1964: LEICESTER - the life of a MIDLANDER | Two Town Mad | Voice of the People | BBC Archive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ค. 2022
- "I am a Midlander, and that is - I do believe - the most uninspiring, uninteresting, unexciting English tribe to belong to." - Ray Gosling.
In Two Town Mad, Northampton born journalist Ray Gosling delivers a personal comparison of two Midland cities, Leicester and Nottingham, each of which hold a special place in his heart.
This clip focuses on Leicester, the prosperous modern city where Ray went to University.
Originally broadcast 28 February, 1964.
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I was 98 years old when this was filmed in 1964. How times have changed since the 19th century when I was young.
You are 144 years old?
wow!! ❤❤❤🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦
I left Leicester after living there all my life two years ago... I certainly won't be ever going back again. That film was amazing it shows just how far Leicester has fallen over 60 years... and how its soul has been ripped out.
I left after 55 years several years ago. Last time I went back I could only stand it for an hour before getting the bus out again
@@clivebaxter6354 I was born there in 63..Filbert street .. 2023 have not set foot in it for 5 years... a festering shithole of dirt , a soulless city now run by scum for scum.. makes me weep.
i left leicester in 1997 born and bread never went back and never will
Lol and good riddance to the lot of you, things change, it amazes me how people expect stuff to stay exactly the same, you do realise the earth changes right? Been doing it for ohh let's see a few million years, so that means your quaint little life was once interrupting something else. Once upon a time there were no humans at all in Leicester, just trees and nature, your existence changed that but you don't see the animals bitching.
Frighteningly accurate portrayal of Leicester in the 60’s. It captures not just the photographic detail, but so much more, the emotion of the city of my teenage years.
Love the fashion of the 1960's. Those sharp suits and rockabilly hairstyles! 20 years before I was around, but would've loved to have experienced this era in Britain.
How times have changed.
@Null How is making a direct observation r@ysist?
Well they don't stay the same, never have done, the irony is this guy in the video is moaning about change in 1964 and now everyone else on this page is moaning about the fact it isn't 1964 anymore, ironic.
It gives me so much hope that two people can watch the same thing but come to very different conclusions.
These old archives are wonderful to watch 🇬🇧🇬🇧
In 1964 I was seven years old. I can just about remember what things were like then but only vaguely. At the age of eighteen I left Leicester to go to University and have not lived there since.
Leicester was never the richest city in Europe, that is a myth, but for a period in the fifties Oadby had the highest average per capita income of any European suburb.
Leicester had its poor but in the main it was an affluent place with a remarkably diverse industrial base: Hosiery, Evans lifts, Invicta plastics, Shoe machinery, Shoe manufacture, Imperial typewriters and sundry small light engineering concerns afforded it a significant degree of shelter from the winds of depression that blighted many single industry Northern towns in the seventies and eighties.
It was not a friendly city compared to places I lived after University. In 1975 it was a considerably less attractive place than Nottingham, just up the road.
But it was recognisably English when I left and it is not now. A friend who came from Mowmacre Hill recently described it as a sad old place and she was right. It’s my home town, I still go back because I love its sports teams. But I grieve for its lost mores.
What a startlingly refreshing conversational voice over!.. So natural!
It's like I am sitting next to him on the bus... Only I can't be as I cannot smell that horrible, yet wonderfully overpowering nostalgic melange of second hand cigarette smoke, diesel fumes and warm vinyl seat-covers.
Best wishes from a boy from the Leicestershire/Northamptonshire borders, now making armour in a French forest. ⚒️🇬🇧🌞
Don't forget the brylcreem!
@@liborsionko Hey Lorne, have some consideration... There are bald people here! 😡👀😂🤣😂
Joking aside, that stuff did smell magic!
On that very note:
In 92, in a Tenerife hotel bathroom, an angry sarcastic Englishman with less hair than a snooker-ball watched me combing Brylcreem through my frankly insanely-thick Oscar Wildesque flaxen locks. Upon leaving he shouted: "That stuff makes you bald mate!"
How I did laugh, as with all my strength I tied my heavy mane behind me and walked back out to the restaurant.
