I would like you to take a walk down Memory Lane with me. Ok – a drive down Memory Lane. Twenty years ago, I was officially ‘A Very Nice Man’ as a member of the Fourth Emergency Services and I frequently rescued people from London and the Home Counties from places like Windermere, Blackpool or Tebay Services and took them and their broken-down cars part of the way home.
(And in case you’re in any doubt as to what the difference is between the AA and its closest rival, the RAC, let me repeat the words of a colleague at the time which make the distinction perfectly clear: “We’re yellow and half an hour late; they’re orange and two hours late!”)
A route I did regularly in my big yellow truck meant going down the M6 to Junction 16; turning onto the A500, heading towards Stoke-on-Trent and then picking-up the A50 until it met the M1 near Derby. Then we would do a swap-over at Leicester Forest East Services for the members to take the relatively short hop home from there.
On the way, as we trundled along the A500, we would come to a point where, if you looked to the left, you could see what was obviously a football stadium in a built-up area some way in the distance.
“That’s a Football League ground!” I would say to the members and invite them to guess which club it belonged to. I must have asked scores of people this question and I only remember one of them ever getting it right.
“Stoke City?” they would suggest; “Chester?”; “Stockport County?” even when I helpfully suggested that the place to the left of the stadium with the old-fashioned floodlight pylons was called Tunstall; the place to the right of it Burslem. But it was `App Norf’ after all so it could have been Moscow Dynamo as far as they were concerned – all that mattered was that it was somewhere North of Watford.
So where was it, then?
I set off to go there again this morning.
Choices, choices before I went: Tweetybix in a Calico bowl followed by a banana on a Calico plate for breakfast as shown bottom left in the following picture? (These ceramic things – currently favoured by Wetherspoons – were all made by Burleigh at their Middleport Pottery on Port Street in Burslem.)
Middleport; Port Street – make a mental note of these words.
Or would it have to be porridge in a big Merryweather dish (bottom right) and a cup of tea from a Crownford tureen (top left) poured into a cup and saucer?
The dish was made by (Royal ) Doulton at their Nile Street Pottery in Burslem; the cup and saucer by Ford & Son at their own works on Newcastle Street in Burslem.
Or maybe I should have a cup of coffee using the set shown top right which was made for the State Management Scheme in Carlisle by Dunn/Bennett at their sadly derelict Royal Victoria Pottery at Westport (yes, Westport…) Road in Burslem:
So there we have it: Burslem. A legend in its own lifetime. But what’s the name of its football club?
For those of us who still haven’t got it – remember the clues.
Time’s up: it’s Port… wait for it… Vale.
“I thought that was by the seaside!” and “Isn’t that in Wales?” (I suspect they meant Port Talbot…) were the most common responses I got to this little gem of information way back in AA days…
Thickypedia tells us this about the town itself and then the club:
“Burslem is a constitutional town that amalgamated to form the Federation of Stoke-on-Trent in 1910, along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent in 1925, following the granting of city status to become the City of Stoke-on-Trent.
Port Vale is one of the few English league clubs not to be named after a geographical location, their name being a reference to the valley of ports on the Trent and Mersey Canal. Port Vale Football Club was formed in 1876 and took its name from the venue of the inaugural meeting at ‘Port Vale House’ situated in a suburb of Stoke-on-Trent. Upon moving to Burslem in 1884 the Club changed its name to ‘Burslem Port Vale’ and after several seasons in the Midland League became founder members of the Football League Division Two in 1892.”
“Gordon Bennett!” you might say, had you been one of the Cockneys riding with me in my truck if this information came as a complete surprise to you. But Arnold Bennett would be more like it: the writer who died in 1931 was from the Potteries and immortalised them in novels such as Anna of the Five Towns.
