Category Archives: Fun Palaces: the history and architecture of the entertainment industry

Don’t drink the water

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Royal Pump Room, Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Royal Pump Room, Harrogate, North Yorkshire

Harrogate’s unique selling point as a spa is the sheer variety of its mineral springs.

The original spring that William Slingsby’s horse tripped over in 1571 was chalybeate, or iron-bearing:  this is now known as Tewit Well.  During the Thirty Year’s War, a “stinking well” at “old Haregate-head” was developed:  this Old Sulphur Well lies beneath the later Royal Pump Room which is now a museum [http://www.harrogate.gov.uk/immediacy-987].

Lady Elmes’ experience of the “nasty Spaw” and of her lodgings in 1665 suggests a degree of stoicism:

The first inst we arrived att the nasty Spaw, and have not began to drinke the horid sulfer watter, which all thowgh as bad as posable to be immajaned, yet in my judgment plesant, to all the doings we have within doorse, the house and all that is in it being horidly nasty and crowded up with all sorte of company, which we Eate with in a roome as the spiders are redy to drope into my mouthe, and sure hath nethor been well cleaned nor ared this doseuen yerese, it makes me much moare sicke than the nasty water.

Celia Fiennes, visiting in 1697, couldn’t persuade her horse to go anywhere near the sulphur well, yet considered the disgusting waters “a good sort of Purge if you can hold your breath so as to drinke them down”.

Traditionally, anyone is free to try the waters from a tap outside the Royal Pump Room.  Within the museum I have seen ladies behind a counter, bearing Mona Lisa smiles, prevailing on visitors to sample the water.

This is a characteristic Yorkshire welcome.

John Watson, former Conservative MP for Skipton & Ripon, told of one of his helpers, no doubt wearing his election rosette, calling at a pub between Skipton and Barnoldswick which advertised “A pie, a pint and a friendly word.”

The pie and a pint were served without a word.

“What about the friendly word?” he asked.

“Don’t eat the pie,” said the landlord.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on spas and holiday resorts, please click here.

Before Bloomingdales

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Former Medinah Temple, Chicago (detail)

Former Medinah Temple, Chicago (detail)

My Isle of Man friend John, whose antennae can detect a pipe organ over astonishing distances, has pointed me to footage of the interior of the Medinah Temple, Chicago, dating from 2000, when the Austin Opus 558 organ was intact and playable:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-3tYSxN8LQ.

Perhaps Bloomingdales missed an opportunity when they stripped out this instrument to convert the building into a department store.

Macy’s in Philadelphia, the current owners of what was once Wanamaker’s, have retained and restored the gigantic pipe organ which John Wanamaker purchased from the St Louis World’s Fair of 1904.  Designed by the great organ designer George Ashdown Audsley, this exhibition instrument – the largest in the world with over 10,000 pipes – proved insufficient to fill the volume of the store’s seven-storey atrium.  Enlargements took place in 1910-1917 and again in 1924-1930, so that there are now 28,500 pipes, controlled by six manuals.

The Wanamaker Organ, as it is still named, is a much-loved part of Philadelphia life.  It figured in one of the Knight Foundation‘s Random Acts of Culture in which 600 choral singers, disguised as shoppers, led by the chorus of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, burst into an impromptu performance of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ to the astonishment and delight of ladies trying on shoes and having their make-up done: http://www.knightarts.org/uncategorized/what-a-joyful-noise-650-singers-burst-into-hallelujah-as-part-of-random-act-of-culture%e2%80%a8%e2%80%a8%e2%80%a8.

A video history of the Wanamaker Organ is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i_mG-qDzD8.

Enjoy.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Windy City:  the architecture of Chicago please click here.

 

Shrine for shoppers

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Former Medinah Temple, Chicago

Former Medinah Temple, Chicago

The first couple of times I visited Chicago I stayed at the Cass Hotel on North Wabash Avenue – at that time an inexpensive, serviceable place to stay with a fluorescent-lit coffee-shop on the ground floor and a dark bar by the entrance.  Now it’s transformed into a boutique Holiday Inn Express:  http://www.casshotel.com/index.php.

On my first visit, in 2001, I was intrigued by the building on the next block, an exceptionally rich essay in Moorish Revival style, bristling with Islamic motifs, which I was told was the Medinah Temple – not in any sense a place of worship, but a Shriners’ temple.

