Karen knew Chris from her days as an audience member of the Oxford Road Show and later with her involvement at Radio HBS (Hospital Radio at North Manchester General). She persuaded both the Freshies and Graham Fellows (Jilted John,  now John Shuttleworth) to swap the BBC studios for the hospital ones, if only for an afternoon.

Here are pictures of a youthful Karen with Frank and Chris in the radio studios in 1985.

They charted with this one and later had to replace “Virgin” with “a certain Manchester superstore” to keep Beardy happy.

R.I.P. Chris, you were one of Karen’s heroes a quarter of a Century ago…

I tried to persuade Deano into it a couple of years ago & he wasn’t keen, the moment had passed, it was a bit too close to the 25th anniversary.

Good things come to those who wait though. We just need to win the Muller Yoghurt New York jolly holiday to see Denise play in her occasional gigs uptown.

The arena has 96 corporate suites on two U shaped levels between the lower and upper tiers of seating. Levels 2 and 3 are only accessible from VIP entrances and whilst it is hardly exclusive in that they must accommodate getting on for 2000 people,  the concourses feel spacious and quiet compared to the throngs below who paid good money rather than getting schmoozed.

Arriving at the suites themselves, they have a decent sized lounge with bar and sofas, with three rows of sets beyond stepping down to the balcony edge. Each row of seats (between 5 and 10 depending on the size of the box) has individual cupholders and are pleasantly comfortable, at least for an arena. Glassware is not allowed on the seating but you can take your drinks down in plastic glasses, or alternatively, there is a shelf and barstools if you prefer to hold on to your drink (& chat).

The staff from Virgin holidays told us that they share the box with Virgin Atlantic and it costs them a five figure sum as the catering and drinks are supplied by the venue, you can’t bring your own catering in. As it was a 21 seat box (three rows of seven) they chose nine lucky winners who could bring along a guest. We had specifically allocated seats and Karen and I were lucky enough to get the front row. (I had guessed that from the eTickets we had been sent, and also guessed correctly that the box would be almost opposite the stage rather than off to one side).

Our coats were swept away into the suite wardrobe and we were immediately offered drinks from their extensive bar and given free rein to the finger food. We had red wine before the show and in the interval, with a refreshing Magners iced Cider at our seats during the show (refreshed after the interval).

Now Karen loves Dancing on Ice whilst I am much more Blase’ about it (probably a side effect of relamping at the top of wobbly scaffold towers actually on the ice at Richmond Rink back in the 80′s.) I did, however, enjoy the performances of national treasures Torvill & Dean.

The trouble with ice shows is that they are a vast open stage and very difficult to fill, although they had a valiant effort at the start with large tent style cloths doing an impressive Kabuki drop afterwards . It was ten years since we had been to the Greenwich Peninsula (it was the millennium dome then and a bit of a touchy feely PC flop when crowds stayed away in their thousands but it did have one massive success – the opening ceremony Millennium Drop). Now the O2  is vibrant and thriving, the entertainment avenue feeling a little like Universal Citywalk, although the dome is still only half full in the doughnut around the arena and the British Music Experience was only drawing a trickle of people, probably because the tickets were £15. (It sounded a bit too much like an online interactive version of the ill fated pop museum in Sheffield that we managed to visit before it bombed.

As we had been to see a Matinee, we squiffily made our way to the Leicester Square TKTS booth and picked up some (slightly) cheap(er) tickets for Sister Act at the London Palladium, Stalls Row C right at the side. It doesn’t have any of the songs from the movies so if you went expecting that you might be a little disappointed but we already knew that and the new Alan Menken songs certainly rock. I also got a big scenery fix as the set changes are stunning. The wine wasn’t as good as Branson’s though and also rather expensive, stinging my Mum £21 for three glasses of red ordered for the interval.

Here are some low quality pics from the O2, they don’t let you take decent cameras in.

He uses a PA and acoustic guitar with pickups  (and with much Capo work) turned up quite loud which emphasises the steel in his voice without having to belt it out. I noticed that his PA was from an outfit called “Aer” with some additional writing below the logo, I went and checked in the interval that it didn’t say Lingus! (It didn’t). occasionally, however, a slight but distracting speaker rattle detracted slightly from the performance when he drove it a shade too hard. I was interested to notice that he had a floor pedal for tuning that muted & lit up when he needed to twizzle his machine heads (which seems to be a lot in the Regency Room).

