Mark Steel’s In Town Margate

I like Margate because it’s um oh it was the first Seaside town was it the first Seaside town oh yeah sunsets I love the beach in winter when there are no people the lady who did the unmade bed Trac em she’s amazing she’s policy we’ve got the Turner contemporary you got TS Elliot you wrote very famous poem wrote part of the Wasteland at the band stand there Dreamland Dreamland you can still see the big wheel the teacups the Enterprise the wers it was very rickety you would fear for your life but you’d still go on it again much less rough now no worse than anywhere else I really like it it’s like a little mini Las Vegas it’s a really bloody good sunsets can’t complain Mark Steel’s in town thank you so much thank you so much and welcome to Mark still town which this week from the kentis Riviera where you can barely see across the harbor as it’s packed with luxury Yachts we’re in Margate where you come into town and the first thing you see is the sign that says Dreamland because that is exactly what your dreams look like if you’ve had post-traumatic stress disorder dirty brick work above a cinema that’s been shut for many years next to a shopping center that was burnt down in suspicious circumstances who doesn’t have a dream like that and it is true you often see the elite of London sauntering across Marine Terrace in their Range Rovers because they’ve got lost looking for witel and there are so many classic buildings here in mgate and none more famous than Arlington House margate’s targe Mahal the biggest building in Margate visible from many miles away a symbol of the Town cuz it’s deceptive Arlington House from a long way off it looks like an ugly dirty huge concrete block but as you get nearer you realize oh it’s even worse than I thought and Marg is a course the Kent Coast for anybody who doesn’t know it’s where the temps ends and the wind swirls off the North Sea the most inviting of all the Seas giving you a unique climate that they don’t have in Ramsgate or broadstairs of all year round swirling horrible drizzle when I came around here to look around a little while ago it was Winter and lots of people from Margate gave me lots of suggestions of places I should go to galleries museums quirky Cafe pH so I went to all the places that were recommended and I enjoyed the common theme of all of them which is they were all shut because the town motto in Margate is we’re shut on a Tuesday it’s a shame you’re not here tomorrow so you say all right then I’ll come back tomorrow and they go yeah we’re shut on Wednesdays and all now I understand this Margate is a Seaside town which is why everything is shut from Mondays to Wednesdays between October and may but to be fair in the summer season it is of course very different because then everything shut from Monday to Wednesday between May and October where do you get things and now some people are trying to make Margate Posh I’m not sure you’re ready to become the Monaco of thanet you like the old Margate the local newsletter for example defends Arlington House it says stop anyone in the street and ask what do you think of Arlington House and the reply would vary they might say it’s ugly it’s overwhelming it’s dirty or it’s full of drug addicts so a whole range of opinions then and the newsletter goes on only one of these is true it is dirty but only on the outside on the inside there’s no vomi in the lifts no discarded con cond Doms or needles in the corridors it’s not a high bar they set is it and uh you’ve modernized the view in Margate as well in another way with a long line of wind farms and when they were built assurances were given that they would fit in with the local environment and they do because they’re turned off from Monday to Wednesday but you don’t need Tre fountains and coliseums to be attractive Marg you attract people with your cheery common charm cuz you’ve got one of the most famous fairgrounds in Britain Dreamland which is currently boasting the iconic roller coaster is a 100 years old now I’ll be honest it’s cute when a house has a plaque saying this is 100 years old but I’m not sure you want a listed roller coaster you’re upside down traveling at 80 M an hour round a corner do you think isn’t it marvelous to think this was built just after the first world war but there’s more to Margate than its idilic beaches and its jelly deal quizy now I don’t usually mention headlines in local papers but there’s this one from Kent online that I think is worthy of note Margate bus driver out of boredom has sex with family pets out of board if I was a detective I guess that happened between Monday and Wednesday but now you’ve become the focal point for a range of artists and writers and filmmakers Tracy eming grew up here and she’s back here now and she’s written a heartwarming Memoir about her days in Margate for example uh I was this is from her book I was a girl dancing provocatively in Margate in 1977 when the town’s leading drug dealer grabbed me by the wrist we checked into the naand Rock Hotel he fell asleep half naked on the bed so I called my mom to say I was on my way home went through his pockets took £6 and 20 Ben and edges and I like to think that story sums up the spirit of margar of innocent fun and art and entrepreneurs and there are so many wellknown authors who have been here been inspired by