As I’m sure those who were there would recall, back in the mid-late 1980’s Birmingham had a burgeoning live music scene with many long-demised venues serving all manner of musical tastes with the plethora of live bands on the circuit at that time. Whilst the Railway in Curzon Street, the Barrel Organ in Digbeth and Edward’s Number 8 in John Bright Street are frequently cited and recalled as prime examples of the local gig ‘industry’ back in the day, one venue appears to have slipped from the radar; Mega’s Wine Bar on Old Square.

Whilst the name conjures-up images of trendy lounge lizards and laid-back jazz piano, Mega’s Wine Bar actually served-up a stream of local – and some not-so-local – indie, rock and alternative bands and was certainly a thriving gig venue on the circuit and was located above Mega-Active which, if memory serves me correctly, was a kind of indoor ’boutique’ market – that was located in the centre of the building seen above at the Junction with Corporation Street (to the right) and Old Square.

Gunlaw at Mega's Wine Bar (courtesy: Ken Worthing)

You entered Mega’s Wine Bar via a flight of stairs with the venue itself being a long narrow room. From the front of the room (imagine standing in it with your back to the windows fronting onto Old Square) there was a square-shaped seating area with tables occupying the front third of the venue and then the bar began on the left-hand side running parallel to a slightly raised seating area surrounded by a medium height wall/railing. As you walked along with the bar on your left the raised seating area ended just before a corridor at the end of the room to the toilets and in that little corner between the raised seating area and the walkway to the toilets was ‘the stage’. Not that it had a stage as such, just a corner clear of furniture!

The word ‘intimate’ is often overused when recounting gig venues of yesteryear but in the case of Mega’s Wine Bar it’s never been more apt! The place was small, very small, and an old friend (once of local bands Voice of Dissent and The Reason Is) contacted me recently who had played there, and who had seen some of my gigs there, and reminded me that at the end of the raised seating area – ie: immediately in front of the band onto the ’stage’ – was a gap in the walling through which audience members would walk to get to the toilets. Thus, numerous times throughout a gig the guitarist or frontman would have to stand aside (nearly always mid-tune) as someone squeezed past to get to the loo – or for their return journey: such was the unique nature of this arrangement that ironic applause for an inbound/outbound toilet seeker would often break out during their return and/or departure!

Unfortunately information is nigh-on impossible to come by as to when Mega’s Wine Bar was operational. I played there 1986/7 and am aware of bands playing there in 1988 but beyond that – and indeed before that – I would assume that it functioned merely as a wine bar: if anyone can tell me any different I’ll be pleased to revise this entry.

Some of the bands I recall from there were This Year, Sleepwalk, Mighty Mighty and the splendidly named Jesus Christ and the Six Disciples (of whom only one arrived for the gig with a drum machine that broke-down mid-way through the set!). Ken Worthing, guitarist with Gunlaw (www.kenworthing.co.uk) , kindly allowed me to use the poster above from a gig they played there back in the late 80’s which attests to the fact that I hadn’t dreamt the place up – so scant is the information attesting to its existence today I was beginning to wonder.

Mega’s Wine Bar was a great little venue with many peculiar quirks and it would be great to hear from anyone who played, or drank, there.

The Old Railway - Curzon Street

Sadly I haven’t really been able to find any information on this gem of a now demolished pub, other than to state the obvious that it was named in recognition of Curzon Street station which stood opposite the site until 1966 (and if recently unveiled high speed rail plans are forged ahead, may well again!).

My first recollection of the Old Railway was in 1985 when a teacher at my school – who knew I was learning to play drums and was into rock music – told me his son’s band Hostage were gigging at the pub and that he’d put me on the guest list! At 15 it was the first gig I’d ever been to and I’d never heard of Curzon Street but found my way there and it certainly confirmed my conviction that playing in bands was what I wanted to do. Several months later I found myself there once more to watch the first gig of a local band called Fayre Warning after bumping in to their bass player on a number 27 bus in West Heath.

The pub itself was quite run-down and consisted of a small bar connected by a short corridor, which could also be entered directly from the Curzon Street side of the building, to the room that used to house gigs. The venue part was small – I would estimate it held a couple of hundred standing people at the most – with a stage at one end, alcove for mixing desk the other, and bar the length of one side with a small ‘dressing room’ for bands accessed from behind the bar via a hatch at the stage end of the room.

Legend has it that Robert Plant and John Bonham from Led Zeppelin – and a whole host of other Brum-based musical notaries – frequented the place back in the 70s but during my time there I recall mostly local rock/metal acts, such as Shy, Briar and Tobruk, regularly gigging there and/or propping up the bar. I also attended an all-day rock festival there sometime around 1986/7 which was fun as I was working at Musical Exchanges then and so knew a lot of the musicians who were playing during the day.