`Five towns?’ you ask; but Burslem, Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke tots-up to six towns, surely? Yes indeed – but Arnold apparently had a personal aversion to Stoke so he ignored it completely. Maybe he was a Valiant – a Port Vale supporter (they tend not to be very keen on Stoke City after all, as the trouble at their latest meeting in Burslem during December 2018 when there was violence resulting in eleven arrests testifies.) Or maybe he already had an aversion to BBC Radio Stoke even though it (thankfully) didn’t actually exist way back then. We shall come back to this later…
Now – and this may come as a shock – not all entries on Wikipedia are accurate. No they’re not. So it might not be right as far as its claims about the origins of the football club are concerned. Here’s an alternative view, from the website thebeautifulhistory:
“Port Vale were formed and are still based in Burslem. According to club records, they were officially formed in 1876. The reason for the club’s name remains a mystery to this day. In Jeff Kent’s book on Port Vale – The Valiants Years – he claims that it is from a canal wharf called Port Vale near Burslem, that the club took its name. However, other historians argue that the club was created following a meeting at a building called Port Vale House on Burslem’s Limekiln Road and it is from this house that the club took its name.”
“Their first ground was actually situated in this street. From here Vale moved to a pitch by Westport Lake, then for two years used some waste ground on Moorland Road before settling at the Cobridge Stadium which was to be their home from 1886 until 1913. Vale had by this time adopted the name Burslem Port Vale and were elected to the Football League in 1891 as members of Division Two.”
You won’t find the following, definitive version of the origins of the club elsewhere but here we go anyway:
The original founders of the club all worked on the Trent & Mersey canal. That bit’s right. The canal had wharves – `Ports’ in local parlance – which specialised in particular products back in the day. But the men who went on to form the football club all specifically worked on the Wharf numbered Port Five, which only handled barrels of beer. (Port 1 Port must have been a bit confusing; then Port II Sherry; Port III Gin; Port IV Brandy and then Port V Ale – yes, Port V ale – is how these wharves were enumerated.)
So there we have it; mystery solved and it’s true, I swear it is…
Anyway, having finally decided what to have for breakfast last Saturday, I set off from home in Carnforth for Lancaster in my van and then caught a train run by my favourite travel company (only two minutes late)expecting it to go to Crewe. But when I got my tickets out of the machine at the station, it was to discover two different routes for going and coming back. The latter included a ride on – of all things – a Blackpool Corporation bus from Preston to Lancaster. Half an hour wait and then a forty minute drive along the M6 (despite the display on the vehicle insisting we were actually approaching the Tower and St Anne’s Square all the way there) for a journey that normally lasts less than twenty minutes on a bus so full that some of our number were left behind. This is train travel in Britain on the eve of Brexit, folks…
However, there is always a silver lining. On the way home, I got talking to a man across the gangway who is a 26-year-old member of the Royal Navy with knee ligament damage: he used to play soccer for them but can’t anymore. He saw my Port Vale programme and asked if I had been to the match.
“Me and my mates – about thirty of us – used to watch Morecambe at Christie Park. It was great. The atmosphere was brilliant and it didn’t cost a lot to get in. But now I don’t go anymore: I can’t; I’m based in Portsmouth. But none of my mates do either – not one of them. The new place is difficult to get to, has no atmosphere – and it costs far too much to get in. This new lot who are in charge sound like really dodgy geezers. The club should never have made the move. What needs to happen is for the actual fans to take it over – like they have in Portsmouth.”
If this happened, he suspected that some of his mates might actually be attracted back into the fold.
Food for thought…
But let’s go back a few hours when I was heading South rather than North. The outbound route to Stoke and then Burslem was to Preston.
There, I had to change and catch a Northern train to Manchester. Northern trains have been on strike every Saturday for literally ages – but today, they ran a normal service. The dispute is about Guards on trains: the men in the suits want to get rid of them; the people who actually do the job don’t want to be sacked. Personally, I support the Guards. I don’t like the idea of my daughter – or any other female on her own – being pestered by a nutter or a pervert on a train without anybody in authority to call upon if this was to happen.
Furthermore (and to clinch the argument), without Guards, ex-Arsenal, Celtic and West Ham Welsh international star John Hartson would never get his notebook back.
What?
Believe it or not, when I got on the Manchester train at Preston, it was to find what looked like it might be a Tablet left on my seat. But it wasn’t a Tablet- it was actually a bound notebook which looked a bit like a big Diary. I opened it to discover if there were any contact details to see the name MARTYN TYLER scrawled across the first page. Could it be his? Maybe it was – because further pages had masses of football line-ups written on them with names and the occasional note, like this from a recent FA Cup clash starring former Morecambe favourite Padraig Amond:
How very intriguing. Celtic featured heavily in the diagrams and scribblings that whoever had lost this thing had made. Who could it be?…
I gave the book to the Guard when he came to check our tickets.
