club but Dockers does always seem to land on fine weather for his gathering. The sun clearly shines on the righteous. A delightful pair of purple Converse were sported by our man TTT, they may have even first made an appearance on Tony’s first ever pub crawl which he informed us was in 1985, the year of Live Aid, that took in this very establishment.

Anybody find me...some purple Converse.

Two absentees were registered in the form of Danny O MIA and Creth O MMA. Creth is currently engaged in a training schedule inspired by that of Ivan Drago in Rocky 4 and couldn’t chance upsetting his carefully planned nutrition programme with a curry of unknown provenance. Word reached us that Danny has a gig planned for the next day and didn’t want to risk any injury to his delicate pinkies by lifting heavy pints and forkfuls of curry.

An immediate discussion point upon entering the ‘Waggon’ was the fact that Gled made short work of getting rid of one of his ‘hot’ £50 notes handed to him in the cab en route to the pub by Matthew. The club can only speculate what kind of deal had been done to lead to two ‘niftys’ been handed over early doors but the suggestion that Gled may be the kingpin of an organised crime gang cannot be discounted.

Conversation quickly turned to ‘faceapp’, most of us being introduced to it by Creth with some absolutely stunning results for some. Our man Scott was undoubtedly the star of the ‘faceapp’ show. Honourable mentions go to Liam ‘Lennie Lawrence’ Gledhill & our long lost curry club brother, Richard ‘Prince’ Lister too.

I was very, very drunk.

We were also informed that, on a recent trip to the capital some of Matthew's colleagues had taken exception to his note-perfect rendition of 'There was an old lady who swallowed a fly' on the train back home. The club were baffled by this mean-spiritedness towards one of our founder members, sad times when a man can't engage in an inoffensive sing-song on his way back to God's own county. 


Gled announced to the group his plans for a European sojourn to celebrate his 40^th year. Discussion turned to the beautiful cities of Europe and Matthew repeated his claims that a nice quiet weekend in Amsterdam is what’s required, a suggestion that fell on deaf ears throughout the evening with the trip organiser.

Drinks were downed and we made our way to the Jug and Barrel just up the road. TTT was delighted to see a TV outside with the cricket on but his delight soon turned to despair as he hurled a torrent of angry abuse about the quality of fielding on show before offering his opinions on another conversation about ADHD. Tony ‘The British people have had enough of experts’ Gove opted to debunk decades of behavioural study and research by declaring ‘”there’s no such thing, they’re just horrible little b**tards”. Let it not be said that the curry club doesn’t shy away from offering opinions on things we know nothing about.  

Quite right Tony.

Discussion again centred around TTT as he opined that having thrown down several tuna sandwiches on a recent day out boozing that he felt bloated and unwell and therefore could be Gluten intolerant. Quick as a flash, Scott queried this statement as he watched Tony quaff another mouthful of Erdinger asking “Is that why you’re drinking wheat beer then?" For once, TTT was rendered speechless but that may have been because of the blisters beginning to appear around his gluten intolerant lips.

Proving that it isn’t just Danny O who lowers the tone, a serious discussion on how to discipline toddlers quickly developed into a discussion on the degradation and incest that appears part of the modern p*rn online canon which our club members didn’t appear too keen on. Without stopping for breath the conversation flew on to the popular Leeds ‘Health & Leisure’ spot Winstons with clubman Jay Bailey innocently declaring “What’s Winstons?” to a chorus of derision and disbelief. It turns out though that this did appear to be genuine and Google proved the quality of their excellent search algorithms as Scott tried to find it by searching ‘Winstons knocking shop’ and there it appeared.

Well played Google

It was heartening to discover that our club members are lovers and not fighters when discussing scrapes that some had seen or been involved in over the years. Scott regaled a delightful tale of being punched in the back of the head by an unknown female #equality and Vinny fondly recalled being ready to square up to a local outside the long departed Morley nightclub ‘The Foundry’ then realising he actually could just run away and did just that. The quality of Morley drinking establishments was discussed with Vinny reminding the group that you had to ask for toilet roll to use the toilets in The Royal, a truly classy establishment.

On we went to our restaurant for the evening, Rupyal. First impressions were good with some remarking on the quality of the carpet?! This was quickly followed by the beautiful realisation that the restaurant had air conditioning.

As we all took our seats for the meal, our temporary blog author-in-chief reported that we had an unknown comment added in response to our last blog going by the name of ‘Leather on Willow’. Upon grilling of number one suspect & cricket fan Vinny it transpired that he “didn’t recall” leaving a comment about his fondness for pre-op members of the trans community and so the anonymous commenter remains a mystery.

As I’ve now realised is the case, by this point recollections of the evening become a little hazy. I do recall that poppadoms were immediate which was an excellent start, although only providing yoghurt sauce for them was a misstep though.


Dockers had dropped off beers earlier in the evening as this was a BYOB establishment and bottles of Tiger were quickly opened and enjoyed. Impressively, Dockers had already ordered our starters which was another example of excellent organisation, take note other club members. Your blog author did feel a little sheepish when I berated our host for not ordering shots until I was reminded that it was a BYOB establishment, a schoolboy error on my part. There is no forgiving the ordering of ice creams though. The dessert menus were already on our table when we arrived on this baking hot summer evening. These seemed to be quickly removed though, perhaps at the request of our host. Dockers had started the dessert trend and now he was ending it. 

I came back from the toilet to Jay being proclaimed the ‘King of Iceland’ by Matthew. I presumed this was to do with his excellent beard game and not a plan to replace Kerry Katona advertising the low-cost supermarket chain.

A very good starter plate arrived with the usual array of chops, kebabs and chicken.

A good variety of mains were chosen with diners commenting on the size of the extensive menu. Keema chicken Balti appeared to be a popular choice and with our man Creth missing his second club on the spin, our blog author shared mains with ‘The Fishmonger’ instead. Lots of comments about the slow-building spiciness of the meals which seemed to be just right for most but some did feel that their mains were too salty.

With a relatively small bill of £116 it was certainly good value and I think all club members would be very happy to return.

Jay Bailey is up next, planning on a retro gaming extravaganza in Kirkstall for the final club of the season.

There was still time for a slightly inebriated Gled to comment to our taxi driver as he inputted our postcode into his satnav, “Putting the postcode in the PDF I see”, confusing the popular file format for capturing and sending electronic documents with a satellite navigation system. An easy mistake to make, I’m sure we can all agree. Until next time.

Not a sat-nav