St Paul's, Jarrow

THURSDAY 31 JANUARY

Having got a little hot under the collar yesterday, I’ve decided to calm myself down a bit today. I am therefore pleased to be able to guarantee that there’ll be nothing even remotely controversial about this posting. I promise.

BBC RADIO NEWCASTLE
There are changes to the weekend schedule from this coming Saturday and Sunday. The new Saturday timetable looks like this...
0600 - Howe’s Fishing
0630 - Simon Hoban
0900 - Sue Sweeney
1300 - Alfie’s Comic Cuts ( - the best bits from Alfie Joey’s weekday programmes)
1400 - North-East Sport
1830 - Jamie Wilkinson
2200 - Sue Sweeney
Sundays look like this...
0530 - Howe’s Fishing
0600 - Frank Wappat
0730 - Jon Harle
0900 - Sue Sweeney
1300 - Garden Mania
1400 - Kathy Secker
1700 - Paddy MacDee (Solid Gold Sunday)
1900 - Frank Wappat
2200 - Sue Sweeney
Sunday morning’s Nightshift will therefore start one hour later, at 0100 instead of midnight.

WINNING WEBSITES
As promised, here are the prize-winning websites I mentioned on Wednesday morning.
Best Ethical Website - thenag.net
Best Travel Website - worldreviewer.com
Best Innovative Site - moveme.com
Best Educational Site - friendsabroad.co.uk
Best Social Site - doggysnaps.com
Best Weird And Wonderful Site - facesinplaces.blogspot.com
Best Charitable Site - freerice.com
Best Shopping Site - nigelsecostore.com
Try them out - they’re awesome!

See? Nothing controversial at all.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
ianstuartrobinson@googlemail.com
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.

Neptune, Durham City

WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY

THE STATUE
At the risk of boring you to tears by grinding this particular axe once again.......I really have had a proverbial bee in my bonnet about the statue of Lord Londonderry that befouls and besmirches the Market Place in Durham City for some years now. When I was in my teens and going to school in Durham, I naturally spent a lot of time there - and often went back on Saturdays too, to visit my schoolmates. Like many local people, I became besotted with Durham's combination of grandeur and intimacy and by the time I left home at 18 I think I knew the city as well as anyone of my tender years. This means that I have carried my hatred of Lord Londonderry’s monument around with me for over 40 years!

But why? I guess I should firstly define my terms here. The sculpture in question (pictured on yesterday’s blog-posting) is a perfectly acceptable - though by no means outstanding - example of the Victorian sculptor’s art. It is competently designed and reasonably well-made. As a work of art, that is one of its main problems as far as I am concerned. It is just too ‘ordinary’ to grace the municipal centre of a unique city. It also too big for such an intimate space.

But it is not because of its artistic merits (or demerits) that I would rather see it at the bottom of some forgotten cesspit. It is the man who is commemorated that offends me so much. Lord Londonderry was a grasping and avaricious coal-owner of the very worst kind - in an area where grasping and avaricious coal-owners were the norm. He treated his miners much worse than he treated his cattle - much worse. Stories of his pompous, cruel and callous disregard for his pitmen’s lives, and thus the lives of their families, are legion. Even after several explosions at his collieries, he refused to sanction the use of safety-lamps because they were too ‘expensive’ - and this over 50 years after they had been introduced elsewhere. He spoke against their use in the Lords and even resisted their introduction after they became compulsory. His miners were still taking candles underground in the 1860s.

Lady Londonderry was even worse, in her own way. To her, miners were bestial savages to be displayed to her London visitors. She insisted, when she drove her visitors through the streets of Seaham, that her husband’s workers - unwashed and black with coal - should line the streets and applaud her as she passed by.

Even by the standards of the time, the Londonderrys were a grotesque and much-criticised parody of capitalism - even fascism - and I have never understood why they should be honoured with any memorial at all, let alone an oversized and grandiose statue like the one in Durham City. Their true monuments are the graves of the pitmen who died in their collieries - almost always as a direct result of the Londonderrys’ reactionary greed and almost unbelievable disregard for humanity. There are many sources of evidence for the legendary cruelty of this monstrous couple; if you can, get your hands on a copy of Troubled Seams by John McCutcheon. I promise, you’ll never be able to look at the Londonderry statue again.

Naturally, these are not the reasons that Durham City Council is considering the removal of the two Market Place monuments. Personally, I would much prefer Neptune to stay exactly where he is. After all, he is a historically important and interesting figure who stood in the Market Place from the late 18th century to mark a drinking pant and to commemorate a bold scheme to canalise the River Wear from Sunderland to Durham - a scheme which came to nothing (as it happens). I reckon he is a harmless talking point and focus for the square.