The Shriners – properly entitled the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine – are virtually inexplicable to the British.  It’s akin to explaining Oddfellows to an American (though there is an American connection, the Odd Fellows).

The Shriners is a philanthropic organisation, responsible among much else for operating children’s hospitals.  The founders sought to combine Freemasonry with fun and fellowship, and their temples provided enormous auditoria in which huge fundraising entertainments could take place.

The Chicago Medinah Temple was a much-loved venue for circuses and graduations.  Built in 1912, it could seat 4,200, and because of its excellent acoustics and its huge five-manual organ it was regularly used as a recording studio by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Noël Coward, obliged to undergo an uncomfortable medical procedure in the nearby Passavant Hospital (now part of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital), was at first irritated by the noise of the massed bands of the Shriners marching to their temple, but later admitted that their rhythmic rendition of ‘Darktown Strutters’ Ball’ “helped a little, spasmodically”.

In 2000-3 the Medinah Temple’s exterior was restored, but the interior was stripped out, apart from the proscenium, the dome and some stained glass, to create a spectacular branch of Bloomingdale’s http://www1.bloomingdales.com/store/index.ognc?action=STORE_DETAIL&lstRegion=all&storeId=70001.

To find out more about the Shriners, visit http://www.shrinershq.org and http://www.shrinershq.org/Hospitals/Main.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Windy City:  the architecture of Chicago please click here.

 

 

Spirited enterprise

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Gaumont Cinema, Dingle, Liverpool

Gaumont Cinema, Dingle, Liverpool

The Cinema Theatre Association Bulletin (September/October 2010) alerted me to activity at the Gaumont Cinema, Dingle, Liverpool – a huge Art Deco pile on the corner of Park Road and Dingle Lane that I’ve been driving past for years without ever having a chance to look inside.

It was designed by the Gaumont house-architect, W E Trent, assisted by Daniel Mackay, as a replacement for an earlier, smaller cinema called the Picturedrome.  It opened on Easter Monday 1937, seating 1,503, with a second-hand Wurlitzer organ (now in the care of the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust:  [http://www.voxlancastria.org.uk/heritage]) transferred from the Trocadero Cinema, Liverpool.

W E Trent excelled at simple, sweeping architectural effects, so the exterior has a vertically-banded centrepiece, originally neon-lit, and horizontal bands of stone and brick, curving round the street corner;  the interior is a calm essay in moderne stripped classical features intended to be highlighted by concealed lighting, probably with a range of colour-changes.  Small-scale live shows were provided for:  the proscenium is 45 feet wide, the stage 15 feet deep and there are four dressing rooms.

It operated as a cinema until 1966, and then became a Top Rank bingo-club until 1998.  Thereafter it stood empty until it was taken over for redevelopment as a cultural centre despite attacks from local vandals [http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2009/02/28/owners-hope-to-restore-former-gaumot-art-deco-cinema-in-liverpool-s-dingle-100252-23030627].

The Dingle Gaumont attracts more than vandals:  it has a reputation as the most haunted cinema for miles around.  The CTA Bulletin led me to a TV series I wouldn’t otherwise have come across, Most Haunted, with an over-the-top production-style that will strike viewers as gripping or hilarious depending on their views about the supernatural:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N08jo7kNqo&feature=fvw.  (More relaxed views of the interior can be found at http://www.urbexforums.co.uk/showthread.php/6799-Former-Gaumont-Cinema-Dingle-Liverpool-June-09.)

Because of its status as “one of the most haunted locations in the North West” it has now become a venue for ghost-hunters:  http://www.britevents.com/whats-on/merseyside/dingle/gaumont-cinema/74823.  Tickets cost £49, and you need to bring your own sandwiches.

Bingo kept the place going for decades.  It’s good to see a new way of gaining income from an old cinema.  And it’s an excellent way of deterring the vandals.

The Cinema Theatre Association website is at http://www.cinema-theatre.org.uk.

Images from a November 2011 urban explorer’s visit are at http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/66021-Gaumont-Cinema-Dingle-Liverpool-November-2011.

Excellent undated images are at http://urbanliverpool.blogspot.co.uk/p/gaumont-cinema-dingle.html.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Fun Palaces:  the history and architecture of the entertainment industry please click here.

