Sky Surge thrills

Have you tried Sky Surge yet? It opened on Brighton Palace Pier last summer as one of the most visually assertive new rides to arrive at the pier end in recent years, its long bench of seats swinging riders high above the deck with sudden drops and rolling spins against an open sea backdrop. Installed during the peak season and promoted heavily on social media, the ride marked a clear statement of intent by the pier’s operators to refresh the thrill offer with a contemporary, continental-style flat ride that photographs well and signals novelty.

The ride was teased publicly in early July 2025, when a short night-time video showed large components being craned through the pier entrance and transported along the deck to the seaward end. The pier described the arrival only as ‘something exciting’, inviting speculation before confirming later in the summer that Sky Surge would open as a headline attraction for the 2025 season. By mid-August it was operating daily and featured prominently in pier publicity as ‘our new ride for 2025’.

Sky Surge is a modern ‘Miami’ ride, a format developed in continental Europe in which a long gondola of outward-facing seats is mounted on a rotating arm. The arm lifts the gondola through steep angles while the seating assembly spins independently, creating a combination of lateral swing, rotation and brief weightless moments. On Brighton Palace Pier the ride is presented with a brightly coloured cityscape backdrop and LED lighting designed for both daytime impact and night-time visibility.

Although the pier has not formally named the manufacturer in its own publicity, the ride has been identified by fairground and coaster enthusiasts as an SBF Visa Group Miami, a fixed-site version of a model widely used in European parks and seaside resorts. The configuration, restraint system and motion profile match SBF’s Miami design, and the Brighton installation appears to be a park model rather than a travelling fair version.

Operational details published by the pier list a minimum height of 1.2 metres, with riders under 1.4 metres required to be accompanied by an adult. Standard health and safety exclusions apply, including restrictions relating to back, neck and heart conditions. The ride is priced at £5 per go and is included within the pier’s unlimited ride wristbands.

Public reaction on social media was largely positive, with commenters welcoming visible investment at the pier end and praising the ride’s scale and movement. Others focused on the logistics of installation on a narrow, historic structure, noting the complexity of bringing large ride components onto the pier deck and assembling them in situ. Trade coverage also highlighted the use of cranes and partial roof lifting during the delivery process.

Rides of the same Miami type can be found elsewhere in the UK and overseas. Notable examples include Mamba Strike at Chessington World of Adventures and Surf’s Up at Alexandra Gardens in Weymouth, both identified as SBF Visa Group Miamis, as well as similar installations at Steel Pier in Atlantic City and in amusement parks across Europe, North America and Australasia.

Latest on the King Alfred

After two BrightonBeach365 stories this year charting King Alfred Leisure Centre’s long journey from feasible idea to firm scheme - first in January as the council appointed a delivery partner and cabinet backed the principle of replacement, and then in September when detailed £65 million plans and a preferred contractor were unveiled - the council’s latest update on the project offers a strikingly different tone.

Where previous announcements focused on vision, design and appointments, the most recent release is unmistakably about keeping the project on track against a backdrop of public scrutiny - see Brighton and Hove News. The council has turned explicitly to clarifying what is and isn’t happening on the ground, amid rumours and social-media disputes about demolition having already begun and about the site’s future. That alone is a sign of how high-profile this project has become locally: residents are engaging closely with the plans, offering feedback on facility mixes, and some groups have even sought to block progress through attempts to list the 1939 building. 

The practical works now underway - asbestos removal and the clearing of interiors - are not glamorous, but they signal the real beginning of physical change on site. And now the council has taken the unusual step of addressing misinformation and calling out hostile behaviour toward workers. Indeed in the press release Councillor Alan Robins, Cabinet Member for Sports and Recreation, is quoted as saying: ‘While most residents are sharing their views through appropriate channels, there are a small minority spreading misinformation and creating a hostile environment for people doing their jobs. I want to make it clear, abuse or harassment of staff and contractors working on any of our projects will not be tolerated. Everyone on site is doing their job to keep the project moving forward safely and efficiently, and they deserve respect.’

For local users of the pools and halls who have endured decades of talk but little action, the situation is clear: the old King Alfred will continue in everyday use through winter, even as the beginnings of its successor take shape behind closed doors; formal demolition still awaits planning permission. Consultation feedback will continue to shape the final layouts and facilities, with another round of formal opportunity for comment expected when the planning application is lodged in early 2026.