Also in 1986/7 I played a gig there myself with my band Lost Cause (prophetically named) and I seem to recall that the landlady was called Gail and whose partner was a very amiable Rasta whose name escapes me!

Some time in the late 1980s I recall the Old Railway closing as a pub/gig venue and being turned into a Mexican Restaurant and by then Edwards Number 7 & 8 was in full swing as a rock gig venue and that was the end of my association with the place. I do, however, understand it reopened once more as the Old Railway towards the end of the 1990s but, as can be seen from the above photograph, is once again no more. Subject of a compulsory purchase order as part of the City’s Eastside redevelopment the pub, along with its surrounding area, lay derelict for a time until demolition began in late 2007.

If anyone reading this used to frequent the Old Railway, played there in bands, or has any information that would add to this article, please get in touch.

Former ATV Headquarters - Alpha Tower

Designed by George Marsh and opened in 1973, the 328ft Alpha Tower at the junction of Broad Street and Suffolk Street was built as the flagship headquarters of the ITV regional televison franchise company ATV (Associated Television) who held the Midlands region broadcasting franchise from 1956 until 1982 when it passed to Central Television.

The 200,000 sq ft of office space contained within Alpha Tower formed part of the hub of the ATV television network adjoining their ATV Centre studios on Broad Street, a connection walkway to which was built from Alpha Tower following its completion. Sadly with the demise of ATV in 1982, and of its successor Central Television during the 1990s, Alpha Tower was gradually abandoned.

However, Alpha Tower now sits at the heart of the £400m Arena Central development project being undertaken by Miller Developments and Bridgehouse Capital which aims to clear the area and create a central square around which will be yet more offices, restaurants and ‘living space’ etc etc. The good news, for once, is that – despite the best efforst of Alpha Tower’s owners at the time – in 2002 Alpha Tower was granted Grade A locally listed status and thus its future was assured inspite of all around it facing the bulldozer.

ATV Centre Television Studios

As those with a good memory will recall, ITV’s output in the Midlands was once provided by ATV (Associated Television Ltd) from 1956 until 1982 when the franchise was won by the, some may argue (well, me), somewhat dismal Central Independent Television. To cement it’s base as ITV’s regional broadcaster for the Midlands (the company itself based in Elstree, London), and to avail itself of the coming of colour television, in 1969 ATV commissioned the construction of a purpose built studio complex on Broad Street in central Birmingham, promoted as “Britain’s first purpose built colour TV studio”.

ATV Centre produced many ITV classics over the years, not least children’s TV favourite Tiswas which was broadcast live from studio 3, and the long-running butt of many a joke; Crossroads! So entrenched was ATV in the region it also built the adjacent Alpha Tower as its Birmigham headquarters in 1973 which was linked to ATV Centre via a raised walkway.

With a shift in emphasis to location broadcasting, IBA-upheld criticism of a somewhat West Midlands focus in programming (largely ignoring the East of the region) leading to new studios being acquired in Nottingham along with Central’s stewardship axing many of the long-standing productions that were filmed there, ATV Centre’s activities began to shrink.

The view at the top of this page shows what was the studio’s canteen but by the early 1990s several of the studios had been mothballed and part of the building used as the Coast-to-Coast nightclub and Hudson Bay bar which occuppied the ground floor.

The studios were finally closed in 1997 with the majority of the complex lying dormant until 2009/10 when demolition work got underway, clearing the site for the forthcoming £400m Arena Central development which sees to develop the 7.6-acre site which includes the studios into offices, shops and restaurants (well, we certainly need more of them!).

Selly Oak Hospital Accident & Emergency Department

June 2010 sees the begninning of the wind-down to closure of Selly Oak Hospital in South Birmingham with the transference of its functions to the new Queen Elizabeth ’super hospital’ some half a mile away. The 140 -year-old site is due for clearance in the coming months freeing 43 acres for redevelopment and currently houses a wide-spectrum of buildings from various decades of the facilities’ history with a large number dating back to its inception. Try as I might I have yet to come across a definiteive plan of exactly what is to be demolished so I thought it worth documenting as much as possible whilst it’s still in situ!

The site was originally developed in 1870 as King’s Norton Union Workhouse, on Raddlebarn Road, by King’s Norton Poor Law Union to replace their workhouse which had been in operation on King’s Norton Green since 1729.  As with all workhouses, the function was to provide relief to those, including many whole families, who could not financially support themselves in pre-Welfare State times under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act. The Amendment Act stated the a parish could only provide such services to those within its facilities (as opposed to previously whereby alms/support could be dispensed to those outside such institutions also) and thus led to a dramatic increase in Workhouse development.