 

End of the pier show

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West Pier, Brighton (1980)

West Pier, Brighton (1980)

Two individuals have been arrested on a charge of arson in connection with the fire at Hastings Pier on October 5th 2010.  Of course, they’re innocent until proved guilty, but even if these two were uninvolved, arson is the likely cause of the fire.  Derelict seaside piers are not prone to spontaneous combustion.

The most spectacular example of such destruction is Brighton West Pier (1863-6), built – like Hastings –by the great Victorian pier engineer Eugenius Birch.  This most splendid of British piers, Grade I listed, was a location in Richard Attenborough’s film, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).  It was partly closed the year after the film came out, and completely closed to the public in 1975.

Battles between owners who wanted to demolish it and Brighton residents who wanted to take it over and restore it continued until the Brighton West Pier Trust bought it for £10 in 1984.  Storm damage in 1987-8 isolated the concert hall and pavilion:  a temporary connection was eventually built in 1996 on the strength of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of just under a million pounds, which was followed two years later by the promise of over ten million pounds of funding for a full restoration.

Two successive devastating storms on December 29th 2002 and January 20th 2003 caused the central section of the pier and the concert hall to collapse.

On March 28th 2003 the isolated pavilion was destroyed by a fire.  On May 11th the same year what was left of the concert hall caught fire.  The following day that fire reignited.  On June 23rd 2004 the remaining shell of the central section blew down in a gale.

The West Pier Trust was eventually compelled to give up hope of restoring what was left of the pier, and turned their attention to building a 150-metre observation tower, I360, on the site.  The current intention is to complete this structure by the summer of 2015:  http://www.westpier.co.uk/the-future.

The sad vestige of the pavilion has an elegance of its own, and Flickr is awash with superb photographs of its outline against the sea and the sky [http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=brighton+west+pier].  There is also a poignant documentary of 2003 by Hannah James:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egikqrDRcww. 

The most exciting and evocative e-experience of the West Pier, however, is a virtual tour by the Brighton-based F10 studios:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rtkWdauc5E.

Pure magic.

A further stage in the inevitable disappearance of the remains of the West Pier is chronicled at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-26046379. 

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lectures on seaside architecture, Away from it all:  the heritage of holiday resorts, Beside the Seaside:  the architecture of British coastal resorts, Blackpool’s Seaside Heritage and Yorkshire’s Seaside Heritage, please click here.

 

Bringing the house down

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Hippodrome Theatre, Derby (1993)

Hippodrome Theatre, Derby (1993)

The last two articles [Hug the Odeon and Hug another Odeon] have highlighted auditoria that are intact (just), architecturally valuable, unlisted and in danger of demolition.

Listing a building doesn’t, of course, automatically guarantee its security.  The Hippodrome Theatre, Derby is a notorious example of what can happen to a supposedly protected building.

In this case, the owner, Mr Christopher Anthony, under the pretext of making repairs, managed to remove the stage area and much of the roof.  The delicacy with which this was accomplished can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5UOSz2dBg and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YlUJUyLcMk&feature=related.  This followed an earlier arson attack which, by means which are unclear, destroyed plasterwork around the dress circle and the proscenium arch.

Derby City Council, supported by such organisations as English Heritage, Derby Civic Society, the Theatres Trust and the Cinema Theatre Association, has pursued Mr Anthony through legal action, not only for the damage caused to the previously intact building but also by rejecting his application to turn the site into, of all things, a multi-storey car-park.

Why does this matter?  Leaving aside the civic and legal arguments about the significance and effectiveness of listed-building legislation, the Hippodrome had, and still has, historical and architectural value.  It was built in 1914, right at the end of the great late-Victorian and Edwardian boom in building variety theatres.  It is the only known surviving example of the work of the Scottish architects, Charles T Marshall & William Tweedy.  Though it was adapted as a cinema in 1930, it returned to theatre use from 1950 to 1959;  it operated as a bingo club from 1962 until it abruptly closed in 2007.

As a result of this history it was very little altered.  I took groups to visit it, by courtesy of Walkers Bingo, repeatedly during the 1980s and 1990s.  The auditorium, stage-tower and grid were intact.  At some time in the early 1990s the auditorium was redecorated and the seating reupholstered.

