My Tonight From the Premier Inn

I’m presuming the man with the camera round his neck and spiral bound notepad in his hand is from the Shropshire Star.  Here’s a photo of him anyway, taking photos of diners in the new Premier Inn.  I’m sitting in the bar watching him.  He goes by, sees me looking and says ‘hi’.  He’s running late.  He’s meant to be in Telford. It’s one of those nights.  I ask if he’s from the Star and he says ‘yes’. 

I’m relieved to hear it because seriously I was beginning to wonder where I’d landed.  I came through the bus station, turned the corner, hit a bit of lawn where once was gravel and a flight of stone steps where once was graffiti and entered through a sliding door into – into what? Piped music. Sinking armchairs and leather-looking sofas. Muted lighting. A handful of people around a bar, a murmur of voices at tables in a dining-room. And all this on a stretch of street where usually only traffic happens

Only a moment ago I was in Shrewsbury, but now I could be in Oxford, Ipswich or Edinburgh.  I could be in Canada. This could be the first Premier Inn on the far side of the moon - or so I think until I notice an enormous photograph of Darwin’s statue outside the library. Phew. How I could have missed it I don’t know. I mean, it’s right in front of me. And just to reinforce that this really is still Shrewsbury, I turn around and there’s my daughter’s neighbour drinking with a friend.   

There may be no balloons on the door or banners stretched across the front of the building [at least I didn’t notice them], but this is opening night for Shrewsbury’s town centre Premier Inn.  Shall I tell you what I like most about it so far? I like the sense of everything being new.  Newly-minted staff move effortlessly across newly-carpeted floors, clearing away brand-new empties, smiling at brand-new customers, putting chairs back in place and tidying up. They do this with an ease that suggests they’ve been practicing for weeks. I ask the barman for a pint of milk. ‘Would that be with ice?’ he asks without batting an eyelid. I set up a tab.  Who knows how many milks I’ll have downed before the night it out.

When I was eight, I watched as week after week the library in my hometown was being built. On opening day I was the first to enrol - a child from a decidedly unbookish family parked outside the new library on her little yellow scooter waiting for the doors to open.  Now here I am all these years later having watched the Premier Inn go up on the old Telephone House site, getting in on opening day for no other reason than that I’m curious.  Last time it was books that brought me in.  This time it’s My Tonight From Shrewsbury.

Oh, and Batman. I’m looking for Batman. I photographed him on Pride Hill the other week raising funds for charity, and am reliably informed that his day-to-day persona is as Manager of the Premier Inn.  So I’m here to find out if that’s true or not. 

A tall thin man goes by.  Could this be him?   He asks if I’m all right. I answer yes. Is he the Manager, I ask. He says he’s a part of the training team.  Another man comes to the bar, wearing a badge and looking official and important.  He’s tall enough to be Batman most definitely, so I ask if that’s who he is and he laughs and says no, that’s Darren.  At least, I think that was his name.

I retire with my milk to an empty sofa by the window.  From here I can see restaurant, bar and cars going by. Voices in the dining room are discreet – a murmur of sound rather than a roar.  I had the misfortune once to go into a Premier Inn in another part of the country and it was packed with screaming kids. Nothing like that here.

It’s time to eat. I order food. I wait.  I eat. I drink more milk. I go to the loo. Nice toilet - grey slate floor tiles, raised white hand basins, nice tiling on walls, aluminium trims on everything.  Can’t think of anything else to say. Back at the table, the meal is quickly finished. Then it’s off to reception to ask to see a room.  Not that I want to stay, but it’s nice to know what’s available.

Everything is immaculate, as you’d expect on its first day.  Here’s a mattress that’s not been slept on yet, bed linen that awaits its first human contact, a bath that doesn’t know what it’s like to be filled.  There are even feather pillows for in case guests don’t happen to like foam.

The nice tall man who’s shown me the room [who also isn’t Batman, by the way] tells me about breakfast deals, eat-as-much-as-you-can deals and weekend breaks.  Already the hotel is fully booked up for this coming August’s Flower Show.  And in a couple of weeks’ time it will be completely taken over by some regimental reunion.  Sounds like it’s off to a flying start.

It’s easy to pick on Premier Inns for being the same everywhere you go.  [And for being purple.  The purpleness is everywhere]. What stands out about this one though is the friendliness of its staff and their willingness to please. When I ask if breakfasts are of organic products locally sourced, the tall man says, ‘I wish,’ and sounds as if he means it. And I know it's the first day, so they're bound to be keen, but I still appreciate being asked repeatedly if everything is all right.