Sadly... I think he might have been right! 🤔
That journalist was a hopeless alcoholic who was destitute and bankrupt by his late 50s.
I dig that motorcycle at 09:00..it will still look modern today!
I like this guy's voice. It's very suave.
Suave is a word you don’t hear much today’
I'm born & bred in the fair city of Leicester. Born the same year as this video was recorded. Love the place, the people & our fantastic football & rugby clubs - Proud to be from Leicester!
Leicester is really boring and run down now.
@@Answersonapostcard Leicester's always been boring, but it's a lot less run down now than it was when I moved here in 1994.
I was born a month later after this was made.
You need to get out more
@@westleymanc Why?
Wow, that whole area around the clock tower has been pedestrianised for decades! Can’t believe it used to be a road back then.
They knocked down some really nice Gothic architecture to build the Haymarket also
Was born there back in 1970 , in the late 70's early 80's can remember standing behind a bus with my parents waiting to cross the road while sucking the fumes in from the buses
I find the most amazing thing is the buildings that are still relatively the same, that shot from the top of Lee Circle car park at 2:19 (the Auto Magic Car Park!) looking north down Byron Street, that building that is now Thrify so clearly visible and virtually identical today, many of the other buildings in the same shot too.
Difficult to locate the 'Ten Pin' from the shot of the front, I initially thought it was the building to the West of the South end of the car park, over on Charles Street that now has a Wilkos at the bottom (where the shot at 6:06 was taken from). But we also see the same building as the car is parking at the top of the car park and from there we can see that the windows were then as they still are today, not quite the same. A bit more digging (I should have heeded the clue 'above the ten pin our multi-storey wheelie wheelie'), it looks like it is the building on the South East of Lee Street, opposite Eldon Street. This whole area was clearly all new in the 1960s.
I think the other multi-storey car par park that was shown in construction must have been what is now NCP Abbey Street, which would make the hills in the distance Bradgate Park I would guess. Brings back memories of when I got my car locked into that car park back in the late 1990s after a night at Alcatraz and clearly hadn't noticed the closing times!
I grew up in Leicester - I was 13 when this was made. And I really can't agree that Leicester had no proper accent. If asked to give an example of a pure Leicester accent, I always cite a fellow pupil in Junior School who put his hand up, and when called upon by the teacher, said "aya gorra rubba worracan borra?" Now that was a Leicester accent. My dear Mother always spoke with a Leicester accent, having spent her life in Leicester, the vast majority of it as a housewife. Her accent was a little more delicate than the previous example... for example she was always admonishing me in my teens to "go bed respekable", by which she meant to retire as a 'respectable' hour.
Wow! Brilliant watch
Was it just me who looked up 40 Bushland Road Northampton, to find Ray's home.
I'm looking at it right now by chance as I live on the street that joins on to it!
I enjoyed my teenage years going to Leicester. NYE round the Clock Tower, going to Il Rondo, the Trocadero, spending time at the Lido. 😊
Leicester born and raised worked at Corah's and left England in 1962. I will always be proud to be English
😆😆
My uncle lived in Ascot Road, he moved. It’s called The Khyber Pass now by real locals.
I lived in Ascot Road as a student. Living in a multicultural area was good for me, as I brought small town prejudices with me. I soon lost them. I should imagine many of the Asian people there now are second and third generation and were born in Leicester, actually making them the locals.
@@markmelton4507 My folks lived there until the early 70s then moved, it was no longer, no longer England he said. The trouble with it all now is the host population (white British) gets less each year % wise. Multiculturalism only can work when the host population doesn’t feel threatened by a rising immigrant population. Look at adverts on TV now, hardly a white face to be seen. We are being conditioned into this and not so subtly.
@@alfredroyal3473 "hardly a white face" is an out and out like. There are more non white faces than previously, which reflects the country as a whole.
@@linalmeemow Oh no,it doesn’t. Census figures show 87% of the U.K. is white British, 3% Black and about 7% various Asian. You sit down, look at advert breaks - and to a lesser extent programmes - and see if those appearing in them constitute 8 out of 10 white British. Black people are way over represented, Asians less so. Broadcasters are engaged in the complete distortion in the media of the U.K. population. I have no problem with everybody being represented it is the distortion of the population ratios which is sinister.
