Big buildings, big ideas, big men. In suits.

This essay features as part of our 2015 Brutal calendar — which is free to download today, but will be half price if you wait until the New Year.

John Madin. Image provenance unknown.

If you’ve ever seen a photo of Central Library architect John Madin you might notice that he always seems to be wearing a suit. I’m guessing that for a man in his profession in the ’50s and ’60s that isn’t too unusual. But somehow it seems too conventional for a man that produced such stark and, even now, startling buildings.

Ian Francis from 7 Inch Cinema once described to me in detail his concept for a TV show set in the architecture scene in Birmingham in the middle of the last century. It would have Madin in it, of course, but also Harry Weedon of Handsworth (the designer of many won- derful Art Deco Odeons and a number of huge car plants and fac- tories) and Jim Roberts of the Rotunda (and King’s Heath). They deserve commemorating. These were men at the top of their game and every bit as much of a part of the story of the British ’60s as anything to do with skirts or guitars.

They’re slowly being pulled down, not just the buildings but the men too. Roberts and his Rotunda survive, Madin doesn’t and neither soon will his masterpiece. We lose loads if we clone stamp them out of history.

In her novel The News Where You Are Catherine O’Flynn draws these parallels between the modern dismissal of the worth of unfashionable buildings and the lack of care paid to people who aren’t in some way useful to society. Birmingham City Council are having parts of their collective anatomy warmed as a warning by central government that they have failed the vulnerable, children especially. Their first announcements to deflect attention from this were focused on their decisions to not look after our vulnerable architectural heritage; or even the use of their toy-like descendants.

Those campaigning to save Central Library, or those miffed at the cavalier way that its destruction is not open for debate, may not realise that the Rotunda nearly suffered in the same way. It got the help it needed.

Colin Toth saved the Rotunda from demolition in 1991, and it eventually got listed and refurbished: the 21 storeys forced through a post-modernist 12 steps programme. Make it bright, they say, and it can stay.

I met James Roberts a few years ago at the launch of a book we were both featured in — 21 Stories, Nic Gaunt’s oral history of the building — and he was not only charming but charmed at the attention and love that his building has attracted. He also managed to tuck away quite a lot of the free wine. And he was wearing a suit. TV execs looking for a West Midlands answer to Mad Men, get on it.

Big buildings, big ideas, big building blocks. They were big men; and not just because they spent their days being photographed towering over model villages.

Brutal 2015

Download and print our free 2015 calendar today

Have a Brutal 2015

Brutal 2015

We’ve already signed off for the holidays but we know that some of you are still in the office today — after all, there’s no work to do and the boss will let you go home at 12 in any case so it’s basically a free day off and only a mug would take it as holiday.

Well anyway, as you’re the sort of person who is in the office on Christmas Eve we figured you’re also the sort of person who has left shopping a bit late — after all, you’re getting out of work at lunchtime so you can just grab stuff on the way home; what’s all the fuss about, right?

If you are still shopping, and if you’re at the office with nothing to do, why not print off a few copies of our FREE 2015 calendar? Elliott Brown tirelessly snaps photos of all things Brum, and he uploads them to Flickr under a Creative Commons license so we’ve nabbed 12 photos of Brummie Brutalism for this calendar.

We hope you like it, but if you need more gift ideas here’s our handy last minute shopping guide.

Download the calendar (PDF – 28mb)

 

Birmingham’s Christmas round robin 2014

RoundRobin2014

 

Dear (Greater) Manchester,

Season’s greetings! And so happy to hear that your little administrative family has extended this year. We are too trying to build the brood, but despite a lot of temperature taking and effort all rounds the patter of teeny tiny Black Country boroughs has yet to happen. Still – it’s fun trying!

We’ve had a mixed bag of a 2014 – I was feeling much more chipper after a little bit of cosmetic surgery ‘down there’, but the latter half of the year has been us moving from one financial worry to the next.

First off, little Mike Whitby had a party while we were away and all sorts of undesirable types must have seen it on Facebook and gatecrashed. How else would you explain all those red trousers in Birmingham, we know Little Mike doesn’t know anybody like that: unless he’s fallen in with a bad lot saints he started spending all that time in London. The police had to be called, they closed off Broad St(!) and it cost a fortune: that was all our entertaining budget gone.

We had to sell our little summer place in Solihull, which was a wrench, although we mainly used to rent it out on a timeshare basis. Some of the people that we’ve had in were awful, we stated no dogs but you should have seen the amount of hair and unmentionables left in March! We’re well rid of it.
Continue reading “Birmingham’s Christmas round robin 2014”

Brum’s best TV-theme pubs

An enterprising young chap has just re-opened Dale End dog-hole Saramoons as a theme bar: The Peaky Blinder. Despite now being much less likely to have any real gangsters in, it seems to have been a popular move — but did you know it was joining a proper crawl of pubs already themed around Birmingham-based TV shows?  Come with us and get smashed responsibly, in Brum’s best fictional boozers.

The Fox & Grapes, Birmingham City Centre

Coming soon: The Citizen Khan. Pic cc Roger Marks

The Boon (series 1-3 only) – Formerly Bassett’s Pole Harvester, staff at The Boon (series 1-3 only) are all dressed as has been bikers with ruddy cheeks and even more ruddy noses. There’s plenty of parking for your own motorbike outside and the country vistas offer nice sunsets to ride off into. Hi ho silver!