When I leave, I still haven’t seen Batman. That’s my only gripe.  But if you don’t persist, you don’t get – and I’ve only asked once and then given up.  Certainly I won't ask now.  Back home again, I’m too tired. Nothing else to say but goodnight.  

A Museum Where You Can Buy Things

From Shrewsbury Prison to It’s A Nomad Life on Wyle Cop.   I don’t know how much further apart you can get than that.  I’m staring at a row of arrows from Papua New Guinea, courtesy of Vicky Crook and Sam Handbury-Madin. 'A museum where you can buy things' is how some people have described their shop. And looking round at cabinets, shelves, plinths and walls stuffed full of tribal artefacts from around the world, I can quite see why.  Yum.  I like it here.

It’s the window that first drew me in. A month or so ago a wooden hornbill sculpture appeared in it, but now it’s gone. Vicky says they like to keep things fresh. They’re continually going to auction, bringing in new stock, moving things around. Much to my relief, I find the hornbill at the back of the shop. It’s from Papua New Guinea, mid-twentieth century. Even as I’m writing this I’m tempted to go back and buy it.  It’s a gorgeous thing, and for what it is not too expensively priced.

Shrewsbury is renown for its small independent shops, and It’s A Nomad Life is one of the most recent, situated at the top of Wyle Cop opposite the Lion Hotel. It’s roots, however, go back to university days.  Vicky studied History and Archaeology at St Andrew’s, and Sam studied Archeology at Bristol  where he continued to develop the passion for tribal art and artefacts which was first nurtured when his father [whose family had been in the trade since the 19th century] brought home a collection of ethnographic artefacts.  

The upper room in It's A Nomad Life is named after the well-known collector, author and art dealer, Nik Douglas, with whom Sam worked for four years. Nik Douglas died last year in New York, but for many years he traded out of Anguilla in the Caribbean, and many of the statues on the upper floor originate from his collection.    ‘Sam fought hard to go out to Anguilla and work with Nik,’ says Vicky. ‘It was his dream job. And his persistence paid off. It was an amazing experience.’

After Anguilla, Sam worked for a while in an antique shop in Vancouver, one of the biggest in Western Canada, then returned to the UK, trading online with a view to building a business and opening a shop.  It was here in Shrewsbury that he met Vicky, who had returned to the town as a fund-raiser for Build It International, having previously worked for Barnardo’s in London.

Both she and Sam have local roots, Sam through Shrewsbury School, Vicky growing up in Little Albrighton, then moving to the town centre at the age of fifteen.  Her interest in fine objects long pre-dated  her degree, with its Greco-Roman, Byzantine bias. She’d always wanted to run her own business and during her school and college days she’d accrued plenty of retail experience. A shop was as much of an interest to her as it was to Sam - not least providing the chance to show off the wealth of fine objects they’d amassed.   

‘I’m good at the business side of things,’ Vicky says, ‘and Sam’s good at sourcing items.’ The subject of provenance is an important one, so Sam sources mostly through personal connections he’s made over the years. Whether it’s the Nik Douglas family in the Caribbean or trader-friends in places like Bali, this means the bulk of their antiques and art have been collected ethically and can be traced to source.  ‘There’s a good network of connections between tribal art dealers,’ Vicky says. The ethical bit is very important to them. She stresses it several times.  She doesn't tell me so, but I see from their website that they also raise funds to support charity work overseas.  

I want to know about fakes.  Vicky reckons that it’s often in the handling that you can recognise a fake.  A thing won’t feel right, or the ageing process won’t convince. Stylistic elements may be wrong. And a tell-tale whiff of burning  can be a sure-fire indicator of a fake.  

This is another world to me.  As much as stepping through the door of Shrewsbury Prison, I’m in a place I know little about. How much interest, I wonder, is there in Shrewsbury for tribal art? Vicky says I’d be surprised. It’s A Nomad Life may only have opened six months ago, but the response has been really encouraging.  ‘We’ve been surprised how many people coming through the door have links with places like Africa, or even remote regions like Papua New Guinea,’ Vicky says.  They’ve had some great conversations. She hopes their passion for their subject shows through. 

Sam and Vicky may be new to Wyle Cop, but they say it’s a great part of town for independent traders, and they’ve been made to feel welcome into that community.  People are so friendly, they say. Setting up shop in the middle of a double-dip recession has required them to tread cautiously, but a great help has been the fact that they already owned the bulk of their stock and that they were already trading online.