He was happy to let 12 year old Dylan use his gear (to sing an anti-Government protest song!)  and went to great lengths to offer the youngster helpful advice during the break.

Kieran has released a remarkable nineteen CDs (& a DVD), many of which are now out of print and collectors items.I succombed to a couple on the strength of his first set and I am enjoying them in the car on my commute. I’ve also noticed that they are comfortably in my limited range so I’ll have to train up my tame backline guitarist for future singers nights.

Two songs particularly struck me as strikingly good that night. I tracked down the first online, from the Fylde Folk Festival last year. It is called the old simplicity and tells the story of two old men in a Dublin Pub reminiscing about their lives.

If you like it, it is on his 1992 album called Akoustik, not on iTunes yet but available as a regular CD for a Tenner.

I will certainly be keeping an eye out for Kieran’s return to the area and he gets the Shades recommendation seal of approval as he is well worth seeing. (Gig list here).

It is on all over the Country (& Europe) for one night only, Thursday night.

(If you can’t make it, I imagine it will be out on DVD for Christmas).

As it happens, I sat and watched a few episodes of MPFC Series 1 last night. It was rather slow paced but there were still some comedy moments, including Nudge nudge wink wink, arthur (twosheds) Jackson, the man with two bottoms and how to defend yourself against fresh fruit.

Showzam Central had an exhibition about P T Barnum, as well as the 50′s sideshows and a couple of interesting additions. We had arranged to finish off the evening with the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performing Ukulelescope at the Grand, but in the meantime, there was a parade to catch and some street heating . The pictures tell the story.

Still pictures cannot convey the movement that flames produces. Fortunately, Showzam already have a Youtube up:

Well, he is here, but not without controversy. On Sunday morning, the statue was lowered into place. There was only a small crowd present as it had only been announced the day before on our local paper’s website. (It is a weekly and there was nothing about it in the Wednesday dead tree version). It was also appalling weather conditions but it gave local Councillor Terry Grayshon the opportunity to take some dramatic photos.

Very quickly though, the Facebook “community” expressed their disappointment. The main view was that it didn’t actually look like Ernie at all and some wondered whether it hadn’t been fixed in its final place as it did seem to lean rather a lot.

Now I haven’t had the opportunity to go and look at it myself yet, but I have seen a number of photos.  It seems to be of a lighter stone than the Miner and the Weaver,  I’m not certain if this is because it isn’t Morley stone or because it hasn’t had the plastic treatment that Terry & Judith apparently did.  The original concept was a pose from the celebrated “Singing in the rain” parody Morecambe & Wise did but the final result is slightly different- he is holding the wrapped up umbrella to his chest and doing a hat tip in the style of the black & white minstrels giving ‘em the old Razzle Dazzle.

Now I suspect that the original concept would have seen Ernie losing his arm and umbrella handle quite quickly to the local scratter element. The siting is a bit tricky- you can’t really see it from the end of the road due to street furniture and it has been put into a flowerbed, presumably to save costs. It is close to Morley’s former theatre, although ironically whilst he is raising his hat to the old place, it is boarded up and neglected.

I did meet Eric and Ernie briefly in the summer of 1976, backstage at Newcastle City Hall. They were waiting to go on, Ernie was calm and collected, whilst Eric was shitting bricks. (He always suffered from terrible stagefright, apparently).  I don’t remember much about the show now, but they had the audience eating out of the palm of their hand and Eric jokingly referred to the spotlight beams from our CSIs as like being a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

You can get a flavour of the feelings by reading the facebook thread, which also links through to press articles.

In the meantime, my thanks to PJ for permission to use his photos.

Is this a foretaste of the 2012 Olympics?

The first one was Iain Dale, at the Total Politics Question Time event in Leeds. (I got offered a late cancellation). The event was at a new hotel near to dark arches and parking was tricky, I was in danger of getting locked in so had to leave early. (This wasn’t helped by the event starting late but I enjoyed the thirty minutes or so of discussion, particularly the very perceptive David Davis, who very politely ripped Rachel Reeves a new orifice for using the perjorative term “Climate Change deniers”.

