Category: misc

Top magician, ‘the great Boundo’ wow-ed the audience at the very first Variety is Back! night by making the Rotunda disappear ‘as-live’.

You can watch it here, recorded for posterity, as if you were there!

David Copperfield, eat your heart out!

Sunday 4th December 2005

Watch the ‘behind the scenes’ video here

Despite receiving a grand total of no pounds (that’s nothing, you tight-arsed little monkeys) in sponsorship, BiNS entered the third Pantomime Horse Grand National. Meeting the other competitors in the Bacchus bar (now open til 12pm relaxed licensing hours laws fans) at 12, we sipped a pre-race bottle of Nastro Assuro despite the outrageous £3.75 price tag and tucked into some fantastic fish-based snack.

Pre-race rituals over with we traipsed up to City Plaza, who were kindly sponsoring the race by letting us change in one of their un-let shop windows. The pantomime horse costumes owed more to Bernie Clifton than anything else, and after squeezing myself into the silks attaching a seemingly never-ending number of false legs I thought I was up and running. Unfortunately I’d put my top on back to front and the cap was made for a five year-old and not my finely coiffured barnet.

Brummieoftheyear & his jockey in official BiNS colours

The 33 competitors were then led a merry dance, down New Street, even out-wierding the Hari Krishna for a change and neigh-ing enough to drown out the sound of the fellas selling the amazing bird whistles. A brief detour up to Marks and Sparks (they didn’t seem to want us in there), and it was up past Brasso and into the Bull Ring (sorry bullringoneword). For once there didn’t seem to be any need for queuing to get on the escalators, and the stony faces on some of the shoppers we trotted past were a joy to behold. I’m truly sorry for disrupting their frantic Christmas retail bulimia.

At the course, all the competitors were immediately sobered up by the sheer dangerousness of the fences, or perhaps it might have been the freezing cold and the inordinately long wait before the actual heats began.

Heart FM did the event proud, filling in until something actually happened with a vast array of single-entendres and we were all very grateful not to be treated to anything too much off their playlist. It was great to see a load of Brummies out and about suspending disbelief and while we hung around we made a load of new friends, including one completely over-excited Frenchman.

Now the race joiners’ pack had promised us the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York and the Lord Mayor, but only the Mayor was in evidence, still I wasn’t too disappointed as we had got to park in the secret underground Council Car Park (it’s not council as in the OTT Christmas lights, white tracksuit exposing ankles smokes Lambert & Butler way – it’s where the Councillors’ park). It’s fantastic, just as you’d have imagined Hitler’s Berlin Bunker with additional silver Daewoos.

Ladbrookes were having a field day, tic-ing and tac-ing for all they were worth, we were a slightly disappointing outsider at 25-1, but since we were drawn in heat two we decided that we could study the tactics of the runners in the first race and copy them. One guy/horse got off to a flyer – Rob Rum – and seemed to be tucking the horse’s head underneath his arm – I thought I would try that. Looking at the course, it also seemed to be well worth getting on the front of the starting grid (is that correct horse-racing terminology? I suspect not, please don’t write in) as the fat arses of the horses were going to prove difficult to get round.

After the first heat, the track had to be completely rebuilt, as most runners had decided to go through the jumps rather than over them – a manoeuvre not seen since the 110 metres hurdles was dropped from the paralympics.

A nip or two from my hip flask and a longing look over to the Bull Ring Tavern, just think I was waiting to start almost on the spot of one of my most famous sporting triumphs – surely you’ve heard about the time me and my mate Tony stopped on the pool table at the Toreador all night in 1994?

I was a woken from my slumber by the klaxon and we were off! Or at least the 15 or so people who had stood infront of me were, I paused and then gee-d the horse up, pelting toward the first obstacle. I place my best hoof forward and onto the fence and, …

went arse over head.