@@alfredroyal3473 "Hardly a white face to be seen" is still a massive, paranoid exaggeration.
I like the philosopher at the end.
8:50 Boy was he right about getting a machine to do that work. Everyone of those people was out of a job within about 10-15 years.
I'm from here mixed views about the place, I live on the outskirts groby which is fairly nice.
1:36
That’s Lee Circle
Nice to hear Ray’s voice again - usually unappreciated.
Leicester really was a thriving city in the mid 20th century
What about now?
@@Zlervo Now it's an utter 💩 hole
Still is I’m proud of my city
If you went today: you could be forgiven, for thinking you were in India.
@@poshgentleman559 or any number of interesting country’s with the wealth of cultures calling Leicester home, That’s why I love my home city, so much to see, learn and experience in one place.
At 3:47 I was surprised to see a bus driving over the kerbstone, lucky no kids were loitering there..
Much better road safety these days, good point!
I like his accent!😊
But it’s not really Northants!
Lovely.🇦🇺
A great insight into someone from a working class background who went to university. The lads in the pub have it so good, they don't know what to do with themselves!
I have lived in Leicester since I was one in the early 1970s, bar around six years. Still love the city despite its faults.
My god what a luvli vid. Born and bŕed here all old buildings gone now shame ❤❤❤❤
4:19 *Met my future wife at The Granby School of Dancing above Burtons on the Clock Tower !*
Now the area around the clock tower has been pedestrianised I suppose it resembles a central ‘square’ more nowadays
They really changed that part around the clock tower, no way you'd have buses rolling by like that now they'd be running down the M&S shoppers. 😂 Cool to see parts of it from the past.
The "Drive in Bank" (7:20)
They'll make a few tweaks to it.
You'll get used to it, mate.
It didn't last long that drive-in bank LOL
Great video! I was born in Lincoln which I suppose is technically the east midlands but I 100% feel northern
Hardly northern 🤔 Carlisle is the north
Very American with all the drive-thru services and parking garages. I like it. (I'm American.)
That was then its changed beyond recognition now
I grew up in Leicester and everyone I know left immediately as soon as they could. Not a single member of my family or friend is still there. It was awful.
Cheerio Then Me Duck you ain't Missed
@@frankcross7925 Phew I was so worried what you thought
Yeah I was Worried you'd Come back. You're probably in the south now
Nob head
The Dunlop factory in evington?
It’s funny this makes me feel nostalgic but I’ve never even been there.
bloke at 9:56 is still alive, rents out vans
I actually remember this documentary. At school we didn't like it!
I’m surprised drive though banks/post offices never caught on into the 70’s and 80’s and early 90’s
this isn't america
They were not the first but Leicester had early Bank cash machines. My bank the Midland in Granby St had one. You could use it with a card like today once a day ten times to get out only ten pounds a time, a lot of money in the 70's. Each time a hole was punched in your card and I presume it was sensed inside the machine and when it got to ten withdrawals the machine kept the card as it couldn't be used again. You used the new one they sent you automatically like when you got to the end of your cheque book. It had a magnetic strip to identify your account and debit it accordingly (if you had enough money in).
@@kenstevens5065 The Nat West had those too, I thought it was great at the time.
Leicester has changed a bit OMG 😳😳
After watching this video, all the comments have the local accent as I read them.
I love “birds” with loose morals!
WOW! It's a good thing it's so much better now🙀😂
I'm from Leicester and it's mad how the 'rough' guy at the end is supposed to be a 'bum' - he'd be upper class and a straight-laced guy by today's standards
That shows a different Leicester in '64 to the place I remember, I have a few fond memories of the place, but not many, preferred the villages round the city.
My Dad worked at BSS for 40 years near the multi car park .what is now a listed building. BSS moved and was being turned into flats. All flats now and like being in a different country 😢
I was born there and im 8
The size of bloke waiting for a pint at bar wow big lad
Narrator seems to downplay the city being part of manufacturing, back when. Little did he know! Now I suppose it relies upon service industries as the main sources of employment. It's not that manufacturing disappeared; it just went somewhere else. Greetings from a Brit residing in the USA.