The second one was in Blackpool and I was delighted to meet Mr. Monkey. Mr. Rik (his handler) initially appeared slightly disappointed that I didn’t recognise Mr. Monkey’s URL The house of the orange monkey (apparently there are copycat sites) but after a brief discussion about a couple of interesting visits Mr. Monkey had made I knew that he was the real McCoy (McCoy Monkey, that is).

Mr. Monkey doesn’t like water, but fortunately we were indoors at the Winter Gardens.

I have happy recollections of the Grange Folk Club, one that used to meet every week in the cellar bar of our Hall of Residence at Coventry. It wasn’t a big room and was crowded with forty in but it had a good atmosphere. It also kept the prices low and the bar solvent, as we used to hike the beer up a few pence on Thursday evenings when the folkies turned up. (It was still much cheaper than a Pub).

Living with a folk club that didn’t have a booked act for a year though, eventually the repertoire of most of the regulars became a bit repetitive. Hallett (Neil Plumpton Hallett-Carpenter) used to perform “Oh Cyril”, a comedy song variant of “Oh Carol”. Ron the Cornishman used to do “Rain”, an unlikely but ultimately successful folk arrangement of a Uriah Heep album track. One of the regulars who fancied himself as a bit of a Mike Harding used to sing a song called “Threshing Machine”, a thinly disguised smutty song with knob jokes.

Eventually, I moved out of Halls, rented a house the other side of Cov and drifted away. I experienced folk music in Pubs and venues elsewhere (particularly in Ireland where it is practically a National Institution) but never really went to any other club  as such (one where the Members decide what goes, not the Landlord).

So, when talk of a Morley Club hit the papers, I was curious. It was being held in Morley’s Regency Ballroom, somewhere I haven’t been in before (the former Co-op Hall, now a dance centre). Having seen a picture of it in a recent local history book about the Co-op, it struck me as being far too big a venue for an intimate club so with somewhat minimal expectations, I climbed the two flights of stairs on the night.

My first impressions were mixed- the club was meeting in a smaller room to the left but there was some rather authoritarian signage demanding silence during the night and a no entry sign on the door warning not to enter whilst people were performing. There was already a roomful there (including some familiar faces) but I was able to find a table near the front and to sit facing the small stage.

As atmosphere goes, the room sucked. It had harsh fluorescent lighting and an unpleasant large damp stain in the plaster. Not very comfortable fold away chairs were arranged bier kellar style and there were some cinema seats along the side walls.  Passing through into the ballroom itself, I was to find more cinema seats arranged in pairs around small tables on each side of what was essentially a fairly plain victorian meeting hall.  The room had many large windows curtained with rich velvet drapes, coloured lamps adorned the exposed roof trusses and two large velvet shaded chandeliers hung from the ceiling, unlit. There wasn’t a stage or platform but there was a Disco box manned by a grey haired lady who I gather runs the place. A staircase at the door end led to regions unknown above the bar and I noticed two cactus cutouts up there, peeking out above the parapet. (Cardboard cut-out Cacti are a dead giveaway for line dancing). A few couples could be seen dancing to a Samba version of the Doctor Doolittle song “Talk to the animals” and I have to say that whilst it was pleasant, nothing struck me as Regency about the place at all.

Back in the folk club, I surveyed the room. There was a good turnout, about fifty or so, with beards and woolly jumpers in abundance. There were also lots of guitar cases on and near the stage. The room wasn’t really decorated, apart from a couple of plates with stars and stripes flags and a few small prints of cowboys.

Keith, the organiser (resplendent in compulsory showbiz compere waistcoast) announced that it was time to get started, and after trying the two light switches to check which combination worked best (neither!) introduced his Son who was going to accompany his fiddling on the bodhrán. Despite two extensive stays in Galway before, I’ve never seen anyone actually spray the drum skin before, something the lad did several times. However, the room was rather cold (which caused tuning problems throughout the evening) and Keith had to abandon his set early as his violin kept detuning. Next up was a bearded floor singer and when he reached the chorus, it turned out that 80% of the audience knew the words and joined in with good harmony. (The Silence rule referred to talking, not singing along).

