Drugs, guns and fights - all in a night's work

David Calvey took grave risks to research the life of a club bouncer. He spoke to Adam James.

Dedicated clubbers will remember the ecstasy-energised era of "Madchester" in the 1990s. Some might also recall a short, stocky pony-tailed bouncer called David Calvey. But this was Calvey's night job. By day he was a sociology lecturer at Manchester University. Yet, far from being a moonlighting scam, Calvey's work at Manchester's club doors was serious academic fieldwork.

For six months, he worked undercover to "creatively" explore the "cultural practice, work culture and social organisation" of a profession that has traditionally worked hand-in-hand with gun-wielding gangsters.

The 35-year-old, with a tape-recorder in his jacket pocket, witnessed numerous assaults, drug-taking and other crimes. If his cover had been blown, he could have been killed. In addition to examining Manchester's "night economy", Calvey aimed to gain insights into a profession notorious for its raw machismo.

"Bouncers are icons of masculinity," he says. "But while keeping faithful to the phenomenon of being a bouncer, I was aiming to demythologise this. I wanted to find out, for example, whether bouncers were indeed all aggressive people, or people who might go home to write poetry as well."

Calvey first took a local authority door staff training programme, where he made a number of useful initial contacts and began to call head doormen of clubs. After securing a job he quickly began to learn the links between bouncers and drug-dealing gangs competing to gain control over "the door".

He worked in one revamped club where the patrons were eager to have a "clean" door after months of violence. Police gave the bouncers bullet-proof vests. One night, two gang members, possibly armed, approached Calvey and his colleagues demanding entry. The door was bolted, and nobody, including customers, was allowed out. The men left, but returned after the club closed, this time trying to force entry.

Calvey, the other bouncers, bar staff and the DJs were all bundled into the cellar and the police were called. By the time officers arrived, the men had driven off.

But the police advised Calvey to keep his bullet-proof vest on as he travelled home.

Wary of his door colleagues discovering his true profession, Calvey never revealed his surname or address and only gave out his mobile phone number. And there were close shaves.

On the door, one night, his tape recorder began making a distinct whirring sound. Calvey told his colleague it must be his mobile.

On another occasion, a student of Calvey's approached him asking what he was doing as a bouncer. "You are mistaking me for someone else," he replied, adding to his bouncer colleagues: "These students are all so pissed."

It is only because four years have passed that Calvey, requesting his photo not be printed, is talking to The THES .

It leaves you wondering why he carried out such dangerous research in the first place. Is the pursuit of sociological "knowledge" really worth the risk?

Calvey says: "If you are going to talk about a group of people, then you have to get a sense of what it is like to be one. What I did was the closest one could get."

Calvey's work was also an ethical minefield. Doormen would open up to him and he was taping every word. He justifies this by saying that it contributes to an understanding of violence in society, with the aim of ultimately informing policy-makers.

Calvey also insists that no other methodology would have appropriately revealed the "authenticity" and "lived experience" of being a doorman. "You cannot give bouncers a questionnaire," he says.

Now a research fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, he still bumps into former bouncer colleagues in the city.

But when they ask whether he is looking for door work, Calvey replies he has quit because the job was "too stressful".

So would he ever embark on such similarly dangerous research again? At first he gives a defiant "No", but then he adds: "But whether or not my journey is going to involve any risk - well, who knows?" David Calvey has a chapter on his study in Danger in the Field: Risk and Ethics in Social Research , published by Routledge, price £16.99.