A man in a suit has a tea tray with one cup of tea in a cup and saucer. He’s bringing it to another man in a suit who sits at a desk, the desk has a ‘Leader of Birmingham City Council’ plaque on it.
The man at the desk is reading a paper. The headline reads, ‘HSBC to move headquarters to Birmingham’.
Standing man says, “OK so they won’t pay us any business rates, but maybe they’ll tell us how to hide our money from Eric Pickles.”
Matt nails it again.
Welcome to Paradise City #1. We’re as surprised to be here as you are. We just put a sign up form up for a joke, but lots of you wanted to sign up for… for what? We’re not sure. You are our early adopters. You’ve stood outside our shop from 5pm the night before to get your hands on this newsletter. As you stumble out of our boutique into the street, feeling a little guilty and sick, perhaps, the man from the Evening Mail is there asking you “Why?”. “Why did you have to be here?” he says “What does it mean to you?” “I just wanted to be here” you say “it means everything”. That guy is not very good at interviews, or rather he is so long as what you want is the most banal consumerist platitude.
And then off you go, clutching the prize and you open it and… it’s alright. There’s loads of things missing though, really. It’s like the start of a good idea. They’ll get it right next time, and when they do… you’ll be here. It means everything.
via @ChrisBeanland
There are plans afoot to for NatWest tower to be replaced by temporary giant balloon model of a poodle. If any temporary public art is going up in town then King Kong has the pedigree — if only we knew where he was. (Saved you a click, he’s in Penrith).
Bobby Alden has thrown his mane into the ring to be new head twat on Top Gear by suggesting cycling is just for quiche loving tree huggers. By the way, Birmingham Gave The World Top Gear.
Eastside got a rebranded again as the Solar Eclipse Quarter (via @craigfots) but Sadly City TV didn’t cover the eclipse quite as well as their predecessors did (via @therealsoundhog)
She has her father’s eyes, doesn’t she?
Surely it won’t be hard to track down this distinctive looking family of Back to The Futurecosplayers — @just_ade found their memory card on the Parade in Sutton.
Infamous Erdington nudist hotel The Clover Spa is having a “clearance sale” — they’re stripping the place bare apparently.
So hello then #WorldPoetryDay
You are a day
For poetry
And also trees
And Downs Syndrome
I wonder what colour they’ve
Lit up the
Library?
Occasional author of brummicana Chris Beanland spotted this lovely promo video for the second city — we ran an extract of his book a while back.
So that’s it for now. Let us know if this is the right sort of thing by tweeting us and tell your friends if you liked it.
As Philip Larkin said about sex, British satire began in the 1960s and it has never looked back. That Was The Week That Was, Beyond The Fringe, Harold Macmillan impressions and that time when the varying heights of John Cleese and the Two Ronnies taught us all about class. Life was changing: young upstarts with just a public school and Oxbridge education behind them were bravely taking on the ruling elites that they were born to join and things would never be the same again.
But where would British satire be without the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, the comedy hothouse that produced Douglas Adams, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Stephen Fry and, erm, Tim Brooke-Taylor? Displaying all the quiet entitlement of a cat lounging on clean washing, Footlights alumni have inhabited every matey TV panel show and chortlesome Radio 4 smug-in for four decades. And where would Footlights be without that distinctive name? Possibly just a footnote in history: another boring revue club, like they have at that ‘other’ university. And without Birmingham we would not have footlights.
Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 72: British Satire”
Amid the hoo-ha around the fracas, it’s easy to overlook that the current brooha-ha is the result of Birmingham’s influence. Yes, Birmingham invented the mechanisms of modern TV, yes, Birmingham was responsible for the growth of the motor car, and yes Birmingham has made Jeremy Clarkson more upset about concrete than a patsy who’s about to take a swimming lesson from the mafia. But we have an even more direct role in the ding-dong than that, because way back in 1977, just after we invented The Star Wars, Birmingham invented Top Gear.