“You know” he said in a very strong Scouse accent, “There was a big Welsh bloke sitting here before you got on. I thought to meself: `he’s the spit of John Hartson, he is!’ But you wouldn’t think someone like him would travel on a service like this, would yer?”
And so, Mr Hartson, if you’re reading this: your notebook can be picked-up from Lime Street.
And, having done so, I hope you will support the Guards in their dispute with Northern Rail: if there hadn’t been one to hand it over to, it would have ended-up at Stoke-on-Trent station because I would not have had time to take it to Customer Services at Manchester.
Anyway, from Manchester Piccadilly I took another Virgin train to Stoke-on-Trent. And walked into town to the bus station where I visited the Information Centre and planned a route to Burslem: No 7 and 7A every quarter of an hour from Stand P. Then I bought a Day Rider ticket for a fiver and went next to the nearby Potteries Museum. In a whistle-stop tour, I saw some amazing stuff: lots of L.S. Lowry paintings for example and this:
It is the metal skeleton of a later model Spitfire. Wow.
Upstairs, they had some proper ceramic work which put my bits and pieces of things totally to shame:
Proud as a Peacock just isn’t in it. These things (this one is by Meakin) are amazing, inspirational stuff. Do the skills to produce artefacts of this quality still exist in Britain today? I have absolutely no idea…
It was getting late and I had an appointment to keep. With no less a personage than the Town Clerk. By Personal Request on his part. Yes indeedy.
Actually, I was secretly a little disappointed that the Lord Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent and at least a Military Band plus a twenty-one gun salute wasn’t there to meet me at the station. But there we go – the Town Clerk would have to do.
So – as an older woman called me `Duck’ in that accent which sounds to me to be as much Scouse or even Manx as it is Brummie – I got on a bus. It was going to Kidsgrove way beyond where I wanted to be but I got off when I saw road traffic signs pointing towards PORT VALE FC.
By sheer chance, I actually alighted right by Hamil Road and walked down a hill which I knew (from looking at Google Earth before I went) led directly to the Wembley of the North: Vale Park.
Not a million miles away from this is Etruria Road.
Etruria – what a name; I love it. It must be out of the same box as Utopia and Narnia, surely, in that it is truly magical.
Or maybe not: places such as Burslem in particular and the slightly more genteel Etruria (which I walked through later) are tough, Working Class places which have seen some very hard times in the past. They will probably be suffering as much as anywhere else in Britain at the moment under the cloud of Brexit uncertainty and Austerity which has applied in this country for god knows how long.
I walked back into Stoke after the match along Waterloo Road (the A50), intending to get on the first bus heading towards the centre I came across. But during the entire two-mile or so walk, only one came along. (And – Sod’s Law – I was right in the middle of two stops so missed it.) I wondered, as I trudged past the seemingly endless rows of Turkish Barbers, Polski Shleps, Kebab Shops and Islamic centres what lies in store for communities like these if the experiment in Brexit just a few weeks from now goes wrong. The people I saw there; music I heard and languages I caught snippets of were not representative of the sort of people I had seen in the pubs and the football ground earlier. Even in Etruria later, as I wound my weary way towards the University Quarter and then finally the train station itself, I found it strange to see what had obviously once been a pub re-opened as a place which had exclusively Arabic script on its frontage. This is the sort of Britain that people like me – living in a sleepy little town in northern Lancashire – have no experience of. Except when I follow Morecambe to places as far apart as Bradford and Hereford. I wonder what the future holds for places like these in a Post-Industrial Britain…
But there I go getting all political and modern. Let’s take this back almost two centuries. It is a little-known fact that there was a General Strike in Britain during 1842. This was supported by the Chartist Movement who were in favour of a People’s Charter which would introduce the novelty of working men being given the right to vote in secret ballots. This was at a time when only the property-owning elite had any influence on the way British politics was conducted. When the ruling classes continued to ignore overworked and underpaid workers whose lives were little better than those of slaves – coal miners had just endured having their pay drastically cut overnight at a time when there were no Trades Unions to resist this arbitrary move by the owners of the pits in which they laboured – working people rebelled en masse.