Bingo kept the roof on and the building warm for decades.  There were even occasional Christmas shows on the stage.  Derby is not well blessed with auditoria, and can ill afford to lose this one.

Indeed, the city is rather better provided with multi-storey car-parks.

The rallying-point for those who wish to see the Hippodrome somehow restored is the Derby Hippodrome Restoration Trust, whose website is http://www.derbyhippodrome.co.uk.  The Theatres Trust website has a detailed architectural description: http://www.theatrestrust.org.uk/resources/theatres/show/118-hippodrome-derby.

A detailed options appraisal report from the architectural practice Lathams, with phtconsultants, examines alternative possibilities for restoration:  http://derbyhippodrome.co.uk/resources/Options-Appraisal-Report-17.04.12.pdf.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Fun Palaces:  the history and architecture of the entertainment industry please click here.

Hug another Odeon

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Former Paramount Cinema, Manchester (1996)

Former Paramount Cinema, Manchester (1996)

The New Victoria Cinema (latterly the Odeon), Bradford stands mouldering because its owners have pointedly neglected it for ten years and English Heritage has seen insufficient evidence to list it and secure its survival.

The Paramount Cinema, Oxford Street, Manchester, which finally closed in 2004, is in an even worse state.

Like the New Victoria, Bradford, it was opened in 1930 – in this case the very first Paramount cinema in the British provinces.  Designed by the Paramount house-architects, Frank T Verity and his son-in-law Sam Beverly, it seated 2,920 in an elaborate baroque auditorium with a Wurlitzer organ which survives in Stockport Town Hall [http://www.voxlancastria.org.uk/ltot01.htm].  Certainly it’s been knocked about a bit:  it was repeatedly subdivided in 1973, 1979 and 1992, and photographs show that the removal of the organ did no favours to the organ case.

The developers, Manchester & Metropolitan, carried out what they described as “limited and entirely lawful exposure works in anticipation of the forthcoming redevelopment”.  This involved ripping out easily accessible decorative features and discouraged English Heritage from listing.

In fact, thanks to YouTube, it’s clear that a substantial amount of the original auditorium decoration remains:  go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3E8RPd0JFo&feature=fvw and fast-forward to 2:45.

Websites discussing the potential future of the Paramount include http://www.cinema-theatre.org.uk/press/pr02_2007.htm, http://www.g7uk.com/photo-video-blog/20070519-manchesters-odeon-cinema-subjected-to-a-damaging-systematic-and-methodical-assault-to-prevent-preservation.shtml and – a more matter-of-fact view – http://www.aidan.co.uk/article_paramount_manchester.htm.

The parallels with Bradford are instructive.  A hopelessly large auditorium is subdivided in the 1960s to maintain its commercial viability;  by the end of the twentieth century the game is up and redevelopment is seen as the answer.  Finding a creative solution to preserve such a building is understandably off the developer’s script while its true architectural and historical significance is hidden.

Yet both these erstwhile Odeons stand within a potentially lucrative cultural quarter.  The Bradford building is next to the Alhambra Theatre and is within sight of the National Media Museum.  The Cinema Theatre Association Bulletin (September/October 2010) suggests that the Manchester Odeon may have a future use as a supplementary conference venue alongside Manchester Central, the former G-Mex.

Alternatively, the building next door is a J D Wetherspoon’s pub – called, suggestively, the Paramount.

Probably the last urban-explorer images of the Paramount, taken shortly before demolition started in January 2017), are at https://www.28dayslater.co.uk/odeon-nee-paramount-cinema-manchester-jan-2017.t107194.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Fun Palaces:  the history and architecture of the entertainment industry please click here.

 

Hug the Odeon

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Former New Victoria Cinema, Bradford (1986)

Former New Victoria Cinema, Bradford (1986)

When the New Victoria Cinema, Bradford opened in September 1930 it was the third largest cinema in the UK, seating 3,318 patrons.  Designed by the Bradford architect William Illingworth, its exterior is punctuated by two domed entrance towers.  The fan-shaped auditorium, elaborately decorated with classical pilasters and friezes, is surmounted by a 70-foot diameter dome.  There was a tea lounge, a 200-cover restaurant and a high-ceilinged ballroom with its own separate entrance.

