I'm naturally biased having pretty much grown up in the Odeon when my father (Bill Furness) worked there, but I have to say I've not been to the cinema in years because the new multiplexes just are not the "cinema" experience anymore. I've been to a couple of plexes and felt like I might aswell have sat in the house with a rented dvd.

To me the cinema isn't just about watching a film, it's an entire presentation by people who believed in whisking the patrons away from their everyday lives and into what they were seeing on the screen. The entire experience from the usherette's coming around to the lights dimming and the curtains swishing back is what made a trip to the cinema such an atmospheric, great and memorable experience.

The Paramount/Odeon is an amazing building, full of history and it still holds the hearts of many people to this day, seeing it stood boarded up and lifeless after all the year!
s it was a centre of peoples lives is simply horrible.

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