A fall-er at the first, I’d got pictures of people cursing me and tearing up betting slips (I was only to find out later that no-one had backed me anyway). But, broken, but not beaten I struggled on. With my short fat hairy legs, however, getting over the fences was proving to be a difficult task. I’d have done better with a step ladder, and before the final fence I’d all but given up, letting a old woman saunter past me and leaving myself in a dishonorable last place. (In fact I do believe that she’d stopped for a fag at some point)

This had its compensations, as last place in the slower heat of the Pantomime Horse Grand National is far more interesting than the tenth or so I might have been capable of – and at least I didn’t have to do it again in the final. Sky News were on hand to interview me as a gallant loser, I managed to look at the camera and only used one expletive in the short time I was on screen (if anyone has taped this I’d love to see if they can ‘bleep’ me out live on air).

Still, as the – tardy to say the least – Archbishop would have said, ‘the last shall be first’ and I was, the first across the road into the Bull Ring Tavern.

A swift pint or two later I was away, back out to see what was going on, whether they’d got anywhere near staging the final yet. They hadn’t, but the late (not dead) Archbishop of Canterbury had finally turned up. I was overjoyed and looking forward to having a discussion of his view on ordaning half-men-half-horses into the Church of England, but no sooner had he arrived but he was gone. Asking the Archbishop of York, “where’s His Grace f**cked off to?” didn’t seem to be the best answer, so i staggered off for some mulled wine in the German Market and that was that.

No idea who won.

& that’s that, thanks to all those who supported us (if not financially).
It was fun and I’m sure a very worthwhile day out.

They’re behind you! And they all were as Birmingham: It’s Not Shit’s Airbiscuit, ridden by Mickey Stokes romped home in the Pantomime Horse Grand National.

We’ll openly admit we didn’t think he’d do it – last year our horse came a distant last and the course this year was tougher than ever. Not only was there the chicane round the back of the Council House and people drunkenly celebrating Germanmas, but the final straights were up the 2:1 gradient of Newhall St. Brummie of the Year wouldn’t even of made it round the hard-core parade trip to Marks & Sparks. Down to the Bull Ring they trotted, past Smiths, waited with Brasso, then up to the cathedral where for some reason they did two circuits – amusing the park’s higher than the national average concentration of crap goths.

A canny rider, Mick, held Airbiscuit up and came second in his heat – qualifying for the final with a bit to spare. As long as frostbite didn’t set in he was in with a chance. It was tense, but they soon belted off through to Chamberlain Square and we stood around hoping for the best.

You couldn’t see what was going on round the back straight, Airbiscuit was second coming up to the water jump, but somehow made it into the lead for the torturous climb to the finish. Squirming through the last jump he was free and clear. Barring a Devon Lock, we’d won!

We did – all that remained was to pick up the cup! Councilor Ray Hassal, who has some experience in this area, being a Liberal, presented the third prize trophy, some bloke from the sponsors did second, then it was the turn of the Mayor, Councillor Mike Sharpe, to hand Mickey the magnum of champagne and the title of Pantomime Horse Grand National
Winner 2006.

No word on whether the Mayor is a fan of the site, but he’s certainly got a nice necklace.

Mick went off to celebrate, we’re told with 2006 Brummie Of The Year Jason Furnell – there’ll be some tales for the tabloids, well the Mail perhaps, in that booze session.

Well done Airbiscuit, and well done Mick, we’ll be back next year.

And with that all that’s left is for Big Chief Busks-with-Recorder from down by the ramp on New Street to play us out with the theme from some TV programme featuring horses, er, the Lone Ranger, de de dum de de dum
de de dum dum dum.

There’s loads more pictures on flickr, including some of the fillies race, just click to see.

EXCHANGE DEAL GOES DOWN A TREAT WITH KRAUTS

The festive ‘German Market’ has become a popular annual event in Birmingham at Christmas, with literally tens of Brummies getting tanked up on gluhwein – German mulled wine – instead of their more usual white cider.

How many Brummies realise that the ‘cultural exchange’ is in fact two-ways? Very few, we’re sure, but it is. From late November the cream of Birmingham’s street traders have taken a Bunders-break and set up shop, er, stall in Frankfurt’s Praca-Principal.