Margate John Benjamin wrote a poem called Margate 1940 about why we were fighting the war and he wrote what a pleasure to see the ground floor with tables for two lat as tables for four and bottles of sauces kiaura and squash awaiting their owners who’d gone up to wash and I bet that inspired the Spitfire Pilots there’s another verse Which is less known I think it flows better that goes shrieking around Dreamland in Terror and laughter tier and chips on the beach moments after nicking some [ __ ] off a blo while he snored molesting the guinea pig when he got bored I prefer that one uh one of the most famous poems in English TS Elliots the Wasteland mentions Margate so there’s a a mural of him at the railway station that says TS Elliot toilet because his name is an anagram of toilet what a childish town the bus shelter where he wrote the verse in the wasteland about margay is one of the 20 rtion to visit on the visit thanet tourist website it goes on Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing the broken fingernails of dirty hands my people humble people who expect nothing that’s what you made him feel and you’re very proud of tsia and it should be celebrated that a famous poem described in the literary magazine the Atlantic as an apocalyptic View of misery and loss by a disturbed man possessed with visions of squala that’s you inspired that but it has been glamorous here hasn’t it this was once the most glorious Lio where we are right now in the Lio it was a majestic open air Art Deco swimming pool with stands where hundreds of people would watch and it was the pride of the town and it attracted thousands of tourists it was this beautiful buing and it was shut in the 1980s I expect the government saw a hole in the ground thought it was a mine and thought we’ better close that Tracy em learned to swim in the LI out she says Tracy was Forward Thinking Of course as an inspirational artist with her bed surrounded by empty vodka bottles and condoms and [ __ ] buts when you think that now Southern water has created its own installation and they put it in the sea and it’s a wonderful thought-provoking piece but the one thing that survived everything is Dreamland and the credit for Dreamland should go to the private Railway owners of Victorian times because they were all in competition so in 1866 the London chattam and Dover Railway company bought land on Marine Drive to build a station but Southeast Railways bought some land a few yards away and built their station first now the first Railway company had spent a fortune on a chunk of land that was useless but at least the railway companies learned from that mistake and never again were rail companies allowed to waste vast sums of public money on a useless project that was clearly never wor uh the mayor of Margate back then formed a partnership with Lord George Sanger who wasn’t a lord he lied about that but he ran circuses and Lord J sanger’s wife claimed to invent the trick of putting your head in a lion’s mouth and he built an archway across the front that said it was based on Margate Abby even though Margate had never had an Abby and he filled the land with elephants and lions and tigers and it’s all so marget when you live here do you feel like you’re living in an episode of Only Fools and Horses and then the land was sold to a man called lord Henry Isles who built Dreamland and he was the same man whose idea it was to build the Lio and then according to secret Margate books got down there somewhere in 1938 Isles went bankrupt and Dreamland went into liquidation and there was one pamphlet I read about the history of Dreamland and three consecutive chapters started with the words sadly Dreamland then went into declin and every bit of the Dreamland story is like this in 1996 the site was bought by local entrepreneur Jimmy Goden who I’m sure you all know and very very popular Jimmy Goden who secured grants for A3 million Redevelopment and then sold off the rides including the big wheel which was sold to a park in Mexico how do you sell a big wheel to Mexico what sort of spiv no weever it to you in no time we’re going to tie it to the roof of he makes Transit van and then when we get to Miami we’re going to roll it the rest of the world one of the first things I was told when I came here was the empty space just past the clock tower is called God’s Gap God’s Gap because that used to be an amusement arcade owned by Jimmy Goden and he couldn’t get permission to knock it down to make another entrance to Dreamland but as luck would have it one day the arcade burnt down and he was able to build his shop so it’s just fortunate how things work something Act of go an act of Goden someone said in 2003 he announced that sadly Dreamland had gone into decline so he sold it and I expect he sold the water slide to the Sahara Desert and then the roller coaster stayed open but the history of Dreamland tell us in 2008 it was damaged after an arson attack another one extraordinary I read a I read an article by someone who lived here who wrote I promise this someone who lived here went no business ever just closes in Margate it burns down even the aquarium in cliftonville burn down how do you burn down an aquarium it’s literally water how stupid are the insurance don’t water burn down must be flam water I bet there are no estate agents in Margate cuz every