The proscenium was 50 feet wide by 35 feet high;  the stage, 70 feet by 45 feet, was equipped with a full grid and ten dressing-rooms, because in 1930 live shows were a requirement and there was no guarantee that the fashion for new-fangled, technically unreliable talkies would last.

The original Wurlitzer survived a 1946 flood, because someone had the presence of mind to park the console at the top of its lift:  it now resides in the deliberately named New Victoria Centre, Howden-le-Wear, Co Durham.

The New Victoria became the Gaumont in 1950.  At the end of the 1950s decline set in:  the ballroom closed in 1961 and the Wurlitzer was removed when the building was subdivided in 1968.  Illingworth’s auditorium was so vast that, instead of the usual practice of dropping a wall from the balcony end to create additional screens in the rear stalls, the balcony itself was divided into two screens by a vertical partition and a floor across to the proscenium, and the stalls area became a 1,000-seater Mecca bingo hall. The twinned cinema reopened as the Odeon in August 1969.  In 1988 a third screen was opened within the otherwise unused ballroom.

After the bingo-club closed in 1997 and the multiplex cinema followed in 2000 the building stood empty.  It was sold first to a developer and later to Yorkshire Forward:  both planned to demolish the Odeon completely, and repeated redevelopment schemes excited vociferous opposition led by the Bradford Odeon Rescue Group [BORG], who in 2007 arranged for a thousand people to link hands and hug the entire building.

Public-sector bodies such as Yorkshire Forward and Bradford Centre Regeneration [BCR] claimed that the building had no historical value and is deteriorating, which it might well be after a decade without active maintenance.  English Heritage has remained unconvinced that it is worth listing, and interested groups such as the Twentieth Century Society and the Cinema Theatre Association have had difficulty gaining access to prove otherwise.

In the end, it fell to urban explorers, those curious obsessive aficionados of dereliction, to provide incontrovertible evidence that the original decorative scheme remains.  The 1968-9 conversion proved to be a shell built within the original space, and the ballroom conversion simply involved installing a suspended ceiling;  Odeon Cinema, Bradford – Whatevers Left.

To see some of what remains, check –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTZ6cmoURRU&feature=related.  It’s an eye-opener.

There’s a detailed history of the New Victoria Cinema at http://www.bradfordtimeline.co.uk/newvic.htm.  The present owners of the New Victoria Wurlitzer are at http://www.netoa.org.uk.

In September 2012 the agreement with the developer who intended to demolish it fell through, prompting a fresh search for an economic solution:  http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/9941717._All_viable_options_open__after_Odeon_deal_collapses and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-20097997.

The Homes & Communities Agency, to which the building had devolved, proposed to sell it to Bradford City Council for £1, and to provide £4.1 million to secure the building.  A structural survey revealed that, after all, the building was in better condition than had previously been suggested.

Irna Qureshi’s article in The Guardian (September 21st 2012) surveys the fall and rise of the New Victoria Cinema’s fortunes:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/sep/21/bradford-georgegalloway.

A 2014 film by Mark Nicholson and Vicky Leith shows how the building revealed itself as the 1970s accretions were stripped away:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Eidel-etU.

An urban-explorer report, presumably dating from early 2017, shows the extent of the cavernous spaces inside the New Victoria waiting to be restored: http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/15377618.23_PICTURES_____Urban_explorer____photographer_gets_a_rare_glimpse_inside_Bradford_s_Odeon_building/#gallery0.

For details of Mike Higginbottom’s lecture Fun Palaces:  the history and architecture of the entertainment industry please click here.

Cosy curry

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Brunswick Inn, Railway Village, Derby

Brunswick Inn, Railway Village, Derby

The other rite-of-passage at the age of sixty, after the bus pass, is the Senior Railcard.  It has to be after the bus pass because there is a cost and it’s not worth having until the first time you use it:  if you buy it the first day you need it, you have more days to use it at the other end (assuming you live that long).

We chose to launch my mate Richard’s railcard by taking the train from Sheffield to Derby, a mere forty minutes, to visit the Brunswick Inn in the Railway Village, three minutes’ walk from the station:  http://www.brunswickderby.co.uk.

Take a close look at the Railway Village houses and it’s obvious that this is polite architecture, not speculative artisan housing – actually by Francis Thompson, company architect of the North Midland Railway – built very early in the railway age, 1840-2.