This was evident in Burslem where – along with fellow Six Towns’ Hanley – there were what have become known as the `Pottery Riots’.
On 16th August 1842, striking workers marched from nearby Leek and about 4,500 of them gathered to protest in Burslem Square. Here, an event sometimes known as the `Potteries’ Peterloo’ then took place.
Thomas Powys – a Burslem Magistrate and member of the ruling class who the strikers were demonstrating against – turned out the guard and ordered them to open fire on the protestors when the Dragoons allegedly had stones thrown at them. A nineteen-year-old worker from Leek, Josiah Heapy, was shot through the head and died at the scene. Here is a plaque in memory of him which now exists in Swan Square in the town:
Ah – the good old days: a certain Tory MP from Cornwall with a double-barrelled name but only a single braincell just can’t wait for them to return…
I digress. However, money and class have had an impact not just on the town of Burslem but also on its football club.
I think it’s fairly well-known that sheer snobbery once caused the spilt in the ranks of the Rugby-playing world into two separate codes. Rugby League came about as a reaction by Working Class men who were paid for playing the Union code being vilified by their supposed betters from Eton and the like who played all sports – the mythical story goes – just for the fun of it. The latter Public Schoolboys and sons of rich industrialists and their ilk were Amateurs and proud of it. But they could afford to be: Working Class players couldn’t. So the latter were banished into the Outer Darkness of the professional Rugby Football League and doomed – until alarmingly recently – never to be able to play Rugby Union again if they’d ever taken part in even one League match.
The distinction between Posh Amateurs and Common As Muck Professionals existed in the Association version of football until relatively recently as well. Corinthian Casuals and Old Harrovians being examples of strictly Amateur (for Gentlemen only) Football League clubs at least in their earliest incarnations. Different rules applied to the two types of player (in terms of taxes paid by their employers, for example) and ne’er the twain were supposed to mix. Back in the 1960s – when this archaic rule still applied – one of my school chums had a cousin who was on the books of the Champions of England at the time as an Amateur. But the club found ways of rewarding him financially for playing for them – a new car, for instance, `gifted’ to his parents. But probably most Football League clubs had ways of getting around the rules at the time.
I am old enough, however, to remember Port Vale being singled-out by the footballing authorities at the end of the 1960s and made an example of for making payments to amateur players. From memory, I think that Vale were in the old Second Division at the time (the equivalent of the Championship now; the Fourth Division was the lowest of the Football League: League Two these days – oh, and two grand was a phenomenal amount of money way back then; enough to buy an average house in an average town…) I can’t find any reference to this appalling chapter in the club’s history on their own website – it’s probably too traumatic for them to recount – so let’s allow twohundredpercent to take up the story:
“In 1968, however, irregular circumstances in more than one sense led to a club having to go before a vote under very specific circumstances. In January 1968, a Football League investigation into Port Vale led to the Football Association charging the club on six counts, as follows:
- Several amateurs had been paid despite not being registered.
2. Associate schoolboys having played for the club against FA rules.
3. Extra bonuses being paid to players after a 3-0 League Cup victory over Chester in August 1967.
4. Illegal bonuses being been paid to two players.
5. An illegal signing-on bonus being been paid to one player.
6. A director of the club offering gifts to young players.
The club was fined £2,000 but, more significantly, the Football Association also recommended that Vale be expelled from the Football League at the end of the season. The League deliberated over it for a month before fining the club a further £2,000 and duly informed the club that it would be expelled at the end of the season. The club’s directors stated that they were “shocked and appalled” at the “savage penalties” handed down…There was, however, a critical caveat that would save Port Vale’s skin. They may well be voted out at the end of the season, but they could still reapply to join again immediately. When they did so at the start of the summer, they were reinstated by forty votes to nine.”
Many of the other clubs probably voted them back in as an expression of their own guilt. It wasn’t fair that the club should be treated in this way when most if not all of their rivals were also doing exactly the same things they were charged with and probably worse; particularly when what was a completely pointless – but at the same time heavily class-laden distinction – was scrapped altogether very shortly afterwards by the FA.
Yet when Manchester United were found to be doing exactly the same thing when the rule still applied – guess what? – no such utterly draconian sanctions were taken against them.