Further expansion of the workhouse site took place in 1897 with a new infirmary for 250 patients costing £45,000 with a subsequent major redevelopment of facilities commencing in 1902 with blocks for a further 1000 ‘inmates’, a doubling of the infirmary in 1907 including operating theatres and the addition of the Woodlands Nurses Home in 1908. In 1911, following a merging of the Aston and Birmngham Unions, Kings Norton Union was absorbed into the new Birmingham Union and the workhouse renamed Selly Oak Hsopital. This saw an increasing emphasis on the medical side of the facilities’ role with the workhouse function increasingly turned-over to elderly and chronically sick pateients under the monicker of Selly Oak House, which itself was absorbed into the ‘Hospital’ with the formation of the NHS in 1948.

Further phases of development have taken place over the years leading to Selly Oak Hospital operating in a wide-range of buildings from 19th Century workhouse remnants (of which there are many) to 1960’s/70’s prefabricated concrete monstrosities.  A more recent development, however, has been the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine which has occuppied part of the Hospital since 2001 to treat injured service personnel (following a closure programme of Ministry of Defence Hospitals) which is staffed by medical personnel from the Armed Forces who can also be seen throughout the hospital on various duties (inclouding A&E cover at times).

In 1995, Selly Oak Hospital was joined with the the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to form the University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. Follwing a policy of combining services in large super hospitals – one much the same as rang the death knell for the many specialist hospitals that used to be dotted around the City a couple of decades earlier – £600m was spent on the development of the Queen Elizabeth Hopsital site with its new facilities coming online during 2010, heralding the closure of Selly Oak Hospital as surplus to requirements.

As a footnote, I’ve been reading the list of Graded buildings in Selly Oak and haven’t come across any of those of the former workhouse and think it would be a sad loss if they were all bulldozed in the coming months.  If anyone can shed any light on that, or indeed on plans mooted for the site, I’d be glad to hear from you.

Below I have provided a selection of photographs taken around the hospital of both the remaining workhouse structures and more recent developments.

Tiswas - Chris Tarrant & Sally James

Ask many a 40 year-old these days if they used to watch ‘Today is Saturday, Watch and Smile’ and you’ll most likely draw a blank; ask many a 40 year-old if they used to watch Tiswas and overwhelmingly you’ll get the same answer: Yes! Produced at ITV regional franchise ATV at ATV Centre on Broad Street, Birmingham, Tiswas ran from 1974 – 1982 and rewrote the rulebook for Saturday morning television and has inspired many pale imitations but has never been equalled.

As I’m sure the more mature reader will recall, Saturday morning television back in the early 1970s comprised an eclectic mix of cartoons and badly dubbed foreign dramas along with endless re-runs of such 50s/60s US delights as Champion the Wonder Horse, Lassie and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon. Splendid though such offerings were, they did little to ignite the enthusiasm of the children of the 70s. Whilst obvious with hindsight, it took ATV continuity announcer (and more recently High Sherriff of the West Midlands) Peter Tomlinson to identify an opportunity for a dedicated children’s’ show that would primarily serve as a wrap-around for the Saturday morning fodder providing links and introduction along with a few sketches. Fortunately, ATV agreed to the concept and Tiswas was born in January 1974 with Tomlinson as host.

Joining Tomlinson, and regular presenter John Asher, was young ATV news reporter Chris Tarrant whose initially minimal supporting role quickly grew to being the mainstay, and later producer, of Tiswas and under whose stewardship the program took-on an increasingly anarchic approach and evolved way beyond its humble beginnings as a continuity tool. The concept was, however, quite simple albeit innovative for the time: take Studio 3 at ATV Centre, fill it with children, a couple of presenters, a supporting cast of regulars from largely the adult world of comedy, add a few musical guests and a few sketches and broadcast the results live.

So what made Tiswas such a success and so fondly remembered over 25 years after it was last broadcast? There are probably way too many elements to mention here, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a fair few over the years, but I hope I jog a few memories with some that spring to mind from the list below:

The Cast

The Character Creations

A whole host of legendary characters were created and utilised on Tiswas, many of which were created by Lennie Henry who was making his name as a comedy impressionist at the time following his title-winning turn on ATV’s talent show, New Faces. Among Lennie’s creations that regularly featured on the show were:

The Props

Along with the cast, there were numerous recurring props and comedic devices that would be used to create mayhem on the set at every opportunity:

The Guests

Catchphrases

Whilst I’ve mentioned some of Lennie Henry’s catchphrases earlier, Tiswas was chock-full of terms and concepts that slipped into popular culture and vernacular . . . certainly whilst I was a schoolboy.

It might seem a bit dry ‘on paper’ but the combination of the above ingredients, along with a great deal of spontaneity, made Tiswas ‘The’ programme to watch on a Saturday morning: the BBC’s response, Noel Edmunds and Multi Coloured Swap Shop, just paled by comparison. The general mayhem was a joy to watch as a child and the sense, even when viewed through young eyes, that a hell of a lot of stuff was off the cuff and that anything could happen at any time made Tiswas compulsory viewing. One minute a competition would be launched and within the blink of an eye, Tarrant would leap up and chase a cameraman around with a custard pie in hand or mid-interview with a top pop act, a bucket of water would be flung hitting the interviewee full-on in the face!