time someone moves you just torch the old out this is one of the signs that the town is becoming gentrified cuz now all the arsen’s done with eco-friendly fire lighters someone told me there’s a Viking ship here but it burnt down a viking a Viking ship this thing survived Wars Viking Wars but couldn’t stay in one one piece in modern Margo there was a save Dreamland Campaign which resulted in rides being donated by other Leisure parks and Southport donated their caterpillar ride and a ghost train and what what a marvelous appeal that must have been like was it one of them that’s read by Joanna Lumley if you could spare anything even a Hall of Mirrors or or a coconut shy please please send it to Margate but it did mean that Dreamland could open again so there was a huge national celebration and everything was fine until in 2015 sadly Dreamland went into declin so uh Dan where’s Dan hello Dan so Dan Thompson who is a a marvelous man many of you may know who’s written books about dreamland it always bounces back again even when it’s I’m sure even if it’s totally leveled it’ll somehow come back again it will it’ll always come back and it has every time you think it’s over for Dreamland somehow it’s back and it’s fighting and it’s changed and it’s something new again might be an aquarium one day you’re short Wayne Hemingway tried to bolster it didn’t he he did the Wayne Hemingway thing was he missed the point of Margate he didn’t get the spirit of Margate in what he did and that version lasted a couple of years before they scrapped it before it went into sad decline sad he went into decline yeah margate’s always been an egalitarian play it’s always had that mixing of rich and poor people in one place and he tried to make it Posh and nice and clean and it doesn’t work as that no I’ve got a push Dreamland uh there a couple of things I want to ask you about first of all so Dan you used to live in Arlington House I did I lived in there for about 8 years looks straight out onto Dreamland isn’t it one side looks right over Dreamland yeah I went inside there and once you’re inside the flats are amazing it’s stunning they’re really good Flats they were built as high-end luxury Seaside holiday Flats so they were built to a really high that so do you get fed up of people being rude about it or is that part of the joy of it it’s part of the joy of it but it is a Pity CU it is it’s a fantastic building and it shows that there was a moment of optimism and hope and joy that Margate was going to have a future that’s what it was built for cuz it is a really beautiful building it just needs a bit of love and a bit of affection it needs a jet wash it does yeah thank you very much to Dan it’s been so [Applause] pleased it’s one of those Premier Escape rooms as well I noticed here that have become very popular have any of you been to that that’s sort of yeah where you locked in a room and the one in Margate it’s one of the most challenging in brit cuz it’s quite easy to get out the challenge is to get in between Monday and Wednesday this is the only town where I’ve seen a sign that says that way for axe throwing it’s a little brown sign as well the one that usually says beautiful forest or Roman War for a special day out here rather than just go for a few points why don’t we Chuck some Act and someone told me oh no they’ve got a bar there as well well that’s reassuring I always like to think everyone around me has had a drink before they throw axes it’s not going to be easy to take Margate up Market you’re going to have to go through against the whole of History cuz you’ve always attracted a certain sort of tourist an essay I read this essay on in the 1790s on the sort of person who came here in the 1790s this was written not many are rich or wise or learned they are I’m afraid a set of unseasoned londoners and they came by steamer because it was cheaper than a coach and then another essay said the real cotney are to be found in the lower part of the social scale the first thing they do when Landing from the steamer is to sit by a window and eat shrimps the first reason that people came here was the sea bathing hospital that you can see on the road coming in cuz SE had only been available to the wealthy before then but then Margate sea bathing was for like the unseason londoners it made it accessible for them for people who have shrimps one of the people who came here was KL Marx and he thought the seawater would help his boils and uh one of the only things that K marks wrote about his stay here was my land lady is as deaf as a post I thought oh I bet he loved that no I said capitalism I don’t want to overthrow cannibalism you silly old C capitalism and then everyone came to Margate in the 1960s when it was a massive Seaside Town Hatty Jake John the Missouri had a house here lots of the carry-on team used to come down here they’d stay at the house and I just you got to imagine them just wandering along the front all day with Sid James going oh I wouldn’t mind going up and down on her roller coasters a mechanical elephant was built here that could run do you know about the mechanical elephant there’s the weather spoons Pub named after it now and it could run at 27 M an hour this thing and it had a special license to run on the roads at 27 M an hour the only explanation I can think of for an elephant running at that