If the Council decides that Lord Londonderry’s statue should stay, then perhaps the plaque on the plinth could - at the very least - be replaced with a more honest and much less deferential inscription.......
’a man who, with his execrable wife, and by the decisions he made and the actions he took (or did not take), caused the deaths and/or serious injuries of many hundreds of miners over many years.....’

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
ianstuartrobinson@googlemail.com
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.

Market Place, Durham City

TUESDAY 29 JANUARY

THE MYSTERY POEM
Towards the end of this morning’s programme, I read out a poem I had received via ‘snail-mail’ before Christmas. If you heard it, you may have wondered why such a wonderfully funny - and cleverly-written - poem should have been kept under wraps for so long. Well, to be honest, I thought that, if I kept quiet for long enough, the poet would make himself known to me - if only to find out why his handiwork had not been broadcast. Alas, he has kept himself firmly in the shadows and I am no wiser now than I was when I received it. Unable to resist the temptation any longer, I have released his poem into the wild where it belongs. I hope you enjoyed it - especially if you are its originator. If you missed it, you can hear it again on Sunday’s Nightshift.

SUNDAY
Changes to BBC Radio Newcastle’s schedule mean that, from this coming weekend, Sunday editions of The Nightshift will be starting one hour later than heretofore, namely at 0100 - the same time as every other night of the week. (Isn’t ‘heretofore’ a wonderful word? Like ‘wherewithal’ and ‘notwithstanding'!) There are unexpectedly exotic reasons for this which I will explain in Thursday’s posting.

THE THEME MUSIC PROJECT
Thanks for all your suggestions, which range from the intros to Sugar Coated Icebergs and All I Need Is A Miracle, through Fanfare For The Common Man, I (Who Have Nothing) (!), Claire de lune, Albinoni’s Adagio, Grieg’s In The Hall Of The Mountain King, to You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) and many others. Please keep them coming. And if you think you can actually write a short intro/theme to The Nightshift, I’d be glad to hear from you!

THE STATUE
The picture above is of the statue in Durham City’s Market Place which I have seriously wanted removed ever since I learned the life-story of the revolting man it represents. Gilly’s news that the City Council is considering its removal - albeit for all the wrong reasons - is the best news I’ve heard for years. I will have more to say about this on tomorrow’s posting. In the meantime - and especially if you’re not sure why I get so aeriated about this - take a glance over any potted life of the Third Marquis of Londonderry. Google him. (Someone ought to have Googled him at birth.) QED.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
ianstuartrobinson@googlemail.com
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.

Norham Castle

MONDAY 28 JANUARY

A few blogsters (or whatever we’re called) have had the enormous effrontery to criticise me - ME! - for not being more forthcoming in the personal details attached to this blog; the ‘profile’. I’ve had requests to know what my favourite songs are, or my favourite colour or book or item of clothing. Why on earth anyone would want or need to know such things is well beyond me; it strikes me that there are much more interesting things to know about people - like ‘what superpower would you like?’, ‘who would you hate to be stuck in a lift with?’ or ‘what’s your most expensive (or most personally-valued) possession?’

So Top Ten Favourite Films it is, then! As a matter of fact, when I sat down to draw up my list about an hour ago, it took no time at all for my Top Ten Films to become my Top Forty-Two Films. Where do you draw the line? How can you include Fred and Ginger in a list that also contains Pan’s Labyrinth and then justify the list? What criteria should you use for including a film in the first place - nostalgia, acting, direction, overall quality? I suspect that this is the reason I’ve avoided making such a list in the first place. On the plus side, being forced to make choices in this way quickly becomes an interesting intellectual exercise. Try it for yourself.

Having whittled the list down to just ten, I have genuinely found it impossible to rank the movies from 1 to 10. So in no particular order, here goes....

The earliest film I can positively remember watching on nana’s old monochrome tv set (bought, like thousands of others, for the 1953 coronation) was I Remember Mama. It was probably of no particular merit, and its ‘leading lady’ was Irene Dunne - quite a star in the 40s but now long forgotten. Interestingly, the film’s only claim to any kind of tenuous ‘fame’ was that Barbara Bel Geddes was in it. If you want to know how she found wider acclaim later in her life.....look it up!

Naturally, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers must be included. Even though it’s not just your disbelief you have to suspend when you watch them, they still have the power to transform a miserable damp Sunday in Elswick to a sunny warm Sunday in Hollywood. Their best film is probably Swing Time. Or perhaps Carefree. Or maybe Top Hat. Dammit!

One of my favourite composers is Philip Glass, some of whose music I once played on The Nightshift. He once co-operated on what was, at the time, a ground-breaking trilogy of films. The best of them is called Powaqqatsi and I must include it in my list.