After the singer, an older Guitarist took the stage, adopting a slightly unusual hunched position to play his two songs. He was followed by a young lad called Dylan  who played his two songs well with a an intermediate style that alternated between strumming and fingerpicking on the fly, very good for a 12 year old.

After the four floor performers, it was time for the guest artist, Bruce Michael Baillie. Bruce was very entertaining, particularly his spiky hair which made me think of Sonic the Hedgehog.

After a short interval, a couple took to the stage, first singing unaccompanied, then with a squeeze box. They were then followed by another singer who wore sandals and a bright lime green woolly hat. (I thought I recognised him but he wasn’t who I was thinking of). After him was another couple, the mustachioed guitarist again and his wife. Finally, Bruce returned to the stage but the audience was gradually thinning out from 10pm until when we stopped at 11 (venue curfew).

I was joined by two Beer buddies before the interval, neither of which I was expecting. (One had called off with indigestion and the other said he would turn up when the Seekers appeared. He was later to refer to the evening as being like middle earth so they are now known as Bilbo and Frodo…)

So, what did I think? The cold and the harsh lighting were downsides, as was the beer which whilst reasonably cheap at £2.10 was only available as fizzy keg. The signage was rather officious and the presenter Keith wasn’t overly charismatic. On the other hand, having the bar in the other room was less of a distraction to the performers and everyone who played &/or sang was good, some very good indeed. If you didn’t want to drink teas & coffees were available, but signs behind the bar made it clear that they weren’t going to let you have tap water. I suspect that 90% of the audience were from other nearby folk clubs and their continued support will be needed to keep the club going for a while yet. The room was the right size but one a similar size in a Pub or Club with good beer and a more flexible attitude to closing times would work even better. (Sadly, Pubs in Morley are an endangered species). Meeting twice a month sounds about right and there is a programme in place until April, subbied by our local Area Committee. Membership costs £2 with £1 off the door price and it is certainly a pleasant evening so I intend to go again.

Future events-

Berkana 3rd March £5/£6

Kieran Halpin 17th March £8/£9

Singers night 7th April £2.50/£3.50

Photos from the night below, no flash of course so not too sharp. hover for text.

Just to finish on a song, here is Uriah Heep performing “Rain”. Try to imagine it strummed on a guitar and sung in a Newquay accent…

***UPDATE*** a quasi-folkie from work tells me that the Clecky folk scene isn’t that lively…

Growing up in the west end of Newcastle, our local cinema was an early casualty to bingo so the kid’s clubs pretty much passed me by, although I did go once with my cousins who lived in Byker. This was an interesting morning as the place was packed and there was a Compere, an Uncle Ernie who looked like the sort of creepy relative that your parents warned you not to be alone with. (The “Uncles” were generally on the management team or occasionally one of the projectionists). Uncle Ernie cajoled us into singing the ABC Minors song (Which the kids did very boisterously, apart from myself who didn’t really know the now familiar “Blaze away” tune even if I could follow the bouncing ball). He called out the birthday boys and girls to get goodie bags, threw out lollies into the audience (causing mayhem as kids scrambled and scrabbled to get them) and a good time was had by all.

Now Byker is a little on the rough side but it all felt very good natured and not anything approaching out of control. Contrast this with my Dad telling me he got thrown out (literally on his ear) of his local fleapit for getting caught shooting the indians with his slug gun…

Now I can remember two Saturday morning shows held in Newcastle that both sprung up  about the same time. The first was at the Odeon and was quite good, if a little low key (although my friends from the band Applecore with Stu and Toota managed to blag a Saturday morning appearance for which which I ended up as lighting designer,  naturally enough. (We weren’t paid but we were given some Comps for Dionne Warwicke instead)).

The other show was at the Tatler Cinema (possibly renamed the Classic by then) and was advertised as being (a remarkable) four hours in length, 10am to 2pm. The Tatler was a Dirty Mac Cinema and I didn’t quite know what to expect but inside it was perfectly normal, a news- theatre type building with pretty festoon curtains. The show was a bit of a let-down though, as it was a continuous performance of about 70 minutes with an interval (to sell hot dogs) then the entire show was repeated again, presumably twice. (I stayed for the cartoons the second time then went!)