speed is there was a bus right behind him and the Elephant thought that bus driver looks a bit bored [Applause] there’s a beautiful lovely old classy side to Margate one of the landmarks that so many people said I had to go and see was the Walpole hotel and you all know that the hotel’s website says from the moment you enter the Walpole Bay Hotel you step back in time to the ambience of a bygone era Exquisite so when I come down here in November I thought I’ll save that to last as a little treat for the end of the day guess what happened Marg not just shut there was a piece of paper on the door that said shut until March I started to think there wasn’t a hotel there it was just sort of all in your imagination and people went oh word do say that it do open up once every Thousand Years but I have been corrected because I went in it yesterday and uh there was a little bit of me that thought when I went onto the first floor I might see a small child cycling going great run and that someone might come up to me and say you’ve always been the caretakers but it is amazing in there cuz it’s not just a hotel it’s a museum as soon as I arrived the owner said uh look at these glasses they’re made with uranium now does that happen in a normal hotel and then she showed them glowing with a green light that I very much doubt was safe she said she said I haven’t got a GE counter but I’m sure you’ll be fine and this honestly then a bus load of about 50 pensioners from Medway arrived average age about 114 and Jane gave a history lecture of the hotel showing all these old original objects like carpet sweepers and things from 1900 and they were going oh I remember them and they were shouting out all sorts of things oh I don’t trust washing machines and and uh so I’m very so Jane is Jane here all right was that a normal visit from pensioners from edway oh yes they come from all over to come and visit our artifacts they were quite Lively one of them put their hand up and I thought oh what question have they got and she just wanted to go to the toilet I have that effect on people one of the things this was most impressive for me was the napkins do you want to explain the napkins oh yeah the napkins are amazing um one chap in 2009 drew a sketch after dinner on a napkin and he said this is my magical memory of staying your magic Hotel Jane and after I stapped for drawing on my linen my husband Peter framed it for me we hung it on the wall and now we’ve got 322 from all over the world all over the hotel these napkins on the brilant and the youngest contributor is four years old and the oldest is 102 and it’s every thank you do come and visit them the one in a there’s 102 in a few years they’ll be entitled to come on one of them goat trips could you what and tell us about room 302 you just want to get Tracy Emon into your talk again didn’t you well yeah that that’s her room isn’t it well she’s done an awful lot for us we hosted her parties for her for 10 years and we were the location for her film and we did her book signing she had a film premiere of her film in our ballroom and um she actually said in GQ Magazine some of the best sex she’s ever had was in room 302 and not in the bested is that slightly higher price than the other it is now but I would like to point out to everybody here that we are open Monday to Wednesday but only from the 1st of March till the 31st of October thank you so much to James it’s so lovely thank you somewhere else that I I managed to get into and it was open is the shell Museum no the shell Museum shell Gro oh sorry it’s not a museum is that two up market for you oh no I went to another place this one’s a museum it was opened in 1835 I know that apparently the owner of a house on Grotto Hill dug down in his garden and found a huge wall that turned out to be an underground cathedral made out of seash shs nobody knows why it was built or even when loads of people have got their own theories it may be thousands of years old one popular theory is that it was the first ever Premier escape room and it’s all made out of cockles and muscles and oysters and welks you can see the Arty side of you coming out now I’m not aware that anywhere else in the world has a crab [Applause] Museum this is a place with crab paintings Claws from old crabs a miniature crab World in a glass crab box to be honest I don’t think many people even if they found themselves in possession of all of these things would think we should make a crab Museum out of it have we got the crab boys hello hello right so can you introduce yourselves I’m Ned and this is Chase I can honestly say I’ve never in my life encountered anybody as enthusiastic about cra well I I think with the right frame of mind anybody can become enthusiastic about crabs you just need to visit I’m more of a lobster guy myself uh so go give us a random crab fact that you might tell to kids that come to your Museum crabs poo out of their chests there you go and also just to add a little bit of extra spice they don’t have sphincters like us so they need to manually pull the turds out of their chests there you go is that right yeah that’s fine this will this will actually now go out as part of nature corner on radio for although I do hear you asking where do they we from yes go on uh their faces just at the base of their nose yeah right okay well the nation will