‘All about the handbag’: How Birmingham’s gay scene turned against its leader

February, 2012. German disco group Boney M dance on the stage, head to toe in matching metallic outfits. A sweaty crowd jumps underneath purple fluorescent lights as Kirk Norcross, of TOWIE fame, flaunts his topless body in front of a dozen cooing fans. This is the relaunch party of the iconic gay club, The Nightingale, which has recently been taken over by a new owner: Lawrence Barton.

“I wanted the Nightingale club to reach back to some of the core values that were established a long time ago” Barton says into a passing camera during footage of the night. 

That was the night it became clear Birmingham’s Gay Quarter had irreversibly changed. A few days prior, a post on Facebook had revealed that Phil Oldershaw, a long time business owner in the Gay Quarter, would not be attending the Nightingale party. He had received a letter from the new management to say he was now barred from all of Barton’s venues. It caused a lot of shock at the time. Not only had Oldershaw pretty much been the face of Birmingham’s Gay scene for two decades, he was also a long-time friend of Lawrence Barton. 

Unsurprisingly, Oldershaw took the news badly. “Shame on you for being so greedy, selfish and manipulating of the Birmingham GAY community.” he wrote about his old friend on Facebook. “I hope nobody trusts you like I did and they see you for what you really are.” 

The pair had been in business together for four years by that time, and had opened up the restaurant and bar, the Loft Lounge, in 2006. But in 2010, Oldershaw relinquished his shares, and after what sources have described to us as a “spectacular” fallout with Barton, he found himself barred from the very venues and scene he had been credited with building. Despite the very public nature of their row, Barton has never commented on exactly what took place — and indeed even now many individuals who worked closely with the pair are unwilling to put their comments on record. “It was the most horrendous thing you could do,” said one former associate of both, who did not want to be named. 

In the following years, Barton established himself as the new face of Birmingham's gay scene. At the height of his success he owned three popular venues in the Gay Village (The Loft, the Nightingale and the Village Inn). But his influence extended much further. He gradually amassed a series of titles: In 2017, he became the leadership commissioner to the West Midlands Combined Authority (this post came to an end in 2022 but it involved improving leadership opportunities for people from underrepresented groups). He is also the “deputy lord lieutenant”, a director of the Southside Business Improvement District, and the city’s first “night-time economy champion”. 

In the last 18 months, however, his monopoly in the Gay Village has dwindled. In 2025, the Loft Lounge closed, and the Village Inn left its longtime home on Hurst Street to relocate into the three-storey club, the Nightingale. The Dispatch understands that Barton’s latest plan is to consolidate Village Inn and the Nightingale onto one floor alone, with the two top floors expected to become Chinese restaurants. 

Inevitably, this shrinking of the city’s gay venues has caused a lot of upset — and for a lot of that upset to be directed at Lawrence Barton. 

In a short video interview with Birmingham Live this year, entitled “Mistakes, Conflict and Controversy”, Barton was described as Birmingham Pride’s “polarising boss”, and in 2024 we reported on the collapse of his company, GB Training, which at the time owed £8.4 million to the government. Barton and his family have since reached a “confidential” settlement with liquidators. 

Earlier this year he announced his plan to exit as Pride director, but it would be no exaggeration to say he has developed into a hugely divisive figure, blamed by large sections of Birmingham’s Gay Quarter for its dramatic decline. But is that actually fair?