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| Version 3 | Version 4 |
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| Tony Scott and the image of northern England | Tony Scott and the image of northern England |
| (8 days later) | |
| The careers of Tony Scott and his brother Sir Ridley are exemplars of how the talent of the north of England will out, in their case from Grangefield grammar at Stockton (whose alumni also include the novelist and Booker Prizewinner Pat Barker) and West Hartlepool college of art. | The careers of Tony Scott and his brother Sir Ridley are exemplars of how the talent of the north of England will out, in their case from Grangefield grammar at Stockton (whose alumni also include the novelist and Booker Prizewinner Pat Barker) and West Hartlepool college of art. |
| Both places are still part of the local education system although in different forms, as might be expected after more than half a century, Grangefield as a comprehensive technology college and West Hartlepool as part of Cleveland college of art and design. They continue a grand tradition which played a major part in an area requiring artistic and design talent for its many industries; West Hartlepool was originally, in 1874, the Government School of Arts housed in the town's Athenaeum. | Both places are still part of the local education system although in different forms, as might be expected after more than half a century, Grangefield as a comprehensive technology college and West Hartlepool as part of Cleveland college of art and design. They continue a grand tradition which played a major part in an area requiring artistic and design talent for its many industries; West Hartlepool was originally, in 1874, the Government School of Arts housed in the town's Athenaeum. |
| The stream of talent from such places, throughout the north and of course more widely in England's regions, is so broad and fast that the Scotts have many equals; but they have played a particularly interesting part in the vexed question of the image of the north, which much-fascinates the Guardian Northerner. Famously, Sir Ridley made the 1973 Hovis bread advert Boy on a Bike, which tapped directly into the national sense at the time of 'the north', sent up the following year with equal brilliance by Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen (pause for a moment's respect to Michael Palin from Sheffield). | The stream of talent from such places, throughout the north and of course more widely in England's regions, is so broad and fast that the Scotts have many equals; but they have played a particularly interesting part in the vexed question of the image of the north, which much-fascinates the Guardian Northerner. Famously, Sir Ridley made the 1973 Hovis bread advert Boy on a Bike, which tapped directly into the national sense at the time of 'the north', sent up the following year with equal brilliance by Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen (pause for a moment's respect to Michael Palin from Sheffield). |
| Boy on a Bike's inspirations included Sir Ridley's first film Boy and Bicycle, a £65 job done while he was a student at the Royal College of Art which starred Tony as a truanting schoolboy in Hartlepool and showed the talents of both of them. Some of the advert's other ingredients were very different; it was shot on super-twee Golden Hill in Shaftesbury and the voiceover is Mummerset. But look and listen! It has cobbles, a flat(tish) cap and crucially a brass band playing the melancholy slow movement from Dvorak's New World symphony. | Boy on a Bike's inspirations included Sir Ridley's first film Boy and Bicycle, a £65 job done while he was a student at the Royal College of Art which starred Tony as a truanting schoolboy in Hartlepool and showed the talents of both of them. Some of the advert's other ingredients were very different; it was shot on super-twee Golden Hill in Shaftesbury and the voiceover is Mummerset. But look and listen! It has cobbles, a flat(tish) cap and crucially a brass band playing the melancholy slow movement from Dvorak's New World symphony. |
| Northern, was the all-but-universal assumption; commentators spoke about the advert representing 'good, plain northern values' and the north is always cited when it wins Best TV Ad Ever competitions for the umpteenth time. Subsequent filmography recognised this. Tony Scott's own Hovis advert Runaway, screened in 1979, abandoned the West Country for an entirely Bronte-esque moor, grim halflight included. Go On Lad in 2008, which follows a flatcapped boy through 200 years of British and Hovis history, uses a range of locations but 'northernerises' them all. | Northern, was the all-but-universal assumption; commentators spoke about the advert representing 'good, plain northern values' and the north is always cited when it wins Best TV Ad Ever competitions for the umpteenth time. Subsequent filmography recognised this. Tony Scott's own Hovis advert Runaway, screened in 1979, abandoned the West Country for an entirely Bronte-esque moor, grim halflight included. Go On Lad in 2008, which follows a flatcapped boy through 200 years of British and Hovis history, uses a range of locations but 'northernerises' them all. |
| Another of the Scotts' brilliant contemporaries Alan Plater wrote perceptively about this in Geordies, an extremely good compilation edited by Robert Colls and Bill Lancaster, where he describes how a fictional Hovisian north was what London commissioners wanted and therefore what they got. He says: | Another of the Scotts' brilliant contemporaries Alan Plater wrote perceptively about this in Geordies, an extremely good compilation edited by Robert Colls and Bill Lancaster, where he describes how a fictional Hovisian north was what London commissioners wanted and therefore what they got. He says: |
| The setting was an ill-defined, generalised lump of the good Earth called 'The North' and the writers were categorised as 'Northern writers'. Hull-born Tom Courtenay starred in Billy Liar despite its West Riding setting and Salford-born Albert Finney found his way to Nottingham in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, all without comment in the posh newspapers, though there were comments a-plenty in the areas listed. | The setting was an ill-defined, generalised lump of the good Earth called 'The North' and the writers were categorised as 'Northern writers'. Hull-born Tom Courtenay starred in Billy Liar despite its West Riding setting and Salford-born Albert Finney found his way to Nottingham in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, all without comment in the posh newspapers, though there were comments a-plenty in the areas listed. |
| I cannot tell a lie. I played the game happily along with everyone else, in radio, theatre and television. I even invented my own geographical area for the purpose, enshrined in the stage direction: The play is set in an industrial town somewhere in the Mid-Pennines. | I cannot tell a lie. I played the game happily along with everyone else, in radio, theatre and television. I even invented my own geographical area for the purpose, enshrined in the stage direction: The play is set in an industrial town somewhere in the Mid-Pennines. |
| It was a simple mathematical equation. We could deliver audiences; therefore we got the job. | It was a simple mathematical equation. We could deliver audiences; therefore we got the job. |
| It is a tribute to the talent of people such as Plater, Sir Ridley and Tony Scott whose untimely death we mourn today, that this world took such a hold. They took generalised truth and the telescoping of many, many decades into a single, timeless moment, to overcome the obstacle that such a place never existed. The industrial revolution section of the Oympic Games' opening ceremony mixed more of the same undoubted magic to a similar joyous reception. | It is a tribute to the talent of people such as Plater, Sir Ridley and Tony Scott whose untimely death we mourn today, that this world took such a hold. They took generalised truth and the telescoping of many, many decades into a single, timeless moment, to overcome the obstacle that such a place never existed. The industrial revolution section of the Oympic Games' opening ceremony mixed more of the same undoubted magic to a similar joyous reception. |
| It is lovely. But do you think it's us? | It is lovely. But do you think it's us? |
| Myself, I'm glad that so many artists in our three northern regions - but far too often below (or above?) the metropolis' radar - now write, film and dance to our own, real-life tunes. | Myself, I'm glad that so many artists in our three northern regions - but far too often below (or above?) the metropolis' radar - now write, film and dance to our own, real-life tunes. |
| Do you agree? | Do you agree? |
| You can watch Tony Scott in Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle here. | You can watch Tony Scott in Ridley Scott's Boy and Bicycle here. |
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