So why were Vale treated totally differently? It surely couldn’t be for the radical reputation of the town and memories of the strength of the burgeoning Trades Union movement there in times past, could it? Not in this country, surely…
The Establishment’s Old Fossils from Oxbridge and Eton who populated the Football Association at the time (and still have disproportionate power within the organisation currently: women have no specific representation on the Board there but Eton does…) wouldn’t be making a political statement of any sort, would they? One rule for the rich and all that…
As I say, Burslem has long had a reputation for being radical in a political sense and Port Vale’s link with the GMB Union as their sponsors until very recently is continuing testament to this fact.
So what else do we know about Burslem?
Singer Robbie Williams famously comes from there, as does the late Ian Kilmister (better known as Motorhead’s Lemmy). Darts Champion Phil Taylor is also a native of the town, as was Josiah Wedgwood. The evidence of the trade which Wedgwood and others brought to the Potteries and skeletons of the places where it once flourished still litter Burslem. Near Woodbank Street can be found the three disused but iconic Bottle Ovens (brick kilns in the shape of a bottle) of the defunct Acme Marls Company. Not too far from these is the Titanic Brewery. I’ve drunk some of their products in Lancaster at least – and very good they were, too. Ok – let’s get the Bad Taste joke out of the way: like the ship, they went down very well… [1]
Round the corner from the Bottle Ovens, St John’s Church can be found: the tower dates from 1586. A local website challenges you to
“Venture down to St John’s Church in the dusk and see the resting place of Burslem’s very own witch Molly Leigh. If you’re feeling extra brave (or foolish, who can say?) and don’t mind looking like a bit of an eccentric, skip around her grave three times chanting: “Molly Leigh, Molly Leigh, chase me around the apple tree”, and she might even say hello.”
I didn’t personally venture down to St John’s Church in the dusk after the game was over (match report here ) but I did venture down Hamil Road from the bus as mentioned earlier.
At the ground, I bought a discounted ticket for £17 (for the over 62’s, which seems an arbitrary age for such things but I’m not going to argue). And then walked into the town centre.
So there I was – a man who will be 65 later this year – trudging along alone and minding my own business. I encountered two fit-looking young men in matching black possibly Adidas tracksuits who looked as if they just might have some connection with the club I had just visited coming the other way. I was wearing my Morecambe hat and as they passed me, one of them said: “What do we think about Morecambe?” to which the other said “They are SHIT!”
Welcome to Burslem. Welcome to Port Vale.
It got worse. In the town centre, I saw a pub where I thought a solemn meeting with The Town Clerk (who was stuck in traffic) might be a suitable place to be convened. This is it:
But as I waited at the Pelican Crossing to cross over to it, I noticed something else in the window:
And when I looked up and down the street, I saw plenty of other examples of this particular type of apartheid. Not very friendly, is it?
But back across the road in a sort of square, the local representatives of Law & Order were gathered. So I walked over and asked them where it might be permissible for a foreigner, Oftcomer; Grockle or whatever they called people like me around here to buy a drink.
“Loads of places, Mate!” said one phenomenally tall Copper. “There’s the Bull’s Head. Then there’s… Actually, the Bull’s Head.”
“Would you drink there?” I asked him.
He looked a tad embarrassed.
“It’s a bit pricey.” Pause for further thought. “But it is Burslem after all and you have to pay Burslem prices!”
I looked around. I don’t want to sound too disparaging but it didn’t look quite like the Riviera or Knightsbridge to me in all honesty.
“But maybe that’s what you’re used to in Morecambe!”
Beer in a classy place like Morecambe? We all drink Martinis, don’t we? But he did tell me how to find the pub.
I had a chat with the doorman after passing a few more licensed premises which also made it clear that they were local pubs for local people: locals for locals; yokels for yokels or whatever.
“It’s the police who make these rules!” he said. And then told me only two pubs in Burslem would serve any away supporters – the other one was closer to the ground but I can’t remember its name.
Anyway, knowing that the Town Clerk was still stuck in traffic, I sent him a text and went in to have a pint. I really liked this place. Particularly this:
I took this shot with my mobile phone. It’s not the best but I would like to draw your attention to the final line concerning the trip on 24th August:
“And then 3 new Micros in Morecambe”.