With Tarrant departing the show in 1981, along with the main cast to make an ill-fated adult version of the show called OTT, Sally James was left to front the final series as a reshuffle of the ITV regions resulting in Central Television taking over from ATV saw the decision to discontinue the series. Interestingly, due to the fragmented ITV regions Tiswas was only seen around the ATV region at its inception with some regions only broadcasting the series much later in its run with Tyne Tees Television only taking-up Tiswas in 1981!

Sadly, Central Television saw fit to wipe the majority of the recordings of Tiswas to reuse the tapes back in the 80s and so only a few full episodes survive but for many the memories of the show linger on and for my money, Tiswas was one of the finest programmes to come out of Birmingham and single-handedly changed the whole approach to children’s television to which the likes of Ant & Dec, Dick & Dom etc can only aspire!

Edward Fewtrell

Opinions about Edward Fewtrell are rarely non-committal or ‘on the fence’: speak to one person and he’s Birmingham’s underworld godfather, speak to another he’s a charitable philanthropist, speak to another and he’s a top businessman, and another and he’s a family man etc etc . . . truth is, he’s probably a combination of all those elements. They’re in no way mutually exclusive character traits and most of the legendary tales about his past from which most people have formed their opinion are somewhat skewed, exaggerated or conversely, in some instances, economical with the truth! However, one fact that’s incontrovertible is that Eddie Fewtrell single-handedly, with a little help from his brothers, did more to nurture and develop Birmingham’s nightlife culture over three decades than anyone else and for that fact should be applauded.

It would be relatively easy here to provide an account of Eddie’s business career but, as with the majority of this website, merely recounting facts that can be found elsewhere on the Web is largely a pointless exercise so I thought a few anecdotes and observations of my dealings with Mr Fewtrell might provide more of an insight. However, a brief potted history for the uninitiated may provide a useful background so here goes . . .

One of a family of 10 born to a somewhat broken home in the relatively deprived Birmingham suburb of Aston, from an early age Eddie undertook the mantle of familial breadwinner and paternal figure to his younger siblings which I think largely laid the bedrock for his later empire building in the nightclub scene in Birmingham City Centre in years to come. Following various business ventures Edward opened the Bermuda Club in Navigation Street which was legendary for having both a front of house bar and ‘backstage’ gambling den which operated somewhat beyond the realms of legality at the time but was sufficiently frequented by Birmingham City Police notables and allied City dignitaries as to run fairly raid-free for the majority of its tenure.

Next-up, Eddie opened the Cedar Club (off Constitution Hill) and began to cultivate his ‘celebrity persona’ with emerging 60’s acts such as the Move playing at the club along with a string of top acts regularly gigging there, socialising at the club and in some instances working there during the embryonic phases of their careers. The Cedar Club stood Eddie in good stead for his next venture which was the much renowned Barbarella’s on Cumberland Street (off Broad Street) which launched a number of bands and hosted many top acts including The Ramones, AC/DC and many, many more huge and soon to be huge acts from the world of entertainment. During this period the nightlife scene was going through something of an evolutionary period with a shift from cabaret clubs to more disco-based nightclubs and Eddie rode this wave with the opening of Rebecca’s in John Bright Street and later Abigail’s and Edward’s – also on John Bright Street – with Paramount and Goldwyn’s on Lower Severn Street opening towards the close of the 1980s.

I think it can be said with a fair degree of certainty that the majority of Brummies who enjoyed the odd night out during the 1970s and 1980s would have visited at least one of Eddie Fewtrell’s establishments and for a time throughout the mid to late 1980s John Bright Street was the THE epicentre of club culture and the heart of the Fewtrell Empire. Following the sale of all his clubs to Ansell’s Leisure in 1989, Eddie was faced with a three-year golden handcuffs arrangement but on its expiry returned to night club ownership with XL’s night club at Five Ways and the XL’s Rock Cafe on Paradise Circus and Millennium Club at Merry hill.

I first became aware of Eddie Fewtrell when auditioning for a band in the mid-1980s who were managed by an associate of Eddie’s. Upon mentioning the band to a musician friend he advised me not to get mixed-up with ‘people like that’! I’d never heard of Eddie and asked a few people who was this person of whom my colleague had spoken in such a cautionary tone to find out that he was the owner of a nightclub empire and had a reputation akin to the Krays and was certainly not someone to mess with. I gleaned a number of ”horror stories’ from various hearsay sources about adversaries being dispatched under the concrete pillars of Spaghetti Junction during its construction, shootings, a legion of punch-happy brothers who were also legends around the Birmingham club scene etc and thought better of joining a band that was managed by one of his cohorts.