I comment on a silver necklace locked inside a glass cabinet.  Embossed with tiny rabbits and dogs, it’s a child’s necklace from Laos. Behind it is another - also from Laos - its rows of silver bands denoting all the stages of a woman’s life from birth to motherhood and beyond. There are some lovely items in this shop.  On the wall above Sam’s head hangs a framed Fijian tapa cloth, a beautiful circle of fine, hand-pulped mulberry bark that has been painted with natural dyes.  It too is gorgeous. I add it to my wish list, and I could go on and on.

The shop is well fitted with CCTV, I notice. Vicky gives me a tight, pinched smile.  She says it has to be.  On day three after their opening they learned the hard way how careful they’d need to be.  ‘This man came in. An older man - not a person who would have stood out as meriting watching.  He seemed perfectly normal and relaxed.  He even spoke to someone on the way in through the door.  The shop was busy.  We were only vaguely aware of him.  A bronze Shiva stood on a shelf by the window.  It wasn’t a tiny object - it was about twelve inches tall and heavy too.  But the man picked it up, dropped it into his carrier bag and walked out. He did it in full view of people in the shop, right in front of the window too, where anyone could see.  We couldn’t believe it when we realized what had happened. Couldn’t believe his cheek. Later the police found him on CCTV walking down Wyle Cop, but they lost him under the railway bridge.  He simply disappeared.  They said that type of theft was rare, but it served as a warning to us.  Not that anything like it has happened since, but we’re more prepared.’      

What next, I ask? There are more auctions to attend, they have the It's A Nomad Life website to maintain and every month Vicky writes about a particular artefact on the LoveShrewsbury website.  Then, of course, there’s the wedding to prepare for. 

Wedding.  My ears prick up. My Tonight From Shrewsbury could do with a wedding. Vicky shows me her emerald and diamond art-deco engagement ring. It’s over a year now, she says, since Sam gobsmacked her with it at Aber Falls.  ‘Our families knew before I did, because Sam had asked my dad,’ she says. ‘When I returned home with a ring on my finger I didn’t need to say a thing.’

What a year, I say.  Vicky nods. Bought a house. Got a dog. Opened a shop. Been robbed. Made new friends. Got engaged. Got the dress. Got the venue. Got the cars, the flowers, the cake. Even got Shrewsbury’s very own vintage ice cream seller and his van. ‘What a year,’ she agrees. 

'WE ARE SHREWSBURY" - In HMP Shrewsbury with Governor Gerry Hendry

In the course of writing this blog there are many people I might just happen to bump into and decide it would be good to interview, but the Governor of HMP Shrewsbury isn’t one of them.  Getting in to see him is a complicated business, not something I might do upon a whim.  In order to get behind those massive gates, I need to write to Governor Gerry Hendry asking please may I come in to interview you, then a whole series of hoops have to be jumped through including being photographed, showing my passport, being issued with a visitor's pass, buzzing on doors, having my credentials checked and handing over my mobile phone because not even the Governors of Her Majesty’s Prisons are allowed to take in mobile phones.  It’s a chargeable offence.

Finally I’m escorted out of the prison gatehouse and across the yard to a Georgian building behind which looms the great bulk of the Dana, which is the name by which the old Victorian prison is more usually known.  A door is open a crack and a slice of face peers out at me. I’m ushered in and the door is locked behind me. By the time I’ve made it from the street outside the prison gates into the Governor’s office I’ve already forgotten how many locked doors have I’ve been through.  

Governor Gerry Hendry’s office is large and light with conference tables, desk and a mantelpiece packed full of cards.  Pictures hang on walls and a white-board is covered in writing. Whilst the Governor and a colleague lean over his computer trying to sort out a problem, my eyes scan down the board.  ‘There’s a fine line between confidence and conceit’ I read, followed by, ‘Going to church does not make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.’  There’s more as well.  It’s all interesting stuff. I wish I could remember the rest, but I’m afraid I can’t.

‘You may well have questions that I won’t be allowed to answer,’ the Governor warns me when his computer’s sorted and his colleague has departed. I have indeed, but I’ve been expecting this, so we start by talking instead about the cards on the Governor’s mantelpiece.  He shows them to me and later shows me some of the letters he’s received.  ‘Thank you for your thoughtfulness,’ I read in one.   ‘What can I say about a Governor like you?’ I read in another.  ‘I will stay out when I do get out. It’s taken a hard journey and a change of lifestyle. Thank you for helping me get there.’