These memories came back to me from an e- conversation with our local Morley Historian Ronnie after noticing that in the Elsie photos in the last blog, the Bingo hall was still advertising Saturday Children’s shows and it looked as if the screen frame was still in situ-on stage (flown out, with the electric number board tied to it below). Ronnie recalls that they did keep on running the shows for a time after it stopped being a Cinema and thinks it was a Morley tradition to have the show in the afternoon. Back in the 1930s when he first started going it was always known as the “Tuppenny Rushes”

Contrast that with the Wakefield Cine-world saturday shows where kids were £1, adults free, but there were three on at once and if you were unlucky you had to wait ten (or twenty) minutes for two of the staff with a charisma bypass  to come in, play some lame half-hearted “boys are better than girls” type shouty games then eventually roll the flick. I can’t see kids getting nostalgic for that in the (20)40s.

However, another member of royalty also visited twice in 1968, that TV Superstar and Queen of Soap Lover’s TV schedules, actress Pat Phoenix, otherwise known as Elsie Tanner from Coronation Street. She opened two buildings; the new (& still trading) DFS Furniture store in March and the refurbished (& now defunct) Star Bingo less than six months later in August.

The Star Bingo, which became Walkers Bingo, was formerly the New Pavilion Cinema, built as a Theatre in 1911 and featured previously on this blog. Up until now, no early  interior photos of the Pavilion were known to be available and local author Ronnie Barraclough struggled to find any at all for his book Morley Entertainers and for previous research into the building. (There are a few photos of actors on stage and in the foyer but not of the auditorium).

However, last autumn, journalist Stephen White was invited to give a presentation at the Morley Literature Festival and he looked though his extensive collection of Leslie Overend photographs for a selection of topics. He found some shots of the Pat Phoenix Bingo opening including some curious interior shots which I reproduce below.

Stephen mentioned that he found the photos surprisingly evocative; it transported him back to messing about at Saturday afternoon picture shows as a youngster, having a great time and generally returning home much dirtier than when he went out. Having seen the state of the carpets in some of these photos, that is hardly surprising!

Hover for additional comments.

Thanks once again to Stephen White and leslieoverend.com for finding these very rare interior shots and for letting me reproduce these images. High quality prints or scans from his huge collection are available by contacting him.

Additional note: It looks like the Star Bingo banner above the proscenium which I took to be a pelmet is actually painted directly onto the Safety Curtain.

I’ve recently installed Windows 7 on the laptop and as it failed miserably to upgrade (from Vista, even though it is supposed to be able to) I bit the bullet, backed up and did a clean install. A consequence of such a drastic action is the need to hunt down license keys and sometimes interim versions of programmes to get back to where I was before the drastic action. (Curse you CyberLink!)

Anyway, I have to retrain my Thunderbird mail handler to recognise spam so I have been paying closer attention to incoming mail and whether the email address is obsolete or whether it is more prudent to unsubscribe.

Today, I had a mailing from the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Noticing that it was to a legacy mailbox, I clicked on the change email/unsubscribe box, to be presented with the following page:

So, WTF are “Long lead jazz mags?” As in Bongo mags? Someone is having a laugh…

Talking of having a laugh, David, Pat & I went to see Avenue Q in London on Saturday night and the show is absolutely hysterical, although it is also very, very, rude. (With a bit of luck, it might go on tour so that Karen can see it as well.)

So, the Trekkie Monster was right…

The funeral was well attended and there were flowers from the regulars at his watering hole, The Swan in the Rushes (arguably the best pub in Loughborough).

One of the Regulars has posted his thoughts on the service here- http://soundsandtexts.blogspot.com/2009/11/mervyn-gould-rip.html

Regrettably I couldn’t stay for the Wake (held in the Swan, of course) as I had to get back to Leeds, then onward to Manchester. Delays on the M1 North meant me diverting over the Snake Pass near Sheffieldand Karen & David heading to Manchester separately.

I arrived at Piccadilly by 7:50 (for an 8pm start) but then got stuck in Gridlock in the middle of Manchester which is absolute motoring chaos at the moment. (I only missed a couple of songs, fortunately).

Hazel’s Rebecca is a song for anyone missing a cherished friend, so this is for Mervyn.

I was asked to write this Obituary which might possibly appear in The Stage next week.

I knew him for more than twenty years and admired him without knowing him for nearly as long before that from his widely published writings on technical theatre.