As fate would have it, a few short years later I found myself at 17 being instructed to go to Boogies Brasserie to ask Mr Fewtrell for a position on the door of Edward’s Number 8 night club! I didn’t really know what to expect – some Al Pacino-type figure I suppose – as I approached Nobby on the door and said I’d been sent to have a word with Eddie and was pointed in his direction. At the end of the bar was a circle of middle-aged men enjoying a drink – some of whom were what I’d term ‘brick outhouses’ – with a rather diminutive grey-haired chap in the middle holding court: that was Eddie Fewtrell. I took a deep breath, walked up to the group at which point they all stopped laughing and chatting and simultaneously turned to look at the spotty, overweight, long-haired 17 year old before them. I stuttered out that I’d been sent over from Edward’s Number 8 to ask about a job on the door to which Eddie just grunted “start Friday you c*nt”, and then turned back to his pals and they all started chatting where they’d left off! Not your standard job interview but in the circumstances it was as long as I wanted. And that was that really, I was working for Eddie at one of his showpiece clubs at 17!

Preconceptions are strange things and largely stand to be shattered and this was certainly true with Eddie Fewtrell. Everything I’ve said thus far turned out to be applicable to Eddie to some degree. I’d somehow sneaked into his organisation’s inner circle at a very young age and was working alongside his longstanding associates such as Ricky Rickabee, Gigi, Norman ‘Nobby’ Nobbs and whole host of characters of both savoury and unsavoury ends of the spectrum and loving every minute of it. The clubs themselves were great, and at that time all booming and vibrant, but equally as enjoyable was getting to chat to Eddie and his crew who were remarkably open about their histories and previous exploits and would quite happily sit, as would Eddie, over a few drinks and regale me and others with endless anecdotes and tales of past escapades.

I didn’t know it then as I was fairly inexperienced in the world of employment but Eddie was one of a kind. Whereas managers and owners of other clubs at which I would come to work were very distanced from their staff, Eddie would do the rounds of all his clubs at least a couple of times a night and stand and have a chat with the doormen and other staff and crack a few jokes and make sure everything was ok. On a Sunday night I’d work the door at Edward’s on my own for £15 (looking back I must have been mad) and Eddie would phone me at least a couple of times during the evening from his favourite haunt of Goldwyn’s around the corner to check that all was well. I can honestly say that I always found him a very avuncular chap who really cared about his staff and wasn’t afraid to muck-in when required (more about that later) and that he knew that staff would have a few free drinks etc but so long as they weren’t really taking the p*ss he was cool with that too.

On the flipside, several incidents spring to mind that give an insight into the power Eddie wielded in Birmingham that have stuck with me over the years. Some of which I won’t recount here but a couple of incidents below give some idea.

One night I was having a few drinks on a night-off on the top floor of Edward’s Number 8 when the girl I was with shouted ‘oh my God’ and pointed at the dance floor at which point the music cut off. I looked over as a line of about 20 blokes trouped across the dance floor and began seriously laying-in to another couple of chaps who were having a drink. The DJ had killed the music and called for the doormen but there were only two working that night and it later transpired that the ‘hit squad’ had just barged their way in on a mission to sort out the two chaps inside. I ran over as the two doorman arrived but it was way beyond our intervention. Then, out of the corner of my eye I noticed Eddie was at the other end of the bar having a drink with Ricky Rickabee. On spotting the melee Edie put down his drink and came straight over, pushing his way into the middle of the brawl at which point everything just stopped – Eddie just looked up at one of the chief protagonists and raised a finger: “you don’t fight in one of my f*cking clubs, now get out” was all he said in a rather hushed tone at which point the whole troupe turned and all walked out in single file in complete silence, heads bowed. Eddie then just looked at us and said something to the effect of “as you were” and returned to his drink and conversation with Ricky!

On another occasion we got the call at Edward’s Number 8 that all doormen were needed to deal with ‘a riot’ at Goldwyn’s. We all ran round the corner meeting up with the lads from Boogies club and Brasserie and piled into Goldwyn’s not really knowing what to expect. Now for those uninitiated with the club, it was split-level and you arrived into the main room on a raised level which housed the bar and half-way along the room the floor level dropped a couple of feet to the dance floor. As I got inside, the raised level gave a commanding view of proceedings on the dance floor which was, in short, carnage, with about 50 men knocking seven shades out of each other. For our purposes here, the image that’s stuck with me to this day however, was that in the middle of all the fighting was a clear circle at the centre of which was the diminutive figure of Eddie randomly throwing punches at whoever strayed within reach . . . none of whom even attempting to throw a punch back but rather trying to dodge out of the way somewhat apologetically. That was a really surreal sight and gave me a flavour of the extent of Eddie’s reputation beyond that of amiable raconteur!

As an aside, Eddie’s biography/autobiography came-out a few years ago (King of Clubs: The Eddie Fewtrell Story) and whilst charting Eddie’s career and charitable associations – of which he had many – I felt it wholly missed the good stuff and was put into such a scatological chronology that it was quite hard to follow: shame, as I’m sure there’s a much better book in Eddie than that!