Those clamouring for a more serious, Reithian, look at the automobile industry need only to look back at the first series: hosted by a woman — Angela ‘Short Fat Hairy Legs’ Rippon no less — it featured endless investigations into safety, re-run after re-run of colour-bleached footage of crash test dummies. The dummies drove cars, they drove them fast, and they said very little: it was a time of equality, it was a time of wit. It was a time that Big Centre TV and their flagship Land Rovers Live are harking back to today. But, if possible, with more stilted presenters.
Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 71: Top Gear”
With all the new developments we’re being involved with, with all the independence our council, the hyperlocal media in partnership with the Post and Mail, and various quasi non-governmental organisations are supporting, with all the impact we can have when we come together — we live in Paradise. And we get great cake! LOL.
Wow, Birmingham!
We’ll never spam you, sell your email address, or ever bother to send an issue, probably.
See an sample issue:
Continue reading “Paradise City – the best email newsletter in our Greater Birmingham!”
Hmmm – what to read…? Celebrity cellulite hell; top-ten handbags-to-die-for; how to bake the perfect chocolate cheesecake; how to lose 15 stone in three days; how to perform the perfect blow-job; how to maintain the will to live….
Amidst today’s flim-flam of celebrity, lifestyle, fashion and beauty publications consumed by much of British womanhood, there does exist progressive, political, publishing on women and their rights: and it is Birmingham, through one of its own daughters, that can proudly take the credit.
Long before there was Spare Rib (the late-lamented tribune of 1970s British second-wave feminism) there was The English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864). This pioneering periodical was co-founded by Birmingham lass (albeit quite a posh one), Bessie Rayner Parkes, who was born in the city in 1829.
Her affluent, middle-class parents were Joseph Parkes, a solicitor of a radical political bent, and Elizabeth Rayner Priestley, granddaughter of scientist, philosopher and Unitarian minister, a chap you may have heard of: Joseph Priestley.
Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 70: Feminist journals”
Here are two things that are hot right now: craft beer, and Birmingham.
So hot are these two things that when The Guardian ran yet another piece a piece on how Birmingham is cool now, craft beer formed a central part of its thesis:
“Two years ago, you struggled to get a pint of real ale, let alone craft beer, in most of Birmingham. Now, from Colmore Row, down John Bright Street, to Digbeth, the city centre is awash in the stuff. It’s as if a phalanx of hipsters, fleeing London’s housing market, have swept up the West Coast mainline to alight at New Street.”
Now that’s not true (we’ve had real and craft beer for at least two and a half years*) but it doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. If craft beer is a measure of how cool a place is, then just how cool is Birmingham? And what would be a fair test?
I’ve got an idea.
Continue reading “The Craft City Line”
Anyone who regularly travels by train between Birmingham and Coventry will know that the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) is a little like Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree. As the train pulls into Birmingham International station, every train regular is wondering, which land is at the NEC this week? If the carriage is suddenly full of perfume, giggling women and designer handbags, it’s probably the Clothes Show. If it’s wall-to-wall North Face, it’ll be a hiking event (or a Christian rock concert) and if there’s a faint pong of wet dog, you know that it’s the Liberal Democrat conference.
The NEC is the UK’s largest conference centre and it is fitting that it is in Birmingham, home to the world’s first ever purpose-built permanent exhibition hall.
Bingley Hall opened on Broad Street in 1850. Designed by local architect J. A. Chatwin, who also worked on the Houses of Parliament, Bingley Hall must have wowed the Victorian public. Its interior space stretched over an acre and a quarter and held 25,000 people in five rooms. It had ten entrance doors and had used nearly 12,000 feet of 21-inch glass in its construction. Of course, just a year later Birmingham-wannabe London launched the Great Exhibition and the rather showy Crystal Palace left Bingley Hall looking small in comparison. But, the Birmingham venue outlived its metropolitan rival by five decades, before also finally succumbing to a fire in 1984.
Continue reading “101 Things Birmingham Gave The World No. 69: Conference centres”