Shrewsbury Prison is rated amongst the best in the country, but it’s being closed because it’s not considered to be financially viable. It’s a local prison - a community prison you could say, in that the majority of its inmates over the years have been released into local Shropshire and West-Midland communities where they live cheek by jowl with not only other ex-prisoners but staff as well.  What sets aside Shrewsbury’s inmates, the Governor says – and this is something recognized in the Prison Service - is the respect that staff and prisoners have had for each other.  It’s the Shrewsbury way. 

This is something I see in practice when Governor Hendry takes me onto ‘A’ Wing.  By now there are only twenty-five prisoners left out of a prison housing three hundred and fifty, but it’s surprising the number of them that come up and want to shake the Governor’s hand and share with him news of when they’ll be shipped out.

The sense of occasion is palpable. One man even shakes my hand.  ‘Remember me,’ he says proudly. ‘There’s been a prison in this town for five hundred years and when I leave next week I will be the last prisoner. My name is Patrick Jackson. Don't forget it.’ I assure him that I won't. 

‘A’ Wing is immaculately clean. We look into cells, and even go into one with a heavy studded door left over from the early days of the Dana’s history.  It’s small, with toilet, basin, table, chair, bunk beds and telly packed in tight, its walls and floors bare and its tiny window grilled of course.  Like everywhere else on ‘A’ Wing it’s as clean as a new whistle.

Not as clean though, the prisoners say, as the wing would once have been, because with closure imminent the cleaners have been laid off. But keeping  ‘A’ Wing spruce, even without cleaners, is a matter of decency and personal pride.  This is their home, one of the prisoners says. It’s all about treating it, and themselves, with respect.

During my morning in Shrewsbury Prison, I hear much about respect.  It’s plain that there’s a lot of it about.  I watch inmates coming up to run through departure information with Governor Hendry or just standing about plainly upset. Again, as with the cards and letters in Governor Hendry’s office, their manner attests to the good work done by him and his staff and the mutual respect that has been built up.

This is exactly the sort of prison you would expect the government to want to keep, and to put some money into.  It’s certainly what Governor Hendry has been working for from the day he arrived back in March 2005. ‘Prisons are only as good as the staff who run them,’ he said on that occasion, addressing his full staff. ‘We must work to achieve a well-ordered and controlled prison…. Reform and rehabilitation are not things we ‘do’ to prisoners… we have an absolute obligation to do everything we can to encourage reform… we have a duty to help our prisoners… the decency agenda is about building relationships with prisoners based on knowing them and respecting them… It is about preserving the dignity of prisoners… It is about embodying the values of integrity, honesty, confidence, conviction, good judgment and flexibility…’

Now the very people who have worked to this agenda, developing and maintaining it and seeing its results, are having to preside over its dismantling. In fact, by the time this article is posted HMP Shrewsbury, the Dana, will be empty of all inmates, and all that awaits it is to be decommission by Order of Parliament.   

We are getting dangerously close to the sorts of subjects to which the only reply the Governor of one of Her Majesty’s Prisons can give is ‘no comment’.  But if it’s prison welfare I want to know about, and the effectiveness of the new privately-run prisons that are taking over from public sector ones like Shrewsbury, I don’t have to go far. Only a few weeks ago the Birmingham Chronicle reported that one hundred and seventeen emergency call outs had been made to private prison, Oakwood, in one month. I ask Governor Hendry how many call-outs Shrewsbury has had.  One, he says.  In the last few years. 

This leads me to wonder about the effectiveness of private prisons, like the super-prison the Government intends to build, housing upward of 2,000 inmates, to replace prisons such as Shrewsbury’s Dana. The Prison Governors’ Association, whilst acknowledge the need for future investment in prison places, have expressed concern regarding privatization, particularly given the public sector’s high performance in reducing costs and its rates for reducing re-offending.  As to the scale of some of these private sector prisons, ‘All the evidence suggests,’ they say, ‘that smaller establishments meet the aims of the Government’s rehabilitation revolution agenda.’

I’d like to know what Governor Gerry Hendry thinks about this, but when it comes to discussing government policy, there’s nothing he can say.  But David Cameron can.  Listen to this gem, which I dug up before visiting the prison: ‘The idea that big is beautiful when it comes to prisons is wrong.’ And listen to Nick Herbert, until recently Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice: ‘Huge prison warehouses are wrong. What’s needed is a network of smaller local prisons with better integration with the local community and more focus on reducing reoffending.’  