Made in china 🇨🇳 🏭 🤪 👎
Perhaps he downplayed it because people took it all a bit for granted then, because things seemed to be going well! But within 5 years, the Great Central Railway was closed , and going into the 70s, manufacturing took on a steep decline.
What did he say they call Liverpidlians at the start?
Plenty chips, Plenty chapatis
09:55 If he's talking about the Swan & Rushes, he's dead right. It was still a nutter's joint at the start of the 2000's.
Don't give up on Leicester... something good is coming your way in 2016. But get to the bookies first 😂
Lovely video, what a great shame Leicester has become, we all know what's happened to it many towns and cities have suffered the same fate...
What's happened? Go on, say it out loud.
@@linalmeemow It has happened that a pack of lies cannot lead you anywhere.
@@giulianaraffa9391 What???
What “fate” Leicester’s great!!cheer up!
i know right, it seems full of racists now?!??!
The town centre destroyed by the hideous theatre, now shut, and the vile Haymarket centre not to mention what they did to dear old Lewis's. Upvc windows and a feeling of scruffiness too. Pubs shut by the dozen and bulldozeed factories is the only legacy now. Multiculturalism and cultural battles in the streets, all in my life time.
Might visit Leicester now.... lol
Don't bother it's scruffy, filthy streets full of every nationality who can't speak English. When I was younger it was a treat to go into town not anymore, not a safe place.
Interesting the accents sound different.
Accents evolve, young people want to be different from wrinklies, sic.
@@willrichardson519 but you never find accents change 100% i work with young people in there 20s, many have strong accents so im sorry to say your wrong,and naive in a way goodbye i don't want to hear from you again.
@@willrichardson519 your older than me, you seem you have very wrong views on this, accent never change that much maybe less broad thats all, again don't bother me again your very strange and feel freaked out.
A place with birds with loose morals...sounds alright, me duck
I am from west of Swansea. I worked for 4.5 years in Leicester in the 80s. It was already very different from the footage here.
I then spent two years in Coventry. I have no feeling for Leicester at all. Cold hostile place. I had studied in Cardiff - that place too has no charisma either, apart from on match days. I do sympathise with the loss of industry & culture & homogeneity across Leicester & Nottingham. Textiles & shoes. Betrayed by the powers that be at all levels.
AT ALL LEVELS !!
I agree. I spent some time in Cardiff and found that it had more Spirit, if that's the right word.
Absolutely love clips like these 🥰 love the narration speaks in proper english unlike people nowdays as its all slang talk ...also i notice so few cars on the road & people on the streets compared to now X please post more clips like this xx
"proper" English lol
I was born the year this was made. In my lifetime, this nation has become alien to me.
1963 for me & I totally agree with you.
@@matt.willoughby Don't patronise me.
Not all change is good. Much of what has occurred over the last 58 years has been for the better but society now is more fractured than it has been for a very long time - and there are some very clear reasons why.
When you are older, you will learn the ruth of what I say (assuming you ahev the intelligence).
In the meantime, don't presume to tell that change is how societies progress. If you knew moe history, you wuld also know that some types of change cause socities to fail.
Dear boy.
@@thomasm1964 I didn't say if change is good or bad. That's totally subjective, so I wouldn't waste my time arguing that. Yes some societies fail, some don't.
Not sure what your point is?
I think you're patronising yourself old chap.
@@matt.willoughby You don’t even understand your own argument. You originally claimed societies progress (meaning “go forward”) through change. Now, you are back-pedalling.
It's called "Change"
Society changes as we progress and move on.
So I don't get you, the fact you are feeling alien ?
Can you expand on your comment old boy.
But when you own a big chunk of the bloody Third World, the babies just come with the scenery...
Leicester is my hometown he ain’t got a LESTA accent because he’s not from there.
Whatcha on about duck it’s the best of the Midlands! Always friendly, always up for a laugh LESTA is the place to be! Don’t take any notice of this dreary piece of journalism
Lineker prefers todays Leicester.
Lee Circle needs uplifting.
It's having some work done now but NCP does the bare minimum to keep it just about usable. Sad really because it's a cleverly designed building.
Ray died in 2013
halcyon days
Leicesterstan
He's a Midlander, he sits on the fence.
