Blackpool's cheap thrills
Robert Gore-Langton wonders why this rundown resort still retains its popularity Whatever happened to poor old Blackpool? The last time I went it was alive, busy and reasonably full of life. The place today is a windswept vision of destitution and bleakness, home to roaming bands of stag and hen weekenders, fat people with limps and aimless geriatrics waiting to be mugged. A town once synonymous with aspiration and elegance struck me as a deeply seedy place, notable for its lovebites and sick.
It is, however, cheap. This presumably explains why, despite its dramatic decline, it's still Britain's most popular seaside resort. There are legions of beyond-parody hotels where you can stay for £20 a night or less — including all the grease you can eat for breakfast. Not that there's much to do in town. Two of the three piers are horrible and all of them virtually deserted — and this was in July. The donkeys shuffle up and down the sands in search of kiddies to ride them. Even the seagulls seem to have migrated to the Costa Brava.
Blackpool is synonymous with live entertainment, but there's not a lot of that in evidence. The Grumbleweeds and Cannon and Ball have teamed up for the big summer season, which should help force up the local suicide rate. The Opera House has a production of the musical Chicago, its condition unknown. The only really good news is that the lovely Grand Theatre has just opened after refurbishment. The best evening out is probably the popular drag cabaret Funny Girls, housed in the old Odeon.
Martin Witts, a former resident and Blackpool entertainments programmer now working in the London theatre, adores Blackpool. He worships its heritage. But even he reckons 'it's absolutely finished. Everyone is waiting for it to be rebuilt but it's hard to believe it's ever going to happen. Today, it looks like Sarajevo. If I lived there I wouldn't let my children go out at night — all those crackheads, junkies and people with neck tattoos. What Blackpool really needs to be is a giant theme park celebrating the best of the English seaside tradition.'
With the highest percentage population of gay people in the UK (according to the AstaBgay website) it should have evolved like Brighton, which was regenerated partly through the power of its pink pound. But somehow it hasn't happened. Blackpool has spent the past decade banking on becoming the Las Vegas of the North (the local college offered optimistic courses on 'coin slot technology') but famously lost out to Manchester on its super-casino bid after which Gordon Brown junked the entire scheme. There doesn't seem to be a plan B.
Something involving a lot of bulldozers and several billion pounds now needs to happen. A new civic plaza is proposed, but isn't yet built. In October Blackpool will learn whether the V&A trustees have chosen the town to rehouse the Theatre Museum. But, since no one went to the museum when it was in London, one wonders if it will have any real power to kickstart the town's desperately needed renewal.
But for all its bleakness it's impossible not to feel very fond of the place and the innocent (if deceased) bucket-and-spade family holiday tradition the town stands for. The haddock and chips are still superb. The brown sea is still bracing and the Tower still standing. The pockets of Victorian elegance are still there, a rebuke to today's seafront of unutterably dismal tat.
Anything innovative in Blackpool seems to stem from the Thompson dynasty, which owns the famous Pleasure Beach — a giant funfair complex — at the south end of town. It has suffered decline like everywhere else, but it still remains Britain's top (free to enter) attraction with six million visitors annually. Amanda Thompson, who runs the entertainments side, is committed to live entertainment in the venue's various theatres — the Ice Show being the most famous.
The Pleasure Beach has the only modern hotel in the town and its shows are a cornerstone of the attraction. At the Globe Theatre they've recently opened Forbidden, a glamorous revue. The title Forbidden suggests something naughty. Actually, it's not quite the tits-and-feathers show (along the lines of the irresistible Jubilee burlesque in Las Vegas) I was hoping for, but more of a revue-circus hybrid. It's still a smashing night out, very much of the 'more is more' school of entertainment.
It comes with a parade of largely Eastern European lovelies with sultry pouts, lads in very short shorts and special effects galore, and replaces the previous Pleasure Beach shows Eclipse and Mystique (both of which were in a similar circus-revue vein). Amanda Thompson has both directed and produced this extravaganza. Choreographer Antony Johns adds tango, flamenco and disco moves to the mix. When it's bad Forbidden is embarrassingly vulgar (slide your boat into my harbour and slip into something wet' sings a showgirl with faux Mae West sass to a chap); but for the most part it's gratifyingly expensive. It contains eye-watering contortionists, strap acts, jugglers, even a gratuitously chucked-in trick cyclist. The show is a very professional riot of dotty excess.
Arguably, the rides at the Pleasure Beach are the town's real outdoor theatre. Blackpool is the world's roller-coaster capital — some of them are nostalgic wooden structures which date back to before the war. The last time I was on the Big Dipper, an escaped lunatic called Richard Rodriguez (an American, I think) was breaking the world record by riding the thing for 90 days solid. I interviewed him, sitting beside him as we hurtled around. He didn't even notice the bends and dips, whereas my tape recording consists of questions all ending in `aaaaaaaargh!'.
The most interesting thing he said was that he repeatedly dreamt that his arms had been snapped off. He has just returned to Blackpool and has broken a new endurance record, riding on the fiendish Pepsi Max Big One by day and the Big Dipper by night, with only five minutes off every four hours. He clocked up nine and a half days' solid white-knuckle roller-coastering, a record that is as astonishing as it is stupid.
I'd like to see him try to get some shuteye on Infusion, the Pleasure Beach's fiendish new £8 million gut-churner ride, which involves customers hanging upside-down like bats, doing loop the loops at incredible speeds with the G force of a rocket launch. I'd tell you what it was like but all I can remember is shutting my eyes and muttering 'The Lord is my shepherd' the entire way round. Getting off it was sheer bliss.
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