Unfortunately, Cameron’s words were spoken in 2009, before he became Prime Minister of the Coalition Government, and Nick Herbert’s in 2008, when he was Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, speaking out against the Labour government’s plans to set up titan prisons.

For a non-politically biased view, however, here’s what Professor Alison Liebling, Director of the Prison Research Centre, has to say in an Evaluation carried out by herself and colleagues from Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology: 

‘Private sector prisons are not necessarily better or worse than public sector prisons.  When they get it right they can provide decent and positive environments. But when they get it wrong, which seems to be more likely [but not inevitably] if they are run cheaply, they can be chaotic and dangerous places…

‘There are real risks in privatizing prisons ‘on the cheap’ and in re-conceiving public sector prisons on the cheapest private sector model…

‘At least two poorly performing private sector prisons in the UK have been returned to the public sector…’

A prison officer comes into the Governor’s office to say goodbye. It’s the end of twenty-four years in Shrewsbury Prison. He’s off now to Stoke Heath.  Governor Hendry leaps up to pound his hand.  He’s not to forget what he’s learned at Shrewsbury, or drop his values to fit in. He’s seen how things can be done.  What he’s witnessed at first hand about the effects of treating people with decency and respect mustn’t ever be let go.

I swear to God the officer’s eyes are moist.  Both he and the Governor are big men, but they’re both visibly moved. The officer shakes hands with the prison chaplains, who’ve come in to talk to me about prisoner rehabilitation.   As the officer leaves, one of them gives him a bear-hug.  

The chaplains, David Farley and Bob Wiltshire, are here to tell me about Fresh Start New Beginnings, the charity set up within the prison to work with problems of homelessness, unemployment, lack of education and lack of support, which are the four root causes of prisoner re-offending.  The private sector has had some success in this area because its pilot schemes have received funding, but Shrewsbury Prison, by means of this charity, has funded this work itself. 

There’s also been a high rate of community involvement in this process here in Shrewsbury, encouraged by Governor Hendry. David Farley tells me that when he first came to work at Shrewsbury Prison, the walls were high in terms of working relationship between prison and community, but that now they were low.  Mentors, trained by Fresh Start New Beginnings, have been coming in to help in the process of preparing prisoners for release, and have continued to support those prisoners once they’ve returned into the community. 

Another FSNB project is the SORI scheme, helping prisoners recognize the effects of their crimes and their impact on their victims. SORI is an intense one-week course that prisoners have been able to choose to opt into involving interaction with community, including victims of crimes, aiming not only to ensure that prisoners fully understand what they’ve done in all its ramifications, but find the means to come to terms with it and learn and move on.  

This is a truly innovative scheme, at the forefront of work towards prisoner rehabilitation. Now, however, it has been stopped.  The prisoners have gone, the prison is about to close, even FSNB has closed. In other words, like Governor Hendry, the chaplains are in the unenviable position of having to dismantle all that they’ve put in place and built up. There is no doubt how upset they are, as indeed is everybody I have met.

Chaplain David Farley will take his expertise to Featherstone, where he hopes restorative work will carry on.  Chaplain Bob Wiltshire will retire. Governor Hendry will retire.  A week or so ago they held the last service in the prison chapel, which was packed with inmates and volunteers.  ‘We Are Shrewsbury’ was their watchword, and they can say that with pride. They leave behind a record of low re-offending that attests to all the good work that has been done here in Shrewsbury Prison. 

One story that Governor Hendry is particularly proud of telling relates to a prisoner he describes as being responsible for ninety percent of burglaries in the Telford area. When, after leaving prison, that particular ex-offender married, it was the prison chaplain who was invited to preside over the ceremony, and it was Governor Hendry who read the lesson. 

It’s hard to know what’s most remarkable about this,  that the offender would have wanted to ask, that the Governor agreed - or that this one-man crime wave, as he once was, hasn’t re-offended now in over five years. Governor Hendry’s attitude to the men in his care is impressive.  He’s the sort of hands-on Governor who’ll go into a man’s cell and sort out problems face to face.  He’s full of stories of prisoners he’s interacted with, and the cards and letters around his office attest to how valued he is.

‘Many years ago,’ he says, ‘when I was a prison officer in another part of the country, I sat in the cell of a particularly disturbed prisoner who’d been giving everybody a lot of trouble. We talked for a long time and at the end he thanked me for listening to him.  That was the trouble, he said.  The prison authorities didn’t listen to the inmates. The whole system was wrong. Well, I shook his hand and promised him that when I became a Governor, I would make a difference.  And though that prisoner is now dead, I’ve never forgotten that promise.  And here in Shrewsbury I have made a difference.’