However, from my perspective – and I hasten to add I only was around Eddie for a couple of years – I really liked Eddie and his ‘no-nonsense’ approach and his rags-to-riches determination has much to be admired. Furthermore, I always got the impression that he saw his clubs as extensions of his family – he really cared about them and the staff (in fact many of his brothers and family members worked in his various club over the years including his daughter Rebecca who worked on the reception at Edwards when I was there and his brother, the late Don Fewtrell, as manager of Goldwyn’s) and considered those causing trouble in one of his clubs in the same manner as you and I would if someone burst into your home and started fighting with each other!

Whatever is written and said about Eddie Fewtrell, and I appreciate that there are those with vastly differing opinions of the man, he’s definitely a larger than life character with a fascinating history. He breeds horses now too!

Tinkers Farm School

With the rapid expansion of Council housing during the inter-war years, a commensurate school building programme was set in motion in Birmingham. In South Birmingham, the children of the sprawling Allens Cross estate in Northfield were to be accommodated by schools at Trescott Road and Tinkers Farm Road, the latter of which is the subject of this article. Opening in termporary buildings in 1930 the school, at that time comprising of both primary and secondary departments, operated under the name of Tinkers Farm Road Council School until 1945 when there was a separation of the primary and boys and girls secondary departments into Tinkers Farm County Primary School, Tinkers Farm Boys’ County Modern School and Tinkers Farm Girls’ County Modern School, respectively.

Moving into permanent accommodation from a series of temporary ‘huts’ between 1932-1937 the school operated as 3 distinct units until 1957 when the primary element was disbanded and the school became a secondary school only, operating with the girls school on the first floor and boys school on the lower floor, housing circa 500 pupils in each department. As is, and was, the case with educational policy, many initiatives came and went and along with them a number of name changes until in 1969 Tinkers Farm County Modern School became Northfield Comprehensive School.

Growing up, as I did, in 1970s Northfield I remember the school having a woeful reputation and it certainly wasn’t one that appeared as the first choice selection for many parents when deciding where their children would go for secondary education. In fact I seem to recall Bournville School was the ‘Holy Grail’ at the time and following my early years’ schooling at Trescott Road Junior and Infants’ School my family moved to West Heath and I’d attended Cofton Promary School from 8 – 11 years and, living as we did, on the number 27 bus route that went to Bournville my mother put me down for that school. Birmingham City Council’s Education Department, however, had other ideas and sent a confirmation letter informing us that I was to go to Northfield Comprehensive.

To further compound matters, due to a drop in child numbers following the post-war baby boom, the Council were looking to close a number of schools and consolidate numbers in larger secondary schools in the City. Among those rumoured as earmarked for closure was Northfield Comprehensive which, on further investigation, we found was set to close in 1986 which was to be the year I finished my schooling and hence I was to be among the last group of pupils to traverse the five years of education on offer at the school.

Unfortunately for me, no one from Cofton Primary School was going to Northfield Comprehensive and so I turned up on my first morning – in my bottle green jumper with fetching red and green diagonally striped tie – not expecting to know anyone and somewhat daunted by the ‘horror stories’ that abounded in the area about the school and its pupils. As I walked up Kelby Close to the school gates I thought the school had a somewhat dilapidated and depressing air to it and its appearance, from that entrance, was dominated by the two halls on the lower and upper floors dead ahead, with the ‘outstretched arms’ of the gym blocks to the left and right with the science and art blocks underneath them, respectively.

Immediately on entering the gates there was a small car park surrounded by a playground and to the right there was a driveway through to the ‘lower school’ playground, and beyond that the craft block, and to the left a driveway to the upper school playground and beyond that the upper school and 6th form block. The school seemed vast to me and I think, at that time, there were c950 pupils in attendance. Fortunately, after a few minutes psyching myself up to enter the playground I ventured inside and was met by many ex Trescott Road School pupils who remembered me from there a few years previously which eased my trauma somewhat!

Over the years my memory has no doubt faded as to some of the characters concerned with the school, but as best as I can recall, and for those interested, the staff as I remember them were as follows:

Mr Evanson – Head
Mr Broomfield – Head (Lower School)
Mr Meyrick – Head (Upper School)
Miss Plimley – Science
Mr Nelson – Science
Mr Harding – English
Mr Hardy – Science
Mr Troman – Science
Mr Hazard – Geography
Mr Fleming – History
Mr Bartlam – Geography
Miss Alcock – French/German
Mr Slater – English
Mr Berry – English
Mr Hill – General Studies
Mrs Marshall – General Studies
Mr Barua – Maths
Mr MacDonald – Maths
Miss Patterson – Maths
Mrs Meachum – Maths
Mr Cotterill – PE
Mr Colvin – PE
Mr Charlton – Woodwork/Technical Drawing
Mr Murch – Metalwork
Mr Zielinski – Metalwork
Mr Malpass – Art
Miss Smith – Art
Mr Turner – Commerce
Mr Sturman – Can’t recall subject
Mr James – Music/RE
Mrs Beddows – Can’t recall subject
Mrs Harris – PE