Stuck for a present? Why not try the new Birmingham: It’s Not Shit the book, or 101 Things Birmingham Gave the World.

The lucky Gerrys have been treated to ‘mulled’ Brew XI, West Bromwich Albion mobile phone covers and other Birmingham speciallities. The streets of our twin town ring out to the cries of “eeeeveeeenin mayol”, while the Frankfurters have obviously enjoyed the delights of Mick’s Meat Auction – trying traditional English delicacies, such as pork chops, instead of the more usual over-spiced sausage.

The ‘English Market in full effect, with mulleted foreigners in stonewashed denim besieging stalls to buy knock-off Calvin Klien pants.

“We luv der Englisher Market” said Henirich Von Trap, 44, from Germany, “it is so quaint, ze nut centre, ze stall that sells brand name toiletries that are almost past their sell by date.”

“Zere is alzo, the street theatre that zey bring with ‘dem. My favourite iz zee scruffy woman ‘oo shouts about us needing ze “bigger shoes” – it is zo funny, because we all ‘ave quite well fitting footwear ‘ere in Deuchland.”

The Midlanders are just as happy, Barry, who is over selling disposable lighters, is doing a roaring trade: “It’s great here, we’ve done 10 boxes already this week. The Germans are just like us really, but a bit fatter and with more facial hair. I mentioned the war once, but I think I got away with it.”

The Nut Centre – going down a treat with the sausage eaters.

Nellie the Elephant went there, we think – although that may have been Manadalay – and that’s about as much we know. But town-twinning is fantastic, just think about all the perks we get being twined with Frankfurt. Chicago, not so much.

According to the Beeb, Cultural mission chief Ali Ould Sidi said potential twin towns can draw parallels with Timbuktu by having a history of being a trade hub and centre of learning, an affinity with the written word, unique architecture and a cosmopolitan background. Doesn’t that just sound like us?

TIMBUKTU The city became very wealthy in the Middle Ages as an important trading centre Muslim scholars from Sankore University helped spread Islam across west Africa Djingareyber mosque, built from mud in 1325 AD, still stands The Ahmed Baba Centre has a collection of manuscripts containing more than 1,000 years of Islamic knowledge It has been a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage site since 1988 Scot Gordon Laing was the first European explorer to arrive, in 1826

Timbuktu is already twinned with a Chemnitz in Germany, Saintes in France, Marrakech in Morocco, Kairouan in Tunisia, and Tempe in the US. Marrakech, I’ve heard of, and I can think of the odd reason we should be twinned with there too.

According to the BBC “A survey of 150 young people undertaken ahead of the exhibition found 34% did not think Timbuktu existed, and the remaining 66% considered it to be “a mythical place”.”, now without suggesting that mythical and non-existance are the same thing, that’s about how the London-centric media see us.

We’ve filled in the form on the website, and you can too – nominate Brum and help us join hands across the ocean, and all that.

Here’s how we’ve answered their questions:

The parallels between Timbuktu and Birmingham.

BIRMINGHAM The city became very wealthy in the Middle Ages as an important trading centre Scholars spread all sorts of religions, and other stuff. The Central mosque, built in 1969 AD, was then officially opened in 1975 as the largest mosque in Western Europe. BM&AG has a very large collection of Pre Raphaelites Birmingham has been ‘Europe’s Shopping Capital’ since the Bull Ring re-opened in 2004 Benny out of Crossroads comes from here.

A. History of being an important trade hub.

At the centre of the UK’s canal system, Birmingham was the manufacturing heartland of the country during the industrial revolution, back when the country manufactured things.

B. History of being an important centre of learning.

Birmingham University was founded in 1900 as a successor to Mason Science College, and is thus the earliest of the so-called “red brick” universities. A major research-led institution, it currently has nearly 17,000 undergraduate and 7,000 postgraduate students. We’ve got three, count-em, Universities in total now.

C. Love of the written word.

Brum has had many famous authors, and has a huge Central Library. We think the scripts for Crossroads were written here too.