The Cambridge Institute of Criminology Evaluation talks about the public sector having underestimated strengths in the use of authority, security, safety, stability and ‘professionalism’, and I’m seeing all of that here. ‘We have found Shrewsbury Prison to be significantly better than its comparator prisons on everything,’ said Professor Liebling in her 2011 *Perrie Lecture. ‘It is possible that small is beautiful – or at least less cumbersome, complex and resistant. Our smaller, older prisons may have hidden strengths – relationships trump buildings in prisons like Swansea and Shrewsbury.’

By the time I publish this article, all the prisoners will be gone and a small town within our greater town effectively have ceased to be.  There’s no turning back the clock on government policy, but Professor Liebling has gone some way towards re-enforcing what I’ve already said, which is that the Government should be trumpeting Shrewsbury Prison’s achievements, not closing it down.

 Before I leave, I ask Governor Hendry if he has anything he wants to say to the people of Shrewsbury.  The town has had the legacy of a gaol for over five hundred years, he says, and this is a sad farewell. However the building is listed and will return to the care of the council tax payers.  He hoped it would be taken care of because it has served the community well.  He hoped, too, that in the future, and in an entirely different capacity, it would continue to serve.

It’s time to go.  We’re standing at the door.  On the wall hangs a board containing the names of all the prison governors back to beyond the time when the Dana became a public prison.  The last name is Governor Gerry Hendry’s.  He shakes my hand.  Earlier I shook the hand of the last prisoner in Shrewsbury Prison, and now I have shaken the hand of the last Governor.  But if I’m here watching history being made, it’s on your behalf as well as my own, especially those of you who are residents of Shrewsbury. It’s for you too that I’m here today, getting behind yet another of our town’s closed doors. 

When the prison is decommissioned at the end of the month there are certain things we people of Shrewsbury need to do.  One of these is to thank Governor Hendry and all his staff for the work they’ve done. Another is to thank the army of volunteers who’ve come into the prison to work alongside its inmates, preparing them for rehabilitation in the wider world.  And a third is to make sure not only that the Dana finds a new way of serving the community, but that that historic board containing the names of all the Dana’s Governors doesn’t get lost. 

My suggestion is that it belongs in the new Shrewsbury Museum, to be opened later this year.  I'd also like to suggest that some of the remarkable photographs I've seen, including some truly stunning portraits of inmates, should be made available too.  A few of these photographs are shown below, courtesy of Governor Hendry.

Prison wardens by day, policemen by night, 1920

Old-style prison activity - sewing mailbags, 1964

The building of the railway bridge with Shrewsbury Prison in the background

A crowd outside Shrewsbury Prison awaiting news of the last hanging in 1961

Shrewsbury Prison from the air

Santa Podmore comes to the Dana...

...and distributes sweets [Mr Podmore was a Poll Tax objector, famous for spraying
council  offices with muck and nailing himself to a tree by his ears


The original plan for the 1793 John Howard-inspired prison at the Dana.

*The Perrie Lectures is an annual event for the purpose of stimulating dialogue between criminal justice organisations, the voluntary sector and anybody with academic, legal or practical concerns for offenders and their families.  From 2012 its lectures have been made available on its own YouTube channel.  

Robin Nolan & Gypsy Jazz - Meeting George Harrison's Favourite Guitarist in the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse

The name ‘Django’ means ‘I Awake’.  A great name for a jazz guitarist whose music awakens everyone who listens to it.  That’s Django Rheinhardt I’m talking about, who famously played with two fingers less than anybody else because the gypsy caravan in which he lived with his young wife burned down, and he never recovered proper use of his hand.

Robin Nolan’s a guitarist rooted in the music of Django Rheinhardt. The influence is unmistakable, but he's definitely his own man. So much so, that most articles precede his name with the word ‘legendary’. ‘You play a mighty fine guitar, Robin Nolan,’ Willie Nelson said when he happened upon him on the streets of Amsterdam, honing his guitar skills and developing what was to become his own distinctive sound.  And George Harrison obviously thought so too, because when he heard his gardener playing Robin’s CD he invited him straight over to play at his Christmas bash.

From the Leidseplein in Amsterdam to Friar Park.  Some jump.  ‘I was terrified at first,’ said Robin when we met yesterday lunchtime at the Shrewsbury Coffeehouse. ‘Friar Park was a fantasyland. A great castle of a place in its own grounds. It was everything you’d expect, only more so.  George and Olivia were super-friendly. And everyone we played for was famous except for us.’