Mervyn Stockbridge Gould (14/12/1946 – 29/10/2009)

Having  been fascinated in technical theatre from his early teens, Mervyn landed his first paid backstage job  aged 17 in 1963 as A.S.M. (& Props) for a two week run of Babes in the Wood at Boston Regal, touring into Crewe, Buxton and Leek. He remained a casual showman at the venue (and #2 Lime Boy) until moving to London in 1965 to study History at Marjons in Chelsea. Having had the foresight to join NATTKE he was able to get work in numerous West End theatres although it impacted on his Degree, just scraping through the Finals. After several years of touring, residences & even walking Schnorbitz (A period he described as “the painful death throes of Variety”), he spent three seasons at Sunderland Empire as CD Operator then a year as Deputy Chief Engineer at The Palace Theatre during the run of Jesus Christ Superstar.

He joined Loughborough University English & Drama Department in 1979 as technical tutor which gave him the opportunity to gain an M.A. and still work occasional summer seasons or Pantos. He remained there for seventeen years before taking early retirement due to ill health.

Mervyn was a Historian, researcher and avid collector of backstage ephemera; his doorbell was a house telephone and his dining chairs were former Box seats.

He was very active in the SMA whilst still working and in retirement became heavily involved in the Mercia Cinema Society.

As an author, he wrote four books on cinema history as well as numerous articles for the theatrical Press including Tabs, The Stage, Cue & Cueline.

In 2007, he was interviewed for the Theatre Archive Project and his colourful memories are online at http://www.bl.uk/projects/theatrearchive/gouldm.html

He died peacefully at home in Loughborough, aged 62.

Ian Grey, November 2009

Mervyn was a real character and I can’t believe how much I miss him despite only seeing him 2-3 times a year. I hope to expand this 300 word distillation into a longer blogpost worthy of his memory when I feel ready.

Now, the room has been totally transformed. The 1923 interior has gone, revealing the original ceiling. The balcony has gone and the stage has swapped ends. The windows have all been uncovered and a small wrap-around balcony has been inserted.

They very kindly sent me a photo of a project they knew I would love to see. On first sight, it looks like some sort of tent structure with an inverted fountain as the centrepiece. Putting it into context though, this is actually a scaffolding birdcage structure in order to provide a working platform for a high ceiling. When you look more closely at the picture, the scale starts to become apparent.Those scaffolding platforms look small but they are twice the height of the Artisans. Also notice in the far right, what looks like a large tilted lantern and the top of some form of ornamental column. These reminded me of a similar decorative feature in the London Playhouse but a trip to Google showed that these were the capitals of two enormous tent type poles supposedly supporting a massive canopy above the proscenium. The picture is from the wonderfully evocative Beacon theatre in New York, an escapist Movie House apparently built for the legendary showman Sam “Roxy” Rothafel in 1926. (Never actually operated by him, however, according to Wikipedia).

Take a look at these various restoration shots, here, here and here.

By the way, Scagliola isn’t a type of pasta, it is a decorative finish designed to look like marble.

What really impressed me was that I had better control than my CD player at home, the streaming behaved as if I had a local MP3 file on the laptop. (It isn’t always this though, the other day it took the best part of a minute for a new track to start, so they might be having growing pains!).

Why does it eat up time? Well you type in the name of a song, an album or an Artist. It then shows you everything related to what you searched for and often a heap of compilation albums with stuff on as well. Before you know it, you are sitting in the gloom with everyone else in bed!

Surely there is a catch? Well yes, it plays you adverts occasionally, with increasing frequency as the evening goes on. You can pay 99 eurocents for a 24 hour daypass if you are having a party or if you really love music, for the price of a chart CD you can have a month of premium service which includes some new releases not open to regular punters. Also it hasn’t made it to America yet but it is imminent. (Details from Rupert Goodwins’ Blog, including ponderings on their business model).

You may or may not be able to try it out- have a look at their website- http://www.spotify.com and see, also see their Blog for a taste of what direction they are heading. I have a couple of spare invites going to the free service, first come, first served. (Email me or comment here if you are happy for your email to be in plain view).

(Not of personal interest to me, but they also have a version for iPhone imminent which will make technogeeks drool!)