Home from Home – or what?
It was like Home from Home because I met two people with whom anyone who has read my personal ramblings here in the past will be familiar with. Last time we saw them, Jordan was in his wheelchair and carer Sam was trying to protect them both from Storm Callum as it deluged Carlisle last October.
Today, Sam had driven all the way from Morecambe to Burslem earlier so that Jordan could get his regular fix of being a Shrimps supporter: something so `normal’ that most able-bodied football fans wouldn’t give it even a second thought. But they had been told at Port Vale that there were no disabled facilities in the Away end. So they would have to watch the match surrounded by Vale’s own disabled community – or not see it at all.
Just think of this: all the effort required to get a severely disabled adult ready and able to face a five hour round trip in itself can’t be easy. Feeding. Continence. Stuff most of us can’t even begin to imagine.
All that way just to see the people Jordan wants to be among as small specks on the horizon: Vale Park isn’t called `The Wembley of the North’ for no reason: the pitch is gargantuan…
Sam is a real stalwart – he never complains. But, when watching EFL highlights on Quest, one of the things he looks out for is the glimpses it gives from time to time of the disabled shelter which is being erected at Brunton Park. Progress of a sort, I suppose.
But put yourself in his place. Something is simply not right here…
Anyway, with two Titanic beers weighing me down, I went back to the ground. I met a man doing a roaring trade selling one of two Port Vale Fanzines (the other one’s called the Beano) and got talking to him.
He explained that the name of his offering was based on a comment made by former Manager Brian Horton to the then Chairman after Vale had been relegated from League One some time ago. Other Valiant fans seemed keen to join in the general discussion – and not even one of them offered the opinion that Morecambe are `Shit’. So Fair Play to them. Just as other Valiant fans I chatted to after the game were as friendly as you could wish for.
“I thought we bossed the first half but you were the better team in the second” said a Valiant fan to me as we walked back towards the centre.
“What do you think about that as a Shrimpers fan?”
“I have no opinion as far as Southend United are concerned” I replied.
I probably shouldn’t have done but the constant referral to my team as the `Shrimpers’ by the World And His Wife and the bloody BBC in particular really does my head in. Sorry. I must calm down.
Poor sod. Having growled at him, I said that as a Shrimps fan, I thought what he had said summed-up the performance perfectly. We even shook hands and wished each other luck – a feeling I wholly and genuinely reciprocate. And this is not just because of the outrageous way Port Vale have been treated by the football authorities in this country in the past.
Worryingly though, on my way back to the ground prior to kick-off, there was still no sign of the Town Clerk.
He finally arrived, however and introduced himself and his dad to me at half time.
We had a really good chat about various things. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had other commitments, this chat would doubtlessly continued after the match. And one of the things we would certainly have talked about would have been BBC Radio Stoke.
So now is the point – bearing in mind the old footballing adage that the best form of defence is attack – where I feel obliged to get my retaliation as far as they are concerned in here first.
The man I met at Vale Park wasn’t the Town Clerk of Burslem. Steve was – is – the Town Clerk of Crewe.
Last year, I wrote an article for this site about Crewe, following Morecambe’s 6-0 thrashing by their League team in the first match of this season.
The following week, the site’s editor was contacted by Steve in his official capacity as an officer of their Council asking to talk to me about it. He turns out – irony of ironies – to have actually been born In Morecambe and grew-up in Carnforth where his dad is a long-term season ticket holder at the Globe Arena. That’s why we met-up at the Port Vale game and then watched it together.
As far as my Crewe article was concerned, he took it as it was meant – a light-hearted observation of the town made by a stranger to the place: a view, he assured me at the time, which was shared by his fellow members of the Labour Council which runs the place. If you read the article, you will see a piece appended to it by the Mayor, Brian Roberts, which confirms this.
