Gateshead Grump

The announcement of imminent (26 July) demolition of the (in)famous “Get Carter” car park in Gateshead, got me thinking about the wonderful glimpses into the past of our region which this great film (movie) provides. I couldn’t resist watching the DVD again - in fact I did so twice and will probably do so again very soon. Virtually every scene showed places I knew so well - and many, of course, are now no more or have changed beyond recognition.

My mind turned to my other favourite Tyneside-based films “Payroll” and “The Clouded Yellow” which show the region in earlier times. I’d had both on VHS, but they’d long ago gone the way of all old technology - in the bin - and I’d not replaced them with DVDs. So, on Wednesday evening, I ordered both from Amazon and they arrived this morning. I’ve already watched both.

“Payroll” shows many fascinating views of the Tyneside of 1961 - a very different Tyneside from that of 1971 (Get Carter). I’d forgotten just how much and how quickly things changed during the 1960s.

Yet, despite the changes, the Tyneside shown in “Payroll” was still a very familiar Tyneside - something I cannot say about all the scenes in my other favourite, “The Clouded Yellow“, which shows the Newcastle of 1950, the year I started school. Yes, the Central Station, the trolley buses, the Jesmond roads are quite familiar, but the film also shows some dark and dingy alleys leading down to the river, places I’ve never seen and would never want to have seen, and it shows the Quayside in its hey-day. What a sight!

As a young child I can vaguely remember being taken around the Quayside Sunday Market with Paddy’s Market beyond - and yes, there were many ships tied up, but I’ve never seen the amazing hustle and bustle shown in the film. Our heroes, Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard, hotly pursued by police and the Secret Service, actually arrive in Newcastle by ship. Yes, by ship!!!

So which films show the region as it was? I know of several:

Clouded Yellow 1950 (Jean Simmons, Trevor Howard, Kenneth More)
Payroll 1961 (Michael Craig, Billie Whitelaw, William Lucas)
Get Carter 1971 (Michael Caine, Brit Ekland, John Osborne)
The Likely Lads 1976 (James Bolam, Rodney Bewes)
Stormy Monday 1988 (Melanie Griffith, Sting, Sean Bean)
Billy Elliott 2000 (Jamie Bell, Julie Walters)

Does anyone know of any others? I’m really looking for examples which show the region as the back-drop to a story - not films like “Harry Potter…” or “Alien 3” which use locations in the region completely out of context, though it might be interesting to note those too.

I was wrong, the loss of the BSF funding will not save Hookergate from closure. At a meeting between parents and councilors tonight it was announced the the closure of Hookergate and the amalgamation with Ryton Comprehensive are going ahead on the same time-scale . The only  change of plan is that the proposed new school at Greenside won’t now be built. Apparently the money the council will get from the sale of the Hookergate site was the deciding factor.

A friend of mine writes “My daughter rang me about an hour ago, and she had just returned from the meeting with councillors stating that the land was worth too much money … and that the money was going ‘into the pot’, not towards the childrens’ education. That the proposed new building of Greenside school was not going ahead, and that some teachers from Hookergate will be taking redundancies!! … There are a lot of very unhappy people around tonight.” and “Apparently it was not a pleasant meeting, a lot of anger and sadness.” and “There will be one more intake of first years in September, and that will be the last, they are just phasing it out in the next three years.”

What a pity.

Hookergate School © Copyright Ivan Everett and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Like everyone else in the UK I’m dreading both the direct and indirect effects of the massive spending cuts recently announced by the coalition government. So I took particularly delight in yesterday’s news that one consequence of the cuts is that my old grammar school, Hookergate, will not now close in 2013 as was planned.

Under Labour’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) scheme, Hookergate  School was to close completely and be replaced by an enlarged Ryton Comprehensive School built under PFI contracts on a new site, probably in the Greenside area.  But yesterday Michael Gore, the Education Secretary, announced that many of the BSF projects have been scrapped to save money, incuding:

Hookergate School - (Proposed for closure) - Stopped

and

Ryton Comprehensive School - Stopped - PFI

So happily the old place, which holds many happy memories for me, is safe for the moment.