IT’S official!
That definitive guide to all things trendy, The Guardian, has declared that Halifax is the ‘Shoreditch of the North’.
In my younger days The Guardian was the newspaper read by Birkenstock-wearing teachers and social workers and certainly couldn’t be termed trendy.
Nowadays it is popular with those who work in the arts, media and politics.
It’s dating service is very popular and a friend of mine who lives in London met his now wife on it.
I once considered the Guardian Soulmates dating site but I had concerns about the foot hygiene of potential matches.
Anyway, back to Halifax and its newly-declared status as the hipster capital of Northern England.
I wonder how many people who live in the Calderdale town welcome this trendy title?
Not that many, I suspect.
If you’ve visited Shoreditch in recent years it has undergone something of a gentrification from a working class area in East London to a trendy hub for digital and technology businesses.
You can’t move for long beards, carefully-crafted lop-sided slicked haircuts, tattoos, check shirts and tight jeans.
They all think they have an individual look and I’d compliment them on that if they didn’t all look the same.
As you might expect, a myriad of coffee bars, rum shacks and street food kitchens have sprung up to serve this hipster community in the Borough of Hackney.
But it didn’t all happen overnight and it will take some time for Halifax to undergo its renaissance into a Northern hipster hub.
In the meantime make the most of a visit to what is an attractive, down-to-earth town with the stunning, newly-restored Piece Hall at its heart and the vast Dean Clough mill – once the largest textile factory in the world.
And if you are thinking of moving to Filey anytime soon, I should warn you, Vogue will soon declare it ‘The Antibes of the East Coast’.
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WE all have a view of what we look like and what we sound like and it very often doesn’t tally with how others see and hear us.
Blessed with movie star good looks, poise and a fine head of hair, I’ve felt pretty blessed in life.
But all that came crashing down this week when I received an email from Tim Brear, co-founder of Harrogate-based financial planning firm Brook-Dobson Brear.
I like the way they describe themselves as ‘your personal finance director’, four words that really explain what BDB do, particularly to those who work in business.
Tim’s email contained the subject “Never seen you angry before!!” and it contained a photo from the back page of one of the previous day’s newspapers featuring Wigan manager Paul Cook confronting Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola on the touchline during the League One club’s epic FA Cup win over the Premier League leaders.
You can judge for yourself, but I think I’m a closer match to Cary Grant personally.
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IF my efforts to sign up for ITV’s pay-per-view coverage of the World Boxing Super Series Super Middleweight fight last Saturday are anything to go by, I think ITV should stick to garnering most of its revenue from conventional advertising.
I couldn’t find a way to get access to ITV Box Office – it’s pay-per-view channel – via Sky so resorted to finding it via my laptop.
The whole service was not intuitive, clunky and didn’t make me very confident my £16.95 payment was money well spent.
But when I finally got the channel on screen I was rewarded with a decent bout between George Groves and Chris Eubank Jr and an even better performance from Sheffield’s former world champion, Prince Naseem Hamed, who was a ringside expert alongside former former world flyweight champ Duke McKenzie.
Host Mark Pougatch must have been delighted when Nas tore into Eubank Jr’s losing performance, saying: “Which camera can I look into to tell Chris Eubank Jr. to finish because I don’t want to see him hurt anymore.
“I hate to say this, but the fact is he is not at this level and he is not as good as he has been saying he is. That is the be all and end all of Chris Eubank Jr. He is not going to win unbelievable things.
“Let us talk reality. Is this guy a world-beater? No, he is not. Two years, three years he still won’t be a world-beater. The guy is not good enough.”
A pretty devastating analysis of a guy who had just lost on points to a world champion, but refreshingly honest given the craven claptrap spouted by a lot of former sports people on TV.
His outburst was viewed as harsh by many TV viewers, who suggested the Sheffield man had gone too far in his observations.
According to the press, it may have stemmed from a long-running feud that ‘Prince’ Naseem has had with Eubank’s father, Chris, the former world middleweight and super middleweight champion.
Twenty years ago, Chris Sr strode into a press conference and accused Hamed of being ‘snide’ about him, while Nas countered that Eubank had pinched his flamboyant style from him and then got annoyed when the Sheffield boxer rejected an offer to be managed by Eubank.
I interviewed Hamed for trade paper Boxing News when he was just 18 and had had only three fights.
Those in the trade could seen the South Yorkshire boxer with Yemeni roots was destined for the top.
Even then, with barely a handful of bouts behind him, he talked and acted like a star. Sitting in a worn red velour armchair in the living room of his eccentric Irish trainer Brendan Ingle in the Wincobanks area of Sheffield, he declared he was something special and had taught Chris Eubank – then world champion – all he knew.
It made for great copy and it seems that years later, Hamed still knows how to make great TV and headlines, this time outside the ring.
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NEWS arrives from London, from King Dick himself.
If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then let me explain.
Last year I described a trip to London to speak to the YEWTGH Club – which stands for Yorkshire Exiles Waiting To Go Home and is pronounced “yooth”.
The club chairman is entitled to take the name of the Yorkshire-born monarch King Richard III, which, according to current chairman David Wood a partner with FRP Advisory in London, can be shortened to ‘King Dick’ and used in all correspondence by said chairman.
It can be a little confusing when you first glance at his email signature, but you get used to it quite quickly.
The YEWTGH club is a semi-regular dining group for ex-pats from Yorkshire working and living in London.
I posted a photo of the dinner I spoke at – which was basically a room full of blokes sitting around a dinner table at the East India Club.
The blog received a lot of comments, the majority of which pointed out the lack of diversity amongst the attendees.
I made the point at the time that while I’m not a member, as far as I’m aware the only people banned from attending YEWTGH Club functions are Lancastrians.
This week the YEWTGH club met at the RAF Club and the special guest was Rory Underwood, the former England rugby international who was born in Teesside, when it was part of Yorkshire.
King Dick informed me: “Your readership will be delighted to learn that we have embraced lady members! Five out of 29 tonight were ladies. You might want to mention that in your blog.”
I’m not sure whether the YEWTGH club included the hashtag #metoo in any tweets from the event, but I’m sure they are now entitled.
The bizarre thing is that no one complains about the myriad of women-only networking groups and events.
Most of the businesswomen I know wouldn’t want to go to them anyway.
And I can only think that this great detente by the YEWTGH club may well be followed by the club considering the future admission of Lancastrians.
On reflection, that’s a ridiculous idea, as unbelievable as KFC running out of chicken.
Have a great weekend.