be enlightened and we’ve all done that when we’ve had too much to drink um what have you got in the gift shop what crab related items can people buy well we’ve got your standard Museum Fair your magnets and your pencils all very reasonably priced uh We’ve we’ve got some canned SE Breeze which is especially popular with londoners yes and then we’ve got uh anti- gullibility potion um you need to basically fill the whole thing up with water and pour it down your trousers um and then you’ll never fall for any High jinkx ever again we’ve we’ve actually got a special offer on them they’re four quid each but we’ll do you two for a tener I forgot one important thing which I do have to ask if anyone comes in wearing a bus driver uniform and they start to look bored do you go we shut quite the C [Laughter] do you know him do you know this bus driver you can’t still drive a bus hello I saw you in the paper yeah know 6 months what are you going to do on it stops me getting bored thank you thank you so much brilant obviously everybody goes to [Applause] theum the the crab Museum obviously the most important modern attraction in Margate but also we should I suppose mention the Turner Gallery it’s it’s it’s not as impressive but it’s there the pillar of the new modern Margate a modern proper Art Gallery with a cafe and a gift shop and Exhibits where I stand there going don’t be an idiot Mark just because you don’t understand it it must mean something don’t be tempted to ask the attendant where’s the art then has someone nicked it I am one of 95% of people that go there and go oh is there nothing by Turner here then are they all in the back like a Argos and when they say no it’s that’s just the name I sort of think well oh isn’t that a bit like you know if you have like someone goes to see the Royal filarmonica Orchestra and then there’s just a bloke whistling in the corner do you all go to it I went there and in the massive room there was a huge screen with a film of waves gently lapping onto the Sands and I did think now you do get a sense of the calming movements of the sea and I was fighting very very hard against the urge to go or another way of getting a calming sense of the movements of the sea is to look out a bloody window you have more artistic history than almost anywhere Margate William Turner as we know gave his name to the Turner Gallery as one of the greatest ever British painters he went to school here he later lived there he painted the harbor he painted the view of the Kent Coast from the sea he loved Margate and he loved all of Ken he was the essence of Margate if anyone doubts this there’s this line from his biography in Margate he was regularly seen eating shrimps he belonged here it makes sense because this was at a time when Constable was painting his lovely tranquil Fields but Turner paintings were grimy and Industrial and about reality of life and Industry and steam and ships on Violent Waves and he said the skies above thanet are the loveliest in all of Europe and that’s wonderful isn’t it and it’s handy because the sky is the only thing you can’t shut from Monday to Wednesday and it’s also it’s also very Margate isn’t it that saying the skies are the best across the whole of Europe cuz it is a little bit brex that isn’t it it is like we’ve got the best skies in Europe now we from Brussels he going to tell us what to do with our skies and now Tracy em is your new Turner who was brought up here and she writes so lovingly about her Margate childhood for examp example she left school at 15 and she lived in a d I’ll read this story out she was she lived in a DSS bed and breakfast on the aflon road at 17 she got a job in a sex shot for a pound an hour and one day the manager came in with a photographer who said he take pictures of her in her underwear for £6 and then he wanted more explicit pictures so she refused and she left the job and that night she wrote a letter to margar police station saying she’d seen things at the shop that should be investigated a year later the vice squad came to her house where she was living with her mom and they didn’t know she’d written the letter but they said that they’d had a tip off about the shop that she’d worked in and they’d looked through the record seeing that she’d worked there and the policeman promised that they were going to nail the bloke had been run in the shop and so Tracy em in asked the policeman what should I do next and then this is saying this the officer put his hand on my shoulder and said you seem intelligent if I was you I’d go down to this shop when it’s dark and throw bricks through the window the Margate police advised her to Brick the windows that’s how Margate works it’s magnificent they told her to put the windows in not to burn the place down cuz then everyone would have assumed assumed it was an insurance job something else that’s very very Margate is I asked someone directions and honestly the start of the answer was well you go past the old entrance on the front that burnt down up past the Old Time Tunnel that burnt down and I thought they were going to carry on past the oi tree that burnt down then past Blaze kebabs that burnt down who would have thought a place called blaze in Margate would burn down pass the shelters along the front that burned down and you can’t the place you’re looking for cuz it’s a pile of Ash