Whilst there were some great staff among the above list – Dougie Fleming, Martin Berry and Bob Hill I particularly remember fondly – I have to confess that I wasn’t overly enamoured with my time at Northfield Comprehensive. Looking back, one of the fundamental problems was that the school was being ‘wound down’ to closure and so any teacher with a modicum of ability and career aspiration was clamouring to escape to pastures new . . . and many did so during my first three years at the school. The result was that what we were left with a selection of supply teachers, teachers coasting to retirement and, I would posit, some who were finding it ‘testing’ to be placed elsewhere. We certainly felt that we were getting less than a fair crack of the whip in terms of teaching quality and certainly a lack of consistence in approach as teachers were abandoning the sinking ship at an alarming rate.

Whilst some of the teaches who came in towards the end were great – John Bradney, English teacher and RSA thespian extraordinaire – some were well below par. Some of the teachers who arrived during my time at the school as I recall were:

Mrs Schneider – Head
Mr Mohammed – RE
Mr Kendall – PE
Miss Evans – PE/Maths (an immensely popular teacher with all the male pupils and staff as I recall)
Mr Oborski – Can’t recall the subject
Miss Knowles – Maths

In my final year at the school there had been no backfilling of pupils for a couple of years and we were the only year left on the site. Not only had the educational quality crumbled but so had the fabric of the school itself with cracks running from floor to roof on the outer wall of the art block/boys gym and a general air of disrepair abounded. Even careers guidance which should have been a rather important part of the final year was reduced to finding everyone Youth Training Schemes (YTS) to go on after we’d taken our clutch of CSEs (Certificates of Substandard Education as we’d dubbed them) . . . don’t ever recall the notion of progression to university being mentioned!

And thus, in 1986 we all left (well, I actually finished a month early following an ‘alleged’ incident with Brasso, a cheese sandwich and a technical drawing teacher) and the school closed with the buildings being retained for several years as a training centre for various youth schemes and, in the case of the old upper school, a Neighbourhood Office until demolition. The school site is now occupied by a housing association development under the moniker ‘Scholars Green’, a name which still makes me chuckle.

I could run-off enough anecdotes and reflections to fill a website in its own right about Northfield Comprehensive but if anyone else can add any names or info to the above I’d be very interested to hear from you.

Ark

As is sadly the case with many bands, talent doesn’t necessarily equate to success and this was no more starkly evident than with neo-prog rockers Ark who formed in 1985 following the breakup of local band Damascus. Hailing from the West Midlands, and walking the dangerous line between prog-rock and commercial rock, Ark produced a succession of musically adroit and lyrically meaningful tracks at a time when the music world was by and large turning ‘hair metal’.

My first encounter with the band was when they entered the Edwards Number 8 ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition in 1987 which saw three nights a week, a succession of the great – and not so great – local bands vying for the prize of a studio session at Rob Bruce’s Rich Bitch studios in Selly Oak. On their first appearance in the competition I was a judge and was feeling increasingly jaded by the whole affair as an endless stream of third-rate Bon Jovi clones and thrash bands made-up the majority of entrants, such was the era. When Ark hit the stage, however, I was totally captivated and blown away – as were the other judges (‘Crazy’ Al King the sound engineer at Edwards and Aaron Whan the lighting tech); we were all caught by surprise!

Ark - The Dreams of Mr Jones

Ark wore makeup (in the case of frontman Tony Short, a lot of face paint akin to early Gabriel), they had two guitarists in Pete Wheatley and Steve Harris (who played a synth guitar from which came an array keyboard and piano touches), they had a drummer – Dave ‘Cocky’ Robbins – who could actually play more than a straight 4/4 beat, Andy Harris on bass and produced a complex and well crafted, but accessible, brand of commercial-edged prog rock: imagine Marillion with balls. Furthermore, frontman Tony Short was just that; he was a frontman in every sense of the word, captivating in performance, possessing a strong and powerful voice and engaged with the audience with good humoured banter as appropriate. We were all convinced that we’d seen a band destined for great things and, as those who remember the competition will recall, Ark went on to win the final on 18th December 1987 (I still have a mixing desk recording of the gig!). I was so impressed with the band, and believe me that wasn’t often the case, I went to see them at the College of Food and Art a few days later and got to chat to them and discovered that they were the nicest bunch of chaps you could ever wish to meet which, again, wasn’t always the case with bands both major and minor.