D. Unique Archetecture

The 160,000 square foot Selfridges store, designed by architects Future Systems, is covered in 15,000 spun aluminium discs. There is also the Rotunda, the Venician-style Council House and the National Trust’s Victorian Back to Backs.

C. Cosmopolitan Mindset

Birmingham is the first city in the UK to have 50% of its population not of white British background. There are huge West Indian, South Asian and North African communites, as well as increasing numbers from other European countries.

Well – what do you think? Help us twin with Timbuktu – and talk about it on the forums…

Before we forget, here’s what we’re trying remember about this year

Apart from us (that’s right US!!!) winning the Pantomine Horse Grand National, what else went on in Brum in 2006? Young Jonnie Bounds goes all misty eye’d (must be the beer).

Two thousand and six was the year that Birmingham lost the tang of molasses from its air and Eddies and the Dubliner from its late night drinking landscape. We gained a second beach, albeit temporarily, and a mini Glastonbury where you could sneak out and get a pint in The Woodman. In fact so much went on it’s given me a headache just making facetious comments about it in our news feed, but I’ve struggled through – and here’s our BiNS review of the year.

Fire in the disco

Eastsiiiide, yes it needs the iii’s, is about to get a new park and in May hosted the SoundStation Festival. It was bloody freezing, and apart from Graham Coxon the line-up was underwhelming, still, we hope it’ll be back next year as the idea is fantastic. Warmer was the first Moseley Folk Festival, which attracted hillbilly AC/DC cover band Hayseed Dixie, folk legends like the Incredible String Band and almost pushed Mo’ over the hippy event horizon.

The Big Bang, who played SoundStation with aplomb slightly too early for me to be out of the Square Peg, were amongst the bands from round our way to feature in the NME’s ‘Best Midlands’ feature showing that there’s life in the city beyond nu-metal covers of UB40 (believe me i was in a band that practiced for years at Robannas, that band were next door, on both sides). Also featured were Sunset Cinema Club, who despite being from Redditch are named after what ‘Adult World’ used to be called, being named after a mucky pictures is a good thing. Trust me.

Metal also took a hammering in November when Edwards No 8 caught fire, which coming hard on the heels of The Dubliner going up in smoke looked a bit suspicious to some eyes. A cleansing forest fire allowing the new ‘multi-use developments’ to grow, or a sad bit of history passing? I fully expect a blue plaque on the site of my slightly homo-erotic wrestle with the bassist out of Napalm Death. No more disco infernos please, can’t someone invent flame-retardant beer? Alfred Bird where are you when we need you?

Build ’em up, knock ’em down

The Rotunda by SlimShady2007 on flickr

The Rotunda is slowly taking shape again, and the town hall is back in 2007. Seeing the columns without scaffolding all round them, or a big picture of Wayne Rooney swathing their beautiful dimples, was heartwarming to say the least. Can you believe it’s almost been ten years? Nearer twenty since I saw Playschool’s Fred Harris live on stage there. Can they live up to the place’s history – it’s a big question.

Where you won’t be going for a night out is a super-casino, with the council backing the NEC’s bid over Birmingham City’s (who’d of bet on that?) – which was then blown away by central government anyway. Makes you wonder what some of us got so het up about really. At the time I said “how can the council come to the decision that the NEC site (in Solihull lest we forget – the Birmingham NEC thing is more like the way cheap airlines say things like London Luton airport) is their “preferred option”? Isn’t that a bit like the USA saying Canada is their preferred option to situate Las Vegas in?” . I was upset, Blues were on a downward slope to say the least at that point.

In fact, a graph of our footy performance would look like a very happy smile – unless you’re the Albion. With Blues, Walsall and West Brom relegated and Villa sinking further into the world of David O’Leary. Things are now on the up, for the time being at least. What else happened sport-wise? Well there was the usual round of lesser sport world championships at the NIA and NEC and an unseen local sports personality topping the BiNS poll for Brummie of the Year. Jason Furnell, or ‘Village’ as he’s know to his team-mates somehow polled over five thousand votes, there are even talk of t-shirts!

