Dick Turpin rides again

JUST WHY did Mark Herman choose Scarborough to portray the fictional northern town in Little Voice, his new comedy film about the seedier side of showbiz?

Rest assured, the Bridlington-born director and screenplay writer has nothing against the East Coast resort, nor does he believe the spa town puts the 'sea' into seamy, even if the setting is billed as "a working-class enclave... of stand-up comedians, two-bit nightclubs and desperate entertainment".

"Jim Cartwright's play was set in Bolton and I drove around those places like Rochdale - the northern industrial towns - looking for the right location," Herman told Turpin.

"But I thought it would be Brassed Off and The Full Monty all over again - you'd half expect a brass band to come round the corner or another group of strippers - and I didn't want to make the third in a series.

" What he did want to do was introduce a new "character" into Cartwright's story of a reclusive northern girl finding her voice through song.

"I thought a seaside town seemed right for the film with its particular brand of entertainment."

He did NOT immediately think of Scarborough. "I went all around the coast, but then ironically I ended up choosing somewhere ten miles from where I was brought up," he says.

"In a film, you need four or five images to establish the character of a place and Scarborough is very good for that." Herman, who lives in York, would like to make one final point clear.

"In Little Voice, we're not saying Scarborough is seedy," he says.

"We're showing the seedier people who live in a fictional northern town - or in fact the seamier side of life, not the seedier."

So, Scarborough, the message is: don't take it personally.

OH, unlucky week for Chris Hudson, marketing manager of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

Press, radio and television besieged her with phone calls when the news broke that there had been a positive sighting on the little scenic railway of runaways Jeff and Jennifer Bramley with their two foster children Jade and Hannah Bennett.

What do we mean "unlucky"? The report of a sighting on the Pickering to Grosmont scenic line of the Cambridgeshire foursome being sought by police brought the North Yorkshire Moors Historical Railway Trust's scenic trip more publicity than it could ever afford. But there's a snag.

Shortly after the sighting, the little railway closed for winter maintenance. Now Chris confesses that she has been wondering whether the Bramleys may duck and dive out of sight for just long enough to catch the first train when it resumes its never-ending journey out of Pickering on February 13.

ENGLAND'S unexpected, glorious if typically too-late victory in the Melbourne Test match brought about a change of punch line in Beauty And The Beast at York Theatre Royal.

Each night since the December 15 opening, Martin Barrass's arrival in a fluffy yellow chick's outfit had been greeted by dame Berwick Kaler with a derisory: "Who do you think you are, an England batsman?", on account of our failing cricketers' propensity for ducks.

However, all that changed after Melbourne thanks to the bowling heroics of Messrs Headley and Gough, as the doyen of dames boomed: "Who do you think you are, an Australian batsman?" Howzat!

WHO says the police have no sense of humour. A slightly inebriated Law College student was returning from a party at 3 o'clock one morning, when she noticed a plastic traffic bollard had been knocked off its post.

Ever the civic-minded lawyer-to-be, she felt it was her duty to restore the aforementioned item to its proper place.

She achieved her goal only to be stopped a few hundred yards down the road by a police patrol. They accused her of vandalism and damaging the bollard.

She drunkenly pleaded her case, to be met with smiling faces - the police had seen her good work and were only winding her up.

WHATEVER next. A York butcher, it seems, will be making a special burger to mark this year's total eclipse on August 11.

Dewhurst, in Acomb, will be making an Eclipse Burger, which has a ring of spicy seasoning around the edge producing a corona effect similar to that of a solar eclipse.

Graham Heasman, director of Dewhurst, which is the UK's largest independent butcher's chain, confided: "These Eclipse Burgers will add some bite to a truly historic event that will not occur again until 2090.

"You can be part of the eclipse experience and enjoy the taste of British beef at the same time," says the advertising blurb. This brilliant initiative is bound to eclipse the effects of our national beef crisis.

THE wonders of the information superhighway never cease to amaze. Had the internet and e-mail been around in Turpin's heyday, one's career as a highwayman might have been brief indeed.

Once your name gets on the internet, anyone, anywhere in the world can track you down at the mere touch of a button. Take this case in point.

A colleague, feature writer Maxine Gordon, received an e-mail from a Sally Pellow (nee Dickson) asking if she was the Maxine Gordon who was an actress in the 1970s.

"She acted in And Mother Makes Five and The Canal Children," wrote Sally. "On all the search engines (of the internet) I've tried, I keep coming up with the Evening Press site. Have I found her, or is the name just coincidence?"

The Evening Press office was intrigued. Did Maxine have a secret, star-studded stage past which they had just stumbled upon?

Under questioning, Maxine did confess to having had her 15 minutes of stardom in 1981 when she played greedy bubblegum girl Violet in a school production of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

She'd never heard of And Mother Makes Five, but she did recall a namesake starring in Crossroads. Could this be the same actress Sally was hunting down?

In a second e-mail, Sally confirmed this was so (Maxine played the doctor's daughter). It turned out both women dated two brothers in the late 1970s, but had lost touch.

Sally would like to re-kindle the friendship. So if the real Maxine Gordon wants to be friends again, contact our Maxine Gordon at the Evening Press and she will put you in touch with Sally. Glad to be of service.

9/1/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.