But by the Thursday after last August’s hammering of the Shrimps by Alexandra, BBC Radio Stoke had also got wind of the story. They described my effort as a `blog’ without actually bothering to read it – but why would you do that? Oblivious to this, I agreed to record an interview with them in which I said: “I want to make it clear that if people have taken offence about what I’ve written, I’m sorry – it wasn’t my intention to insult anyone.” They specifically promised to play this bit in their forthcoming broadcast. But they didn’t. Boo and – even (please forgive my language) – hiss…
When asked about my own background as a writer, I mentioned that I used to create comic scripts for Whizzer & Chips and Buster comics, including strips their listeners might be familiar with such as The Bumpkin Billionaires; Tarman of the Jungle and – the one I am particularly proud of – Watford Gapp the King of the Rap: this one was in verse and the kids loved it. But they didn’t broadcast any of this, either: presumably because it didn’t chime with their portrayal of Yours Truly as an ignorant oik from Morecambe with no sense of humour.
I sat through the dreary three hours of their Morning Show the day after they recorded the interview with me, understanding – as I do every time I hear the usual output of their sister station BBC Radio Lankyshite up here – why so many Southerners think we’re all thick Oop North. At one point, the two presenters vied with each other as to which of them can yell `Woohoo’ the loudest – like two pretty stupid kids in a playground somewhere. Then the Dizzy Blonde female presenter admitted to having reversed her car into a skip on more than one occasion – but that’s what women do, isn’t it girls? Oh – and women need a Man – like the Alpha Male co-presenter – to explain to them how to do Fantasy Football – because football isn’t for dizzy blondes, is it, ladies? All this peppered with the false bonhomie which the BBC – in its infinite wisdom – thinks the Lower Orders like you and me want to hear first thing in the morning to brighten up our otherwise completely empty lives. Come back FA Fossils – all is forgiven… What was that? Oh – you run the BBC as well, do you?…
Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation is the slogan depicted in stone letters on the side of BBC Broadcasting House in London.
Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation? More like Nation Shall Speak Drivel Unto the Nation, I fear.
So I was already losing the will to live when BBC Radio Stoke started playing music from 1971. I’m old enough to remember this year and in my memory, Jimi Hendrix; Deep Purple; The Faces; Jethro Tull; The Who and the Kinks all immediately spring to mind. But they didn’t play a single track from any of these bands – why bother when you can play “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” by Middle of the Road instead?
Anyway – I suspect the whole idea backfired on the production team. Instead of being flooded with outraged calls from Crewe residents defending the attack on their town by a Morecambe fan throwing his toys out of the pram and ranting about the place because the Mighty Railwaymen had just demolished his pathetic team from Lancashire, they received a stream of tweets and calls from people elsewhere in the Potteries and further afield saying far more dire things about the town than I – as an outsider – would ever do. One woman, for instance, had once cycled from Stoke to Crewe for a day out. She rode around the roundabout there… and then came straight home again. So BBC Radio Stoke dropped their piece about the outrageous slur on a nearby town very quietly during the second hour of the programme.
So if `researcher’ Hazel Morgan wants to interview me again or Producer Andrew Bowman wants to stoke (no pun intended) a totally artificial controversy about the outrageous words concerning Port Vale that you have just read, I can save them the trouble by writing their copy for them right now:
CRAZED MORECAMBE FAN RAILS AGAINST ANOTHER OF OUR FINE POTTERIES’ TOWNS!
IN LATEST POISONOUS OUTBURST THIS LOONY RANTS
- THAT POLICE OPERATE APARTHEID IN BURSLEM
- PREDICTS GENERALISED RACE RIOTS AFTER BREXIT
- DENOUNCES FOUNDERS OF MIGHTY PORT VALE AS ALCOHOLICS
- IGNORES WARM WORDS OF WELCOME FROM LOCAL YOUTHS
- DISHONOURS LOCAL HERO HEAPY AS A COMMON HOOLIGAN
- SENSATIONALLY SUGGESTS THE PEOPLES’ CHAMPION TOM POPE IS SO BANDY HE COULDN’T STOP A PIG IN A GANGWAYTHIS BLOKE IS NOT JUST POTTY ABOUT POTTERY – HE’S JUST PLAIN POTTY!!!There you are, Andrew: job done to the highest BBC standards. And I do have a new slogan for your station which you can have totally free of charge and with my very best wishes:RADIO STOKE? – BIT OF A JOKE!
As for the City’s football team, I couldn’t possibly comment. I will leave that up to you, Valiant fans….
[1] Ten percent for this slogan please, brewery owners…
words Roger Fitton, D3D4 Morecambe correspondent