I CONFESS I was no Odeon hugger. I grew up going to Bradford’s old cinema, but so what? Just because I saw Flash Gordon there when I was 12 didn’t make me sentimental about the place.

I didn’t even think it was an appealing building, despite the landmark domes. And I’d lived away from Bradford for years by the time it closed, so I felt detached from all the fuss.

As the years went by, and the Odeon building looked increasingly unloved, with bushes growing out of it, I saw it as an embarrassing city centre eyesore. Maybe the kindest thing would be to call it a day, like putting a lame old dog to sleep.

But the fight to save Bradford’s mighty Art Deco picture palace from demolition raged on, and in 2007 a group of protestors in Save the Odeon T-shirts were joined by hordes of Bradford folk - among them older people who knew the place from its New Victoria and Gaumont days - for a mass hug of the building. Elderly men and women who had probably never joined a public protest before held banners and chalked slogans on the pavement, as passing cars tooted.

There was something about this building that Bradford people couldn’t let go of. It was part of them. When it opened in 1930 it was, said the T&A, “a rendezvous for all who appreciate everything good in pictures, music, song and dance”. With a large cinema, a band room for a 26-piece orchestra, grand ballroom, tea lounge and 200-seat restaurant, it brought opulence and elegance to the working people of Bradford. It was, said renowned photographer Leslie Overend, “one of the finest, if not the finest, cinema in the country”.

It later became the place to be for Bradford’s teens, with Saturday morning shows and package tour concerts featuring the likes of the Beatles, the Stones, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. Husbands and wives met on the dancefloor.

Now, with the Bradford Live development, the beat goes on within those walls. There is, says Bradford Live director Lee Craven, a whole generation who have grown up in the city not knowing anything about the place. My younger nephews weren’t even born when it closed in 2000, but I’m sure they will go to gigs there when it opens - making their own lifelong memories.

Memories of the New Victoria, Gaumont and Odeon are captured beautifully in Bringing the Beat Back to Bradford - an exhibition comprising photos, posters, programmes, tickets, old signage, cinema seats and lots of recorded memories - at Impressions Gallery. At the launch last weekend, I met people who’d worked in the old building, and whose parents and grandparents had. “I feel such love for it,” said Ann Bolton, a former Odeon usherette, with tears in her eyes.

Sue Barker, whose dad was Gaumont manager in the 1950s-60s, spent her childhood backstage. “I’d take my friends’ autograph books into the dressing-rooms. My brother and I used to slide across the ballroom floor on our backsides,” she smiled.

“My mum brought me to see The Robe at the Gaumont in 1955 - it was the only cinema showing it in Cinemascope,” said Adrian Hartshorn, who later saw the Beatles, Chuck Berry and Haley and the Comets there and has a collection of T&A concert posters on display. Matthew Allen proudly showed me a lovely photograph of 1950s Gaumont usherettes, in smart uniforms. Among them was his grandma, Kathleen.

“My happiest teenage times were at the Gaumont,” said Dave Welbourne, who saw acts such as the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Billy Fury and, in 1963, a band he’d never heard of, but raved about at school next day. They were the Rolling Stones - and bottom of the bill. For 60 years Dave has treasured his programmes, on display in the exhibition.

Now I realise that I too have happy memories of that building. I’m not the Gaumont generation, but I did queue round the Odeon block to see Star Wars with my dad and brother in 1977. And went on a first date to see Ghostbusters.

So thank you to the Odeon-huggers. Our past lives on in those 92-year-old walls.