Interestingly, Robin was even more scared playing before a gypsy audience. But that was at Samois-sur-Seine in France, the definitive Django festival, which gypsies travel to from across the world. Samois is the high altar of gypsy jazz - the final resting place of Django Rheinhardt himself. The first time he attended, Robin was knocked out by the way the gypsies played. What with the music, the camp fires, the river and the moonlight it was a magical experience.  ‘The gypsies were purists,’ Robin said.  ‘Django was their god.  Their strength lay in the tradition. I was just some guy from England who loved the music. Yet when I came to play for them myself, they liked what I did. I’d say I’m better at being imaginative and creative than at delivering the music note perfect. I have a sense of humour too, and I use it to get my own message across.’

At Friar Park, Robin may have been wide-eyed, but he knew that none of George Harrison’s famous guests, including Eric Clapton, could play what he did.  It was the first of many gigs for the Harrison family. Robin played at Dhani Harrison’s wedding. He even played at George’s wake, when the sense of Harrison’s spirit was palpable in the room.

‘You were my father’s secret weapon,’ Dhani Harrison told him once. ‘He loved watching people’s jaws drop when you began to play.’

With Chris Quinn on rhythm guitar and Arnaud van den Berg on bass, Robin is currently on a UK tour.  Thursday the trio will be playing at the Royal Albert Hall, and on Friday, courtesy of Theatre Severn, we in Shrewsbury will be their hosts.  Arnaud comes from Amsterdam like Robin, and like Robin too,  Chris has honed his guitar skills on the streets – though not in Amsterdam but on Pride Hill.  In fact it was Chris who first brought Robin to Shrewsbury, and they’ve been playing together on Robin’s UK tours ever since. Occasionally Robin will include other musicians but mostly it’s the three of them taking songs well known in gypsy jazz circles, blending them with rock, blues and jazz and making them their own. 

It’s this making it their own that I’m really interested in.  This is jazz, after all, and jazz is always changing and developing.  Robin reckons that in recent years the whole gypsy jazz phenomenon has really taken off.  ‘It’s opened up globally, and much of that is down to the internet,’ he says. ‘Musicians are going online and seeing and hearing gypsy jazz being playing by the custodians of the tradition, the gypsies themselves, and they’re learning from them and stamping the music with their own identity, blending in sounds from their own cultures.  Gypsy jazz from Argentina, for example, with its strains of the tango, is different to the young gypsy jazz scene currently taking place in France.’ 

What were the names I should be listening out for, I wanted to know. Adrien Moignard was the first name Robin mentioned. ‘Guys like him are absolutely killing it,’ he said. ‘Listen out for Birelli Lagrene too.  He’s the man. They used to call him the wunderkid. Django was progressive for his time. He was playing the electric guitar by the end of his life. And these guys are progressive too.’

And if I wanted to listen to Django Rheinhardt himself? Say I’d never heard him and wanted to know where to start. ‘Minor Swing. 1937. That’s your track,’ Robin said, quick as a flash. ‘It’s the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ of gypsy jazz.’

Robin’s come a long way from the wide-eyed young musician from the streets playing for George Harrison and his mates. He’s performed his own particular brand of gypsy jazz all round the world, and headlined at all the major festivals. I asked him if that Christmas at Friar Park was his most outstanding gig, and he grinned and said it couldn’t help but stand out.  But a gig in the north of Iceland sprang to mind as well - gale force winds and hail beating down outside whilst inside, in a warm fug heated by natural hot springs, Robin and his trio played to a fantastic crowd.

What next, I asked. There’ll be a new album, Gypsy Blue, out later in the year, produced by Dhani Harrison. Then there are more tours, and Master Classes like the one Robin did earlier this week in the Forest of Dean. Teaching has always been an important part of what he does.  The Robin Nolan tutorial books are famous for taking the mystique out of gypsy jazz guitar. They’re credited with being an important element in the gypsy jazz renaissance in the US. 

In addition, Robin is responsible for a monthly online magazine, available as an app on iPad. In fact, two magazines – one free, the other a to be paid-for issue. I’ve had a quick whiz through one of these issues, and can tell you that it’s is a portal into a whole other world packed full not only of playing tips but  interviews and news about gypsy jazz. If you’re interested to find out more, the link's www.gypsyjazzsecrets.com.

