I admit it, my hearing is going. While sat in the BBC canteen, I head the voice on the radio say that the next Eurovision Great British song entry would be sung by Tommy Tynan. Tommy Tynan? Imagine my disappointment when I found out the presenter has said Bonnie Tyler. I think Tommy would have a great chance. I once had to phone Bonnie Tyler for an interview and dropped myself right in it. An Arthur Mullard sound-a-like answered the phone. When I addressed the voice as ‘sir’ only to discover that I was speaking to Bonnie directly, I hastily said ‘Hang on I will put you through to Mr FitzGerald.’ Doh!
So, Plymouth has a new advertising slogan, Ocean City, catchy and to the point! I can’t help thinking that Ocean City sounds like an ‘all you can eat’ Chinese restaurant, but I hope it works. I have a bad record with ‘all you can eat’ Chinese restaurants as there is one in Plymouth who watched me ladle fragrant rice and beef with oyster sauce onto a plate. Then I added spring rolls and chicken balls, garlic spare ribs and promptly smothered the lot in sweet and sour sauce. Mmmmmm. After some frantic chewing I discovered that the chicken balls were in fact banana fritters!
Ocean City could be the slogan seen by hundreds of thousands when we win city of culture status. In case you missed it, the English contenders for the 2017 title are Chester, East Kent, Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea, Hull….yes Hull, Leicester, Plymouth, Portsmouth and Southampton to name but a few. So have we got a chance? Let’s start with Chester and compare famous people born in they city. Sporting talent. They’ve got Michael Owen and we have Michael Evans, no contest…one up to us. Hunks! They have Daniel Craig and we have Wayne Sleep!
OK, how about Hull? Arr Hull, so good they named it once. I have never been to Hull and I wish that status to remain the same for the rest of my life.
Let’s size up Hastings. My family lived in that area in the fifties and took me for a visit in 1972. As my father said at the time, the tide went out in 1954 and had never come back in again. It’s not exactly a racy, throbbing centre of nightlife. There were eighteen of us stood on the seafront that day and I think I was the only one who had my own hips.
Leicester, great for dead monarchs and car parks plus brilliant for curry! The city gave us Peter Shilton and then we gave him back but not before I ran into him at Bigbury one afternoon. I wandered into a pub and there was sat a very famous footballer. I knew the face but the name just wouldn’t come.
‘Trevor,’ I said.
‘Peter,’ he corrected.
I wasn’t going to let this go and added defiantly ‘Francis?’ I drove home the mistake….why?
‘Shilton.’ Was his one word answer and the conversation ended there.
Support the 2017 bid and if the team want a slightly deaf diplomat with no sense of taste, I’m your man.
Fitz