Nope, we live in the middle.
I've lived in Leicester all of my fifty-five years and it has not changed for the better. There is no civic pride anymore, once decent neighbourhoods are going to rack and ruin. It's become a melting pot of all nationalities to the extent that I feel like a stranger in my own town. In short it now resembles something more like 1970s New York with garbage everywhere and a prevailing underclass.
That's England in the 2020's...same in every large city. What the hell went wrong???
@@imbyl6087 It goes way back to something called the Kalergi Plan i.e the eradication or ethnocide of white Europeans and their replacement with a race similar to Egyptians. Just walked home from work and hardly saw a white face. It's grim.
@@joegibbs448 Come on Joe, say it out loud. Show us what you really are.
Move
Leicester like 70s New York!?You’re exaggerating just a tad.C’mon cheer up ,we won the league!
All towns and cities change, none are like they used to be, maybe it’s for the better maybe its not…
If it’s for the better we’ll that’s for the locals to decide, those that have lives their all their lives.
Of course, towns and cities change. However, do the faces and culture need to also?
When this was a proper country.
What kind of country is it now, Chris?
@@linalmeemow Very dictatorship now, Democracy basically finished, Its all about Money Money Money how much can be squeezed out of your pocket every week young people cannot afford to go out on a Friday & Saturday like we used to.
@@chrisclarke3645 I'm not sure you understand what a dictatorship is.
@@linalmeemow i do understand maybe i did not explain it to you the right way my bad.
@@linalmeemowyou really are a 🤡
I used to like Ray Gosling but disagree with many of the sentiments voiced here, a little too whimsical to my liking. He mentions factory work 'making things that don't last long' whoops thats offended a lot of ppl straight away and factory work bringing no satisfaction, I disagree again, look back at any weeks effort and that is an achievement surely. Never mind, was always looked forward to, RIP old fella left this Earth 2013 age 74.
Alienation wasn't great, but mass unemployment and precarious under-employment are a damn sight worse.
At least he has Gary Lineker.
I just can't watch things like this, they're too depressing. Because our country is no longer truly ours.
When was it ever? It's been run by a small clique, sic, since 1066
It’s certainly changed , that’s for sure..
Yep, Thatcher and her ilk did for the decent factory wages, class of people.
What a change since then, I've been Leicester for 52 years and I'm all about diversity as you see I married an oriental, but what have we become?
What would your wife say if she read "I married an oriental".
Alternatively, how would you feel of your wife said "I married a white"
@@sandeepk4093 it wouldn't bother either of us because she is an oriental and I am white. Reality and truths hurt people's feelings these days, some people live in a fake world and in denial of reality, but not us... you should try it you would be a lot happier.
Just sounded weird to me. The Orient is a big place with lots of nationalities
@@sandeepk4093 yes I get your point, to me, being over 50, the south eastern Asian countries, like Thailand, Philippines, Japan, China etc... are oriental . It's not derogatory or insulting it's just old fashioned language, like listening to the wireless... lol.
Men were just so cute then. Awwwwe.
Those were times when people were stronger 💪 and were not afraid 😳 of a little second hand smoke.
Tell that to Roy Castle, oh, you can't, he's dead.
For me it's more that all your clothes would stink of smoke when you got back
I went to Leicester about 12 years ago and it was pretty well spot the white man
And?
Bradford and Leicester two city's about the same size, with very similar demographics and a very similarexperience, so why do Leicester people have no angst, Not in the least bit lairy like Bradfordians, not as weather beaten and world weary either, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing 🤔
Oh it does mate, it’s just that Leicester isn’t as easy to report on
@@thededoidheskey6128 Try Bradford that has central govt censorship on it, can't report anything about it until it is viewed by the home office
Demographics, my dear boy, demographics.
@@sandgrownun66 Que?
1:44 "No slums", " to find the poor you have to look very hard". That folks was how it was in post war Socialist Britain. Look how far this nation has fallen in the past 40 years .
Indeed, it changed somewhere between the late 60s,and mid 79s, Labours dominant right wing threw in the towel well before Thatcher and, Powellites, sic, just like the "reformist" "social Democrats" on the mainland.
