The West Pier looks beautiful in this photo how different from the current look! Even if you compare this look to the current Palace Pier (note not 'Brighton Pier'!), the old West Pier look is from a different era, Edwardian. Not the current raz-a-mataz look of the Palace Pier!

I have very fond memories of growing up in Hove during the early 70s. I remember being entranced by the beautiful illuminations of the West Pier. How sad the way it's ended up.

It's a crime to take this beauty away from the world this way, just for commercial interests, as I suppose. It's a crying shame, and I cannot believe in someone's interest to rebuild this jewel. It's lost, and it remains to be a shame. Tom, from Germany.

I remember both of the piers so very well, the Palace Pier, or Brighton Pier as it is now called, which I visited while having a short break in the UK in August last year, as we now live in Southern France and have a Gite business. We were staying one night at the Royal Albion Hotel, so we took a stroll for old times sake. The Brighton Pier was a dissapointment from what I remember as a boy.

In the summer of 1975, I was a student looking for holiday work, and found it on the West Pier looking after the slot machines in the building shown. Little did I suspect that I would be one of the last to work there! Pier people were characters: there was the 'professor' who read palms and was assisted by an extraordinarily attractive girl (who must have been a brilliant reader since he taught her the craft in a single afternoon); the guy who fixed the slot machines fought a miserable prolonged battle against the 1930s wiring - sometimes those machines wouldn't 'pay out' for a whole day and when you opened the back, many hundreds of coins would crash out onto the floor due to the log-jam; the guy responsible for the cash weighed the change returns on Edwardian scales that could detect a single missing sixpence in a bag of 200. One day the PA system for the bingo collapsed and I lent the lady in charge a system I 'cooked-up' quickly at home. It worked! She let me have anything I wanted from the stall as a reward - I chose a whistling kettle which stayed with me throughout university. Unlike the Palace Pier, the West Pier was privately owned. The most terrifying times were when the owner appeared: he would walk over from the Metropole (which I think he also owned) and wander around criticising everything (including us). In hindsight he never really provided the cash to modernise the place, which was such a pity. Now when I look at the old pier I see only the ghosts of all these characters.

Shame they let the West Pier go beyond repair, such a waste.

Great comments John.. thanks! I arrived in Brighton the day the pier burnt down for the first time. I remember everywhere in Brighton smelt of the smoke for 3 days. Now I've lived in Russell Square for 7 years, looking at the sad remains of its former glory on most days.

Dave Wiseman's comment about the West Pier burning down has reminded me that I watched the Bedford Hotel opposite the West Pier also burn down many years before. Incidentally, are you the Dave Wiseman that went to Varndean school in the 50s?

Yes, I lived not far away in Brunswick St East off Waterloo St for a while and went on the West Pier most nights during the warm weather. It's  hard to believe it's gone now. I used to love that area during the summer especially when the art show was on and you could walk along looking at the pictures then go on the pier. itsmepaul57@gmail.com

The West Pier was always far superior to the Palace Pier (or 'Brighton Pier' as its current owners renamed it) and it was such a shame that more wasn't done to save it from the elements, the arsonists, and the delaying tactics used by the Palace Pier's owners to stall restoration plans until the restoration eventually became unviable. The Palace Pier is also a shadow of its former self, having had its theatre building temporarily dismantled and then - oops! - "lost" by the owners (bits of it occasionally turn up for sale or auction). They have also removed most of the original filigree wrought iron arches that used to grace the Palace Pier, giving it its unique charm and character, turning it into a rather joyless funfair and chip shop on stilts. The best big piers left are: Llandudno, Eastbourne and Worthing, the best small piers are: Clevedon, Bangor and Saltburn. Enjoy them while you can.

Back in the mid 70s there was a small, but intrepid bunch of surfers who would paddle out to the end of the pier during every gale to catch Brighton's elusive surf. This was 'our' spot and we guarded it jealously. Highlights include battling with elderly fisherman casting weights at us for scaring fish off, watching the piles swaying as waves passed through the giders and watching bits fall off the pier as it slowly fell into disrepair. On flat summer's days we would climb onto the pier then already closed to the public for a nose around. Now it resembles a skeleton poking out of the sea - tragic! Friends from that era include Steve James, Nick Hewetson, Andy Barnard, Phil Hall, Dave Brown, Nigel Barrat and Andy Westgate.