With the studio time won in the Battle of the Bands competition Ark recorded their debut album The Dreams of Mr Jones, a 5-track opus that is nigh-on impossible to come by these days but well worth the effort if a copy can be secured. The album also featured a new bass player, Jon Jowitt. My abiding memory of the band with Mr Jowitt was a rather odd gig at the salubrious Coldstream pub on the Frankley estate in South Birmingham where, mid-way through a track, a group of bikers drinking at the bar picked Tony Short up and carried him out into the car park whilst still singing, fortunately in jest!

Ark - Cover Me With Rain

The band built a strong local following and began to construct a fan base around the country, playing the likes of the Marquee club in London and things seemed to be heading in the right direction for the band. Further recording and tweaks in line-up followed with ‘Cocky’ Robbins being replaced on drums by Gary Davies, and later Paul Rogers, and Jon Jowitt leaving to join prog behemoths IQ – with whom he still plays – being replaced by Nigel ‘Gel’ Newey.

However, whilst building a cult following around the country, and indeed around Europe, true success eluded the band and after 10 years they called it a day in 1995. Rumours have circulated from time to time about a reunion but one has failed to materialise and I can’t help but look back to Ark with a tinge of sadness as they were one of only a handful of bands to understand how to put on a performance and were musically very skilled and yet failed to make a breakthrough into the big league. Fortunately, they did leave behind four albums – and a plethora of cassette EPs and singles – that, whilst extremely hard to find, attest to their legacy as one of the regions finest musical products.

Update 10/05/10

Since I published the above article, it’s been confirmed that Ark have reformed with the calssic Short-Harris-Wheatley-Jowitt lineup with gigs to come later in 2010 and a new album! Get your tickets for their album launch gig on 5th September 2010 at the Robin 2 HERE!

Redbeards from Texas - Goodbye T' Jane

A good friend of mine, when I was around 16, got a job at a guitar shop called the Bass Place in Suffolk Street that was owned and run by two members of the Redbeards from Texas and thus my introduction to the band began.  It’s a little tricky to describe the Redbeards act without using the phrase ‘mock ZZ Top’ but it’s fair to say that, particularly in their early days, they really modelled themselves as ZZ Top soundalikes which, at least during that period of the mid-1980’s, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in terms of gaining a listening audience.

In fact, prior to  actually meeting the band, I do recall reading about the Redbeards from Texas in Kerrang and a few friends of mine told me about a particularly torrid gig they’d seen them play at one of the short-lived ‘Blast, Blitz and Boogie Nights’ at the Birmingham Odeon supporting black metal ‘inventors’ Venom:  whoever thought-up pairing a ZZ Top genre group with a death metal act needed help!

My particular introduction to the band was when a friend asked me if I could help out as a roadie for the day at the Portland Club where the band were to shoot a video for their single Shoot It Up.  I jumped at the chance and spent the day with the band – along with their preferred PA company Tourco headed by Richard ‘Fez’ Ferriday (about whom you can read more as bassist with Cryer) whom I had got to know through Edwards Number 8 gigs – ‘Crazy’ Al King, Tony Smith, ‘Big’ Mick Hughes, Dave ‘Sprog’ and Den York.  It was an eye opening experience and great fun.

The band consisted of:

Morton Pinkley (Ian Allen) – Guitar, Vocals
Wild Hoss Maverick III (David ‘Kink’ Keates) – Bass, Vocals
Bud Weiser (Craig) – Guitar
Duke Delight (Colin) – Drums

Neil Troman – Drums (final tour)

During their time they release several singles from their one and only album – Havin’ a Ball – performed a BBC Peel Session on 25/06/85 and made several TV appearances.  However, despite being a good live act and pulling a considerable audience for their gigs, they were somewhat limited in appeal due to their musical adherence to the ZZ Top mould and their association with their early days comedy gimmicks such as false beards etc which was a pity.

Redbeards from Texas - I Saw Her Standing There

I helped out carrying equipment etc at a number of gigs for them during the mid-late 80s and had a blast – endless Budweiser, practical jokes and far too much running around naked (won’t elaborate further but some of the band’s antics were legendary) ensured a good turn was had by all,  except possibly at a gig at the Kent Custom Classic bike show where Fez pulled the gearstick off the van exiting Toddington Services on the return journey at about 5am in the morning and we had to get the AA to bring us back to Birmingham – which they did, in just enough time for me and Fez to pick up the Tourco PA truck to go off to a gig elsewhere!

The Bass Place was also a hive of activity with many of the City’s musicians shopping there – or at least popping in for a natter with Ian and Kink.

However, by the close of the 80’s the band had called it a day with Ian and Kink going on to form Mazique with vocalist and ex-recording studio owner, Guy Stanway (brother of Magnum’s Mark Stanway) – who had a minor hit with a cover of Golden Earring’s Radar Love – only to reform a year or two later – this time with Neil Troman on drums – for a final (Inland Revenue-related) UK tour. Ian and Kink also had had a song entered to be the UK song for Eurovision but it lost out in the final of ‘Song for Europe’ several years ago.