Fallen stars in disguise?

Some 125 years ago, buskers were a familiar and thriving presence on Brighton’s seafront. Their popularity was such that The Era - a long-running theatrical weekly founded in 1838 - felt moved to puncture a persistent myth: that the musicians and singers scattered along the promenade were fallen stars in disguise, disgraced actors, or even incognito aristocrats turning a penny between scandals. On 1 September 1900, the paper published a faintly sardonic survey of seaside performers under the headline ‘Buskers on Brighton Beach’, written by a ‘special correspondent’.

‘Quite an interesting fallacy exists in the mind of the casual holiday maker,’ the writer begins, ‘as to the identity of many of the performers at the seaside, on sands and beach’. Brighton, like Margate and other resorts, was awash with rumours of ‘Mysterious Musicians’ and ‘Promenade Prowlers’, supposedly hiding ruined careers beneath false beards and cheap costumes. The correspondent treats this with amused scepticism, mocking the idea that royalty might secretly be busking ‘to meet the demands of uxorious creditors’.

The article’s first task is to insist that busking itself is not disreputable. On the contrary, it is presented as honest labour, particularly for performers between engagements: ‘There is nothing discreditable in “busking”, and when out of a shop we see no reason why an actor, if he thinks fit, should not turn his singing or reciting talents to account until the tide turns.’

But this defence is immediately followed by deflation. The correspondent claims that most stories of famous actors ‘buskerading’ on the beach belong ‘chiefly to the region of fiction’. Having taken the trouble to observe performers on the Brighton front, the writer reports that, with one or two exceptions, they were not fallen professionals at all but lifelong street entertainers, ‘to the manner born, and had been street entertainers since childhood’.

What follows is a brisk, sometimes sharp-eyed catalogue of Brighton’s beach entertainments at the turn of the century. Originality, the correspondent complains, is scarce. Music-hall songs dominate, endlessly recycled for undemanding holiday crowds. Even variety, once sampled, soon palls.

Yet Brighton still stands out. Among the many acts observed ‘down at London-on-Sea’, it is Brighton’s Pierrot band that earns unqualified praise: ‘At Brighton the Pierrot band is far and away the best, the selection and the execution being above the average.’

The Pierrots - already an established Brighton fixture by 1900 - represent, here, the high-water mark of beach performance: disciplined, musically competent, and recognisably professional. Other named troupes fare less well, dismissed as ‘customary’, misnamed, or only intermittently entertaining. Ballad singers are ‘most plentiful’, leaning heavily on the popular composers of the day - Tosti, Molloy, Maybrick - while jugglers are ‘scarce’.

The most striking passages are reserved for the marginal figures of beach performance: blind musicians, paralysed instrumentalists, labouring hard for meagre rewards. Their presence reminds the reader that the beach economy was not merely comic or picturesque, but precarious and often harsh. Alongside them, older forms of popular entertainment persist: Punch and Judy drawing ‘crowds of willing customers’, marionettes and fantoccini keeping pace with what a wag calls ‘the origin of the drama’.

The conclusion is deliberately sour. Whether through genuine decline or the jaundiced eye of the observer, the correspondent finds Brighton’s beach entertainments wanting: ‘On the whole, however, the beach entertainments are deteriorating; they are not what they were, or else we are not.’

Conversation with performers yields little insight. Questions are suspected of being veiled appeals for money. And the final judgement is blunt: ‘real “buskers” seem to be dying out, and, perhaps, ’tis well’.

Sources: Editions of The Era can be accessed online via the British Newspaper Archive and Internet Archive. The photograph above - dating from the summer of 1899 - is courtesy of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. See also Busking on the seafront - yes please and The Punch and Judy tradition.

No burning of the clocks

Brighton’s Burning the Clocks will not take place today, 21 December. Same Sky, the community arts charity that created and runs the event, says 2025 will be a ‘fallow year’ to concentrate resources and secure the organisation’s long-term future amid funding pressures, with a full return planned for 2026.

For three decades, Burning the Clocks has been Brighton’s distinctive winter-solstice ritual: a lantern procession through the city centre, ending with a ceremonial burning on the beach and a fireworks finale. It began in the early 1990s as an alternative to the commercial Christmas and as a secular, inclusive community celebration ‘regardless of faith or creed’