cuz it burnt down this must be a tradition that goes back to the 1700s when sailors could chart their positions on the Sea by going there would be fire as a Shore we’d be passing Margate it does look to it does look if you come down here like margate’s coming out of its most difficult time now don’t we think a bit it’s back in the sort of 70s people stopped coming here as much cuz they went abroad for holidays and that’s when the Lio and lots of hotels shut but about 15 years ago it started picking up again so much that lots of people from abroad started coming here people came from Albania and Kosovo and Afghanistan and you know some people there still complained even then at one point cliftonville became known as Coville when the covans com up so serbs and covans were at War and terrified of each other so they fled and managed to get across the whole of Europe across the sea and come here from what I’ve read and heard than it Cil then put the serbs and covans back together in the same street right next to each other that’s genius Mar that let’s put you both together that will be nice for you you’ll get on cuz you’re all from the same area we’ve had some Viking refugees a while ago we put them right next to the Saxons and they love that cuz it was right next to the axe throwing Center in the brexit referendum 64% of people here voted to leave the European Union and part of this of course was in response to the growing number of East Europeans in Kent and that’s worked out well I think because because now the population of Kent has gone up to 24 million of which 23 million a Romanian truck drivers stuck on the M2 10 years ago onethird of the shops here were closed and now there’s new shopping mes and dreamlands booming it’s been doing well since the boats started coming here start the boats that’s what you should be saying I think it’s not controversial to suggest some things probably need to change a little bit here for example Pete Dockery and K Barett of The Libertines bought the Palm Court hotel which according to Trip Advisor was the worst hotel in the country 57% of guests ranked it as horrible but now it’s called the albian rooms and it’s really popular and it’s been called gentrified and there was one article I read that said it’s less a hotel and more a place you happen to sleep in while having the luckiest Bender of your life sounds brilliant and Pete docky is a wonderful blend of old and new Margate artistic and creative cretive sometimes self-destructive and he went to the Delby Cafe which you must all know where they have a special breakfast of four eggs four rashes of bacon four sausages a beef burger hash browns mushrooms chips onion rings bubble beans or tomatoes and two slices of thick bread and if you finish it in 20 minutes you get it for free and I thought the most impressive part of that menu is when where it says beans or tomato they must think well you can’t have both why are you a pig only six people have ever managed this Challenge and one of them was Pete Dockery and you’re trying to go up market now isn’t it’s all Chic and happening now there’s a hotel called beetroot do you know this place no good it boasts it boasts we are margate’s first completely vegan Hotel no animal products were used in the building of the hotel as opposed to normal hotels where the light switches are made out of lamb there’s Ramsey and Williams the ice cream bar and art gallery combined in Margate there another Margate that’s a suburb of Barcelona oh I think I have a Renoir can you put a flaking it there’s hles it says hles the Abundant seaweed that floods the shores goes into every one of H’s products the handh harvested skin transforming properties are magical and good for the planet in 1790 you conned a bunch of people into coming here and paying for crackpot r remedies and you’re still doing it would it have cured Carl Marx’s boils this magical hand harvested oxy seaweed but this is the new Margate Margate has always been full of this though creativity and art and then the old Margate combined Oscar wild said Margate is a nice spot not vulgarized by literary people and and the old town with the Hipster shops it does look quaint and artistic but the charm of mygate will always be that this is a proper tourist Resort not some Tossy place if you took over the ancient Incan site of matchu pitu in the Andes you’d go we can put a log flume down there this is a town of inspirational land ladies that marry turer or can’t ear marks or our Hatty Jakes or buy glasses made of uranium and so I will leave Margate with the Diary of John William Turner who loved it here so much that he wrote this this little piece in his diary and I thought it’s very very much sums up the spirit of Margate upon docking at the salubrious Harbor replete with fishermen amidst counselor shrimps I inquired as to the possibility of lodging at the renowned warpole hotel which had opened the previous week I was informed regretfully it was now closed until the spring of 2024 I retired to an inn for an evening meal of four ducklings four rabbits four geese and an ox with beans or tomatoes which cost three guies or was free if you could consume the entirety within 20 [Applause] minutes Mark Steel’s in town was written and performed by Mark steel with additional material from Pete Sinclair it was produced in Margate by K Cooper