Danny Reddington came second in the voting for Brummie of the Year, despite shutting up shop and going online only – one nil to the interweb.

Tomorrow’s fish wrapper

Despite Midlands Today ‘demonstrating’ it live on air, the council’s plan for city-centre-wide wi-fi (not free wi-fi, not like Manchester or San Francisco) is “coming some time in 2007” – when it finally arrives, if you can afford it, you can surf BiNS out in the freezing cold. But what else is worth going to on the Brumterweb? This year we fell in love with Pete Ashton and the Grassroots Channel. Pete as he’s the oracle as far as Brum 2.0 is concerned, we’ve subscribed to his blog and can sleep soundly without worrying about missing anything going on creatively in the city. The Grassroots Channel is a podcast which, if slightly worthy, gives real stories about what it can be like to live round here – give it a go. We also loved Adrian Goldberg’s The Stirrer “news that matters, campaigns that count for Birmingham, the Black Country and beyond”. All that and BiNS and Wedding Present references, what more could you ask for? They even dropped the Comic Sans – go The Stirrer!

Trinity Mirror shut the Sports Argus, ending the fine Saturday evening tradition of too-hard quizes and bizarre letters pages with our pork scratchings around the city. We now hear they’re trying to sell the whole Post and Mail shebang, worrying really. Open to parody as it is (and Russell Brand spent at least an hour at the Alex just reading out the Mail, by jingo), we need a local press that can be interested, or we’ll get sucked into thinking that the world really does revolve around that London. Just look at the national coverage their tornado got as opposed to ours, and if the local elections rigging last year had of happened in the smoke we’d have never heard the last of it. Maybe we need our own elected Mayor to balance out Ken Livingstone – there was talk back in Februrary – Chinny for President we say.

Art versus commerce

Last year the FIERCE festival woke brummies to the very real threat of being crapped on by a Belgian from 100ft. Some Walloon lived in a nest on the side of the Rotunda for a week, did we appreciate it? Not sure, but this year they installed a tranny in a barbers. Like Artsfest, it’s never going to all be to your taste but I’m glad it goes on. Great things are planned, we hear, for 2007. Seven Inch Cinema continued to push the boundaries of what a night at the flicks might be, some of their Slomo Challenge is on the Big Screen by the library over the festive season – check it out. Richard Hughes the Brummie sculpturist was up for this year’s Beck’s Futures award – he didn’t win. Stanley Victor Collymore made it to Hollywood (USA), ‘starring’ in Basic Instinct 2, not seen it but we’re sure he got an ice pick, that made his ears burn.

Adrian Chiles in a shed by the canal may sound like the mucky dream of a certain – more deranged – section of our womenfolk, but six weeks of live television it doesn’t sound like – it was though. The ONE Show ran five nights a week from up by the Mailbox, and while it was a great advert for Brum on TV it didn’t do much for the reputation of our window cleaners. When they’d got the Mr Sheen out, it was clear to see that Chiles was a Brummie to treasure and that the back of Gas Street should host more television, Royal Variety Performance on water next year anyone? Locked on.

Lemurs (a sort of a stripy monkey) arrived at the Nature Centre, which led to the beaver living with the ducks (and not in a crap rodent mafia way either). Brum got the thumbs up from two other visitors from out of town this year. less controversially a Guardian journalist took our advice on where to go in Brum and liked it (although we never mentioned the Custard factory as it can get a teeny bit pretentious for our tastes). Wilbur the ‘American tourist’ loved our parks and pre-raphaellites, but his – admittedly fake – “y’all” southern ways kicked up a right stink in certain circles. At least that’s what we read in the Mail, I’m not sure if it made the New York Times.

Times were indeed changing, as that busker in a hat up by Primark says, the Fighting Cocks got a makeover, Nike made Brum only the second city to get custom Air Max (check out Brasso on the back!), and the Mercat – home of the 6am booze – became a ‘bar and grill’. Is this for the better? Join us for 2007 and we might find out.

But I doubt it.