What goes around...

12:29pm Thursday 20th November 2008

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The show must go on, and it does. At the annual lunch of the Showmen's Guild, the column hitches a ride.

ALL the fun of the fair, I was a guest last week at the annual lunch of the northern section of the Showmen’s Guild, the Ramside Hall Hotel thronged like happy hour at the Hoppings.

Thus it was possible to have a jolly good feed, to discover that my urbane host was once a member of the Angelic Upstarts – the punk rock group which infamously kicked a pig’s head around on stage – and to resolve at last the mystery of how shuggy boats came by their name.

As probably they used to say of the Super Waltzer, you really can’t fall off.

Formed in 1889 as the UK Van Dwellers’ Protection Association, the Guild is the fairground operators’ trade union, they who ensure that the shows must go on.

Though its members move with the times, the G-force with them, they remain proudly traditional, too.

The possibility of renaming it the Showperson’s Guild has, though there are female members, never been considered.

Nor may there be many organisations where gentlemen are required to replace their jacket before the loyal toast and told that they may remove it thereafter.

It’s all quite formal, more municipal chains than a corporation netty.

The toastmaster wears hunting pink, the principal speaker is Sir Len Fenwick, chief executive of the Newcastle upon Tyne Health Service Trust.

Sir Len’s an honorary member, something to do with his work in preserving the Town Moor for the great annual extravaganza. They’ve a chaplain, too – 68-year-old Canon Bill Hall, long-familiar in the North-East arts world.

Arthur Robert Moody, the northern chairman, tells the company that it’s been a desperate year – “non-stop rain from mid-June to Guy Fawkes’ night”

– and a 200 per cent rise in the cost of fuel, upon which so greatly they depend.

“Just when the season’s ended, it’s going down again,” says the chairman.

Next year he hopes for cloudless skies. What goes around comes around, as probably they say on fairgrounds everywhere.

BORN in South Shields, the Angelic Upstarts appeared a bit anarchic, a bit anti-establishment, particularly unhappy with the constabulary.

A website describes them as a meeting of working class rebel and musical aspiration, another talks of their gritty populism and savage past.

Paul Evans is the former, if not the fallen, Angel. An ex-Bishop Auckland Grammar School boy, he produced his own comic as a 12-year-old, hawking it at twopence a read among his pals.

He’d also persuaded teachers to screen something from the Hammer House of Horrors, instead of the more anodyne fare at the school film club.

Though a member of other punk bands, his stay on the Angels’ cloud was quite brief. The most rebellious thing he does during a four-hour lunch is wear his shirt outside his trousers, and even that’s probably accidental.

Their first record was Who Killed Liddle Towers, about the death in Northumbria police custody of a nightclub doorman from Birtley. The Upstarts thought that the coppers did.

“The police haunted the band’s early concerts like a malignant poltergeist,”

Sun columnist Garry Bushell once wrote, and the Sun also supposed them Britain’s sickest pop group.

They were led by Tommy Mensforth, known as Mensi. Others down the years had names like Sticks Warrington, Tony Feedback, Ronnie Rocker and Max Splodge. Friends insisted that they were lovely lads, really, a sort of Peter, Paul and Mensi.

Tommy took over the Black Diamond pub at Butterknowle, in Teesdale, changed its name to the Sly Fox, went bust in 1997, was last heard of running a decorating company – called Angels – at Dawdon, near Seaham.

Paul Evans, nice lad, played his last note 18 years ago. Now he operates Carnival Funfairs, based in Shildon – mainly children’s rides, what the showmen call juveniles – likes to retreat into his Sherlock Holmes room with a bottle of real ale (if not quite with his pipe.) He’s married with two children, loves the smell of the candyfloss and the hum of the generators, loves kids, hopes to bring his own up the same way.

“I’m an extrovert when I need be, but I can be introverted just as easily,”

he says. Another Angelic Upstart has come happily back down to earth.

AMONG many other guests is Alec McCoy, Wear Valley District Council’s commercial manager who perchance featured in last week’s column.

They’re the lads hoping to ease fears about late night misbehaviour around Bishop Auckland Market Place by issuing doormen with metal detectors and – it was hoped – with lollipops, too.

The municipal sweeteners have now been ordered, 35,000 for around £250, which mathematicians may confirm makes the legendary penny lolly appear overpriced.

Last week’s column, however, mistakenly said in a caption that a photograph of the lollipop-sucking Mr McCoy was in fact Stewart Joyce, manager of a town centre bar. Alec’s the real McCoy.

SHUGGY boats is the North- East term for swing boats, familiar at fairgrounds and on the beach.

“I’d never even heard the term until we started getting the miners’ families down from County Durham,” said Victor Vernon, one of the Redcar showmen.

“The lads would go off to the races and leave the women and children to go off on the shuggy boats.”

Not even the admirable John Culine, northern section secretary and MBE recipient, knew the etymology, though he worked the tables (and their occupants) until he found out.

It’s from the dialect word “shug”, presumably meaning to shove. If the kids needed to get the thing going, they’d ask someone to give them a shug.

At the end of a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, John was presented with a scroll of honour from Spennymoor Town Council – he’s a former mayor – for services to the County Durham town.

For services to etymology, the guy deserves a knighthood.

NEXT day was the Guild’s annual meeting, lots of health and safety issues, business as usual. That evening, a coach load of the younger and more resilient was heading for Newcastle, further to enjoy the endof- season attraction. It’s what the showmen call wintering, and they looked to be wintering very well.