Tonight as I write this, the Robin Nolan trio will be playing Tenbury Wells. They’re in for a treat. “Robin Nolan is so amazingly good,’ said the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman in an  interview for Dutch music magazine ALOHA. ‘As soon as I record something in the spirit of Django Reinhardt, I’ll book him a flight and bring him into the studio.’

As commendations go, it doesn't get much better than that.

Click here for: Robin Nolan Trio at Theatre Severn
Click here for the Robin Nolan Trio with Jazz Violinist Jason Anick at the 2007 Montreal Jazz Festival   

And Now For Something A Bit More Cheerful - Sir Scallywag & The Golden Underpants

There’s been a certain amount of doom and gloom in the last couple of posts, so what we need is something to raise our spirits, and I reckon The Golden Underpants might be just the thing.  Or Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants, to give it its full title, for which we have to thank the dynamic duo of Giles Andreae and the mighty Korky Paul.

If you don’t have a clue what I’m on about, let me explain. Sir S and the GU is a children’s picture book with a bounding storyline and glorious, in-your-face illustrations. It’s naughty.  It has kings and queens in it, and bare bums.  It has a giant who steals underpants and in triumph wears them on his head [and not just any old underpants, but golden underpants OF POWER] and it has a six year-old hero in full armour, who of course saves the day.

Great, you may be thinking.  But what’s this to do with Shrewsbury? 

Regretfully, there are so many things going on in Shrewsbury that My Tonight From Shrewsbury doesn’t have the time to include the half of them. That’s why, when Sir S and the GU came to town a few weeks ago in the guise of Ensemble 360, performing in the Maidment Building at Shrewsbury School, they found themselves missed out.  Now, however, is their moment in the light [not that they need any light - with Golden Underpants to guide them, they generate enough of their own].

Ensemble 360 was formed upon the retirement of the world-famous Lindsey Quartet. Musicians from across the world were auditioned and a flexible, eleven-piece chamber music ensemble of five string players, five wind players and a pianist was born.  Music in the Round, with whom they work in collaboration, is an education and outreach group that aims to inspire and enthuse by means of concerts and workshops, bringing high-quality professional music-making out into the community. Together with Ensemble 360, their repertoire includes The Chimpanzees of Happy Town and The Lion Who Wanted to Love, so I’m sure you get the general idea. 

With this latest edition to their repertoire, Ensemble 360 packed out the Maidment Building last December, and less than two months later they were back, courtesy of Shrewsbury’s Children’s Bookfest.  For the first half of the performance the packed theatre full of young children [roughly three year-olds upwards] and their parents/grandparents/aunties/uncles etc were put through their paces, learning the Underpants Songs and a series of key noises and actions that would be required to bring alive the story of King Colin’s tragic loss and Sir Scallywag’s triumphant quest.

This was testing for all concerned.  Tonight from Shrewsbury, I can attest that getting the right actions together with the right noises in the right places was trickier than you’d expect. Eventually, however, the audience managed to sort itself out and the performance moved into its second phase, which was the telling of the story Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants, kicking it off in grand style with an extract from Handel’s Music For the Royal Fireworks. 

‘King Colin wasn’t clever and King Colin wasn’t bold,’ the narrator began, in a voice that bristled with excitement and expectation, ‘but what made King Colin special were his underpants of GOLD.’

I’ll spare you the rest.  After this lapse in time some of the details escape me.  But what doesn’t escape me is the memory of Shrewsbury’s little people [along with some of the grown-up great and good of the town] with their arms above their heads doing the Golden Underpants actions and singing the Underpants Song. They all loved it.  There were no actors on stage, just a handful of musicians, a screen with a few pics and a narrator with a mesmerizing voice who brought to life Giles Andreae’s galloping verse. But for one glorious and magical hour, they and King Colin [and his bare bum] ruled.  Or, at least, King Colin tried to rule – but it was very difficult without his Underpants of Power. God alone knows what might have happened if Sir Scallywag hadn’t come along.   

For a three year old, what a whizz around the world of live music, and what an fabulous introduction to real instruments and how they work.  Little people toddled out afterwards, blinking into the daylight, their ears ringing to the sound of Rossini’s William Tell Overture. For many of them, Sir Scallywag and the Golden Underpants will have been their first show. 

If you get a chance to attend a Music in the Round children’s performance go for it, and prepare yourselves to gasp, giggle and roar [all in the right places, of course]. For those of you interested in finding out more about Ensemble 360 and their Sir S and the GU performance, HERE’S a rather endearing YouTube clip.