The pub, occupying the apex of the triangular street-pattern, is distinctly elegant:  apparently it was originally the Brunswick Railway & Commercial Inn – catering for commercial travellers by offering storage for sample-cases, telegram facilities and generous opening hours.

The houses and the pub were scheduled for demolition in 1970, and were rescued by the Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust.  The Brunswick reopened in 1987, and a microbrewery was added in 1991:  the place collects awards, including UK Beer Pub of the Year, 2001.

From the Brunswick, we walked round to London Road, where there is a superlative Indian restaurant called Anoki [Derby | Anoki].  Anoki’s chief claims to fame are its superb food – £35 buys a multi-course banquet that leaves you full but not bursting – and its assiduously attentive staff.  The male waiters, who are in a majority, wear the sort of elaborate uniforms I associate with Indian border guards – hats with fans and shoes with curly toes.  The place is high camp:  the immaculate gents is liberally provided with fluffy white towels, the floor scattered with rose-petals.

Its historical claim to fame is that the building is the former Cosy Cinema, built in 1913, and later renamed the Forum (1939) and finally the Cameo (1950).  As the Cameo it featured an adventurous and unsuccessful line in French avant garde films;  better business was done by placing an advertisement at the exit to Derby Midland Station to attract long-distance passing trade.  Occasionally, when the house-lights went up, patrons would be found wearing dressing-gowns and pyjamas, refugees from the Infirmary across the road.

After the cinema closed in 1959 it became a furniture showroom:  installing display windows wrecked the ornate baroque façade.  The restaurant occupies the balcony level, built across to the former proscenium.  The barrel ceiling and caryatides are beautifully decorated and, where the original screen would have been, an endless loop of Bollywood clips is projected.

The place has impeccable style.

Madeleine moment

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Theatre, Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire

Theatre, Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire

My Isle of Man host-with-the-most John has provided further details of the Wurlitzer organ at Stanford Hall, Nottinghamshire, which, as I mentioned in the previous blog, was bought second-hand from the Madeleine Theatre in Paris in 1937 for Sir Julien Cahn’s private theatre attached to his house.

The organ came, not from the Madeleine Theatre (1924), which still exists in the Rue de Surene [http://www.theatremadeleine.com/index-historique.html], but from another Madeleine Theatre, which is now an opticians, designed entirely as a cinema by Marcel Oudin in 1918, at 14 Boulevard de la Madeleine .  The Wurlitzer – one of only two French Wurlitzers – was installed by the then owners, Loew Inc, in 1926.  According to Ken Roe’s contribution to http://cinematreasures.org/theater/23874/ the cinema subsequently became the Gaumont Madeleine and showed films until at least the mid-1970s.

The website http://www.theatreorgans.com indicates this Wurlitzer was repossessed at some point after installation.  This modest instrument was an ideal purchase for Sir Julien’s 352-seat theatre – “une salle élégante“, as the French account has it.

The knobs and bells and whistles of the Wurlitzer have a more elegant tone when described in French:  les clochettes de traîneau [sleigh bells], les sabots de cheval [horses’ hooves], les vagues [waves], les oiseaux [birdsong], la corne d’auto [car hooter], le gong d’incendie [fire-alarm], le sifflet de bateau à vapeur [steamboat whistle], la sirène [siren], le tam-tam [gong], et la sonnerie de porte [doorbell].

Among his many talents, John is a church organist and confessed, many years ago, to an ambition to play a Wurlitzer like the Blackpool Tower Ballroom.  My influence in Blackpool runs nowhere near that far, but I managed to give him the opportunity to play the Stanford Hall Wurlitzer.

Sometime in the late 1980s I ran a WEA day-visit to country houses in south Nottinghamshire, and smuggled John into the orchestra pit of the Stanford Hall Theatre – then part of the Co-operative College – with an arrangement that when at the end of my tour I brought the group into the back of the auditorium and said, “And this is the private theatre…” John would press the lift-button on the console and rise from the pit playing ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’.

Which would have worked perfectly if John had realised how far up the lift goes, or I’d been aware that he suffers from vertigo.  It’s quite difficult to keep a grip when you’re playing with both hands and both feet.  I suppose buttock-clenching is the only resort and I’ve never liked to ask.

Certainly John’s performance had a certain bravura quality, and we’ve both dined out on the story ever since.