The Pebble Mill at One – With staff in friendly jumpers, and music on the easy side, The Pebble Mill at One is a pub from a gentler time, which will forever have afternoon closing. Open at one, and shut up again at two — just in time for your nap.

The Crossroads – actually a chain, The Crossroads is a new concept for the pubs you find inside a Travelodge or other budget hotel. “These spaces feel like you’re actually in the wobbly set of a pub and not a real pub” brand expert André De Jong, whose agency Zaphiks developed the concept, told us. “Drinking in our The Crossroads bar is more like drinking in a metaphor” he said, before explaining something complicated about the social graph. “Also they’re actually inside motels?” we asked. Andre just looked confused.

The Rosie & Jim – Genial landlord John steers this canalside boozer with a steady hand on the tiller but that’s not his real job. Ladies, try the salad. Stop laughing. Sister bar The Brum opens in 2015.

The Tiswas – The various bars at the Custard Factory have struggled for identity and solvency for many years but now one licensee is betting on TV nostalgia to keep him afloat. You can sing the famous Bucket of Water Song as you use the downstairs bogs.

The Gangsters – Themed around the ‘70s with a hint of crimplene, Benson and Hedges and danger, there has been little change since it was The Yenton.

The The One Show – Recently closed and moved to London.

The Central News – have the slops left by the other programmes a day later, round the back of Broad St.

The Hustle – a slick bar like they have in that London, but see if you can spot the tell tale Brummie signs — yep that’s a Brew XI tap over there, behind the Veuve Clicquot ice buckets. In a suspiciously empty street around Colmore Row.

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No. 66: Pissing

Armitage Shanks

This is one for the guys, ladies you might want to sit down. Remember when you were learning how to ‘do a standing up wee’? The hardest thing was getting your little soldier to hit the target. Now then: what did you aim for? That’s right! There was some writing near the back of the pan.

Now you probably couldn’t read at that age, but very soon you could and one day you’d be having a jimmy and you’d finally decode that writing: ’Armitage Shanks’. From that day on you’d see those letters every time you went for slash for they are the motto to which we urinate. The connection between those words and relief is so strong that I often need to stop several times to spend a penny when I drive past road signs in Staffordshire.

But there wouldn’t be an Armitage Shanks to shoot for if it wasn’t for, yes you’ve guessed it, Birmingham. For it was here that two great sanitary giants met to thrash out a peace that led to the formation of Armitage Shanks in 1969. Yes here in Birmingham, the Switzerland of Pissing, Armitage Wares of Armitage agreed to merge with Glasgow’s Shanks Holdings – and just as well for this writer would not be able to cope with the hilarity of piddling into toilets stamped ‘Shanks Holdings’ (‘Yes! I am!’).

So ladies – welcome back – the reason we never sprinkle when we tinkle is because of Armitage Shanks and all thanks to Birmingham. And if our aim goes wrong don’t worry – we’ll be sweet and wipe the seat.

Buy 101 Things Birmingham Gave the World: the Book now

image cc JJ Merelo

2014 reviewed by Brummie kids

From Ebola to ISIS, 2014 has been a pretty shit year. Danny Smith is no stranger to shit years, having grown up in the 80s, so we sent him to find out what Brummie kids today made of it all. This piece was originally written for and published by Contributoria.

I grew up scared. This isn’t a ‘woe-is-me’ tale, I was a weird little kid born during the tale end of the Cold War and somehow, possibly through harrowing TV shows like Where The Wind Blows and Z for Zachariah, I absorbed the horrors of the nuclear bomb. I remember clearly looking at maps trying to work out the blast radius from the centre of the city to my house and my school. Would I be vaporized in the first detonation? Have my clothes melted to my body with thermal radiation? Or would I be forced to fight severely-mutated former friends for fetid water? Actually, I knew the last one wasn’t true – I knew I would kill myself before then. I was eight. As I said, I was a weird little kid.

But I’m not sure which is worse: gleaning what information I can by cultural osmosis, with all the myth and hearsay that involves, or having access to truly terrifying, peer reviewed, Wikipedia articles. Today we have unparalleled access to information, streams and screens spitting it right in our faces. So much, it could be argued. that its actually harder to filter the signal from the noise: leaving us information rich but data poor.

This past year has been tough for anyone who follows the news, the summer soundtrack was a percussive rhythm of images and stories of schools and hospitals being shelled into rubble in Gaza. While pop culture seems obsessed with zombie fiction and other pandemic diseasecore a genuine outbreak of an infectious disease has killed thousands of people. A whole aeroplane went missing. Read that last sentence again. that’s the year we’ve had.

My school contacts let me down but I was able to visit a scout troop in south Birmingham and ask them some questions. Scout ages are from 10 and a half to fourteen, with Explorers — a little older — there as well. The names have been changed, and picked by them. They’re disappointingly mundane considering on the same night they came up with team names for their games such as “Currybomb” “Epic Ninja Friends” and “Just Bob”. Continue reading “2014 reviewed by Brummie kids”