NEAL Guppy is such a unique character that a word has to be made up to describe him. For almost 50 years, Neal has made a living out of bringing people together to have fun, so I reckon ‘socialpreneur’ is the best fit.

His venue, Guppy’s Enterprise Club, on Nunnery Lane, is a York institution. Since the Seventies, the sprawling building – part Georgian, part Victorian – has been home to a clutch of clubs, societies and groups, as broad as they are bizarre. From war games to Wing Chun kung fu; role playing to creative writing; life drawing to learning Italian as well as tango and jive lessons, the club attracts people of all ages and walks of life.

“We have members who are lecturers at the university, a retired professor and someone who collects trolleys in the supermarket,” says Neal.

“Everyone mixes together, which is one of the great things about it.”

Inside, time has stood still. In the bar, there’s a distinct Seventies feel, with low seating and giant cheeseplants. Upstairs, in the ‘social room’ red velvet chairs line the wooden dance floor. A set of red lampshades bathe the room in a nostalgic cabaret light. It’s here, twice a week, that Neal takes the jive classes.

Music has been a passion for Neal, now 70. His foray into the club scene began in 1961 when he was a student teacher and organised a dance at Clifton Cinema Ballroom. Later, he ran a club in a basement bar in Walmgate and operated the first mobile disco unit in York. In 1975, he opened Guppy’s.

Despite undergoing treatment for cancer last year, Neal is as spritely as ever. He teaches jive to students on Tuesday nights, to older adults on Thursdays.

“Jiving has been like physio,” says Neal, who has regained much of the three stone he lost during his treatment. “But now I can jump and lift girls up and swing them round again.”

Thankfully, when he offers to show me some moves, he keeps both my feet on the ground.

As he swirls me round the dance floor, guiding my arms back and forth in time with the music, I notice he’s still wearing his slippers. That is not as odd as it seems, for the club is also Neal’s home.

Among the warren of rooms lie his lounge, kitchen (complete with shiny orange units from the Seventies) two bedrooms, a bathroom and attic store room. Neal is a hoarder. In one bedroom are the old decks from his DJ-ing days in the Sixties. In the store room, he keeps membership records going back half a century.

For Neal, there’s no such thing as the nine-to-five. He rises every morning before nine to light the building’s real fires. He then busies himself through the day, re-arranging furniture, serving coffee and drinks – as well as teaching his own classes.

He gets to bed before one in the morning.

Guppy’s members – around 400 at the last count – are a loyal band. There are no locks or keys separating Neal’s living quarters from the suite of rooms – indeed hundreds of his CDs and books line shelves in the club. It’s heart-warming to learn of the trust Neal has in his members.

“They are members of the club, they are not going to cheat me,” he says. “They become friends in due time.”

Neal came to rely on these friends last year when he was diagnosed with rectal cancer. He needed several operations and six months of chemotherapy – but, thanks to the help of club members and some of Neal’s family, it was business as usual at Guppy’s.

“We only missed one week at the start of January and the club remained open thanks to the volunteer work of friends,” says Neal.

He is also full of praise for staff at York District who scheduled his treatment so that it would cause minimum disruption to life at the club.

Running Guppy’s was never going to make Neal rich, but making his fortune has never been his motivation.

“We finance the club by admissions on the door,” says Neal. Most people pay £2.20 per person, although the jive classes are £3 a week. “For most people, admission is less than the price of a pint.”

Neal adds that when he started back in 1961, admission was the same price as a pint of beer.

“Increasingly, we have become more of a consumer society but there is still a proportion of people who want to do something different. I see it in the students who come here and are so enthusiastic about learning to jive,” says Neal.

“We are now about to fall on hard times and people are going to realise that they can’t afford to do the things they used to do. They will be looking for things that don’t cost so much.

“If we have less money to spend, we might occupy ourselves with things we can do for ourselves. There may be a silver lining in all of this.”

And what better than a visit to Guppy’s to remind us about the simple art of having fun without spending a fortune.

“People don’t come here to be entertained,” says Neal. “They come here to entertain themselves and that is far more exciting.”

•Find out more about Guppy’s at geocities.com/guppysclub