Leicester the furthest place away from the sea in the country.....Gary linaker .....red Leicester cheese .....walkers crisps...
What did he say people from Liverpool are called besides scousers?!
Whackers
He reffered to them as "wacks"
@@frankythefox I've never heard that before.
@@diverguy3556 "Alright wack" was a greeting oft heard on the docks, so I am told.
I've lived in the North West all my 60 odd years, and never heard a scouser call anyone "wack"
To buck the inevitable "oh what a shame it's changed" comments, I think Leicester is far more interesting now than it was then. I can't get misty eyed over the construction of a carpark. Growing up there taught me to respect difference, and I'm forever grateful for that.
Tell that to young white girls !
@@davefitzpatrick4841 All of them? I think they'd find that a bit weird Dave. And it would be a logistical nightmare
@@redcarsgofaster just the ones who have suffered at the hands of the grooming gangs, still a logistical nightmare !
@@davefitzpatrick4841 And there it is.
@@redcarsgofaster as with the authorities, choose to look the other way .
That’s still the East Midlands boring, bland and largely forgotten, many claim it doesn’t even exist. Though I must admit I greatly enjoying not being part of that most boring debate of north vs south
Narrator sounds fruity
All big cities are unrecognisable from fifty years ago ,in fact the country is
Change happens, some good, some bad. NB austerity has never "worked"
Brilliant video. Looked like a nice place once. Shame
10:08 MEN actually, more men used to visit pubs in the 60’s/70’s that women and you would never find families in them like you do these days
They went to the pub to get away from their families. 😂
Leicester is a shite hole now.
You don't need more than one guess to know why.
Leicester used to have white people???
I never saw a black face in the whole video.
Nowadays you'd be hard pressed to see a white one.
Is it true that everyone was racist and sexist back then and homophobic? Its just everyone I know always tells me this so thought I'd ask
Pretty much. The city became home to thousands of new immigrants from Pakistan and the Caribbean and the original locals weren’t used to it. Pre-war values were slow to dissipate so the man was still the head of the home and homosexuality was very much in the closet. I grew up in Leicester during the period of this film and the sixties was an exciting time. Some of these pre-conceptions started to break down and the old ideas challenged. Some of the comments here hint at the possibility that some still live in the 50s! I was 13 when this TV show aired and I remember watching the original broadcast with my dad. It’s many years since I’ve lived there but it wasn’t a bad place in which to be raised.
Back then....? You only gotta read comments on these types of vids to see nothings changed.im not saying the kalergi plan is not happening but there are much bigger problems.
@@benitopussolini544 Like what?
Some people still are.
@@MrPeterthepilot And Indian Ugandans, who got kicked out of Uganda in the late 60's (after this film - notice how there was no Asian/Afro-Caribbean in the film?)
Personally, I think Leicesters diversity is it's jewel in the crown (that will certainly trigger some!). Without diversity, Leicester would have gone the same way as many other cities around the UK. If you'd like to see the evidence Stoughton and Oadby are two prosperous areas lived in now by those first 60's immigrants that, remember, came here only with what they could carry and didn't even speak the language! Half of you can't even be arsed to speak a little Spanish when you go on your holidays!!
Leicester is still one of the more prosperous cities in the UK, but the industries have changed. Transport/warehouse hubs and call centres may have replaced the hosiery and tool industries of yonder days, but they are just as important as the industries in the 60's.
Narborough Road in the 60's had Ugandans (I know because I lived on Wilberforce Road when I was a kid). In the 80's the Polish came, in the Noughties the eastern Europeans came. The area evolves, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
Listen, I'm not going to say all is rosy in Leicester in 2022. I will say though that we are far better off than some other cities in the UK and without a doubt our ability to diversify is what has kept us going through hard times. Such a shame that some parts of the city are going to the dogs because high business rates and parking charges are a thing by the politicians that run the council.
Utterly heartbreaking to watch England as it once was. A kingdom lost to time in less than 60 years. The scourge of Multiculturalism, and the jackboot of the Diversity Commissars have robbed us of this England forever.
Good riddance to the bland, grey old days.
Not much diversity back then, happier days, now its an absolute dump.
Right dump Leicester Nottingham is better