I am of an age, too, when any list of top-notch movies must include something from the Ealing Studios. But which one? The Ladykillers? The Titfield Thunderbolt? The Lavender Hill Mob? The Man In The White Suit? Laughter In Paradise? Passport To Pimlico? This really is an impossible choice; they all mean so much to me, even now. But I’ve decided that The Belles of St Trinian’s says it all. You really can’t go wrong with Alastair Sim, George Cole and the sainted Joyce Grenfell.

I’m a big fan of William Hurt and agonised over which of his movies to include. Second Best is a real charmer but it was pipped at the post by Smoke - if only because of that film’s closing sequence.

And how do you choose between The Railway Children and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, both of which I watched over Christmas. I swear I know the scripts by heart. The answer is to omit them both. Sadly, that’s what I’ve done.

It’s generally regarded as unfashionable to like Steven Spielberg’s films these days. But I do. So I’m bunging Close Encounters Of The Third Kind into my list, if only because of ‘that’ moment when the entire cinema audience gasps in amazement.

For not dissimilar reasons, I couldn’t possibly leave out 2001: A Space Odyssey. I remember sitting in my cinema seat long after the film ended, open-mouthed in sheer awe.

Things are now getting tricky. There’s Napoleon Dynamite, Fight Club, Gattaca, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Golden Compass.....I knew it. It just can’t be done. You’ll find that you end up with the same headache I’ve got if you try to do this. But.....

I must include three of the films I’ve most enjoyed in the last few years. I’m usually not a big fan of subtitled films - there’s too much for me to do while I’m watching them! But Amelie (since branded as a ‘chick-flick’ by some critics) and A Very Long Engagement (also starring the wonderful Audrey Tautou) are truly irresistible.

And the very best film ever made? It’s called The Lives Of Others and was released only about a year ago in German. It concerns life in East Germany during and after the Berlin Wall period. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know perfectly well why I’ve chosen it. If you haven’t, there is a very big gap indeed in your cinematic experience which you should fill as soon as you can.

OK, OK. I know you disagree with everything I’ve said and every film I’ve chosen. So try it yourself and you’ll see just how tricky it can be. Be imaginative and perhaps there’s a Nightshift item in the making here!

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
ianstuartrobinson@googlemail.com
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.

Our Mascot

FRIDAY 25 JANUARY

GROSVENOR
Thanks to Lawrence for sending me the latest pictures of our glorious mascot Grosvenor, the Black Rat. And what a fine-looking creature he is, to be sure. His plump proportions and shiny coat not only put all other, less media-friendly, rats to shame; they also bespeak a life of pampered ease, which is no more than a Rat of his importance deserves. He is truly Grosvenor the Happy Rat and the entire company of truckshunters should be grateful to Lawrence for looking after him so well on our behalf.

Are his ears supposed to look like that. though? They look almost human; unnervingly so, in fact. They remind me of an ex-colleague.....

Thanks to truckshunter Mary from Low Fell for calling me the other day to remind me that the Chinese New Year is almost upon us - the Year of the Rat. What do you think we should do to celebrate? A ‘live’ Nightshift, perhaps? Hmmmmm.....

THE MINER’S HYMN
Another ‘thankyou’ now - this time to the many truckshunters who answered the call of our President, Bob Williams from Blackhall Colliery. He wanted to know if there was a recording of the Miner’s Hymn and you responded exactly as I would have expected. It seems there are at least three. You may be interested to know the details. The Grimethorpe Colliery Band include it on a CD produced by Castle Music (based in Chessington, Surrey). The Ellington Colliery Band have also made a CD which includes the Miner’s Hymn - you can get further details from their website: ecband.org.uk. And Easington District Council (whom God preserve) include it on a CD they commissioned called Banners Music.

This last-mentioned CD actually sounds very interesting. Kev tells me that 200 local musicians and singers perform on it - led by the redoubtable Jez Lowe. The Daily Telegraph named it ‘Folk Album of the Year’. So well done, Easington District Council - you are almost (but not quite) forgiven for inflicting that dreadful logo and slogan on us.

WEBSITES
Most people who use the internet to buy CDs tend to go for amazon.co.uk - usually with good reason. If, however, you’re into more unconventional music of any kind - including rock, folk, jazz, classical and world - you may also like to try CDbaby.com. It’s an American site chockablock with fascinating and often rarely-recorded music that deserves a wider audience.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or contact me in any one (or more) of these ways....
ian.robinson@bbc.co.uk
ianstuartrobinson@googlemail.com
text 07786 200954 (while the programme is on-air)
call (between about 0545 and 0630 Monday to Friday) 0191 232 6565
Ian Robinson, The Nightshift, BBC Radio Newcastle, Spital Tongues, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE99 1RN

NOTE
Please bear in mind that the views expressed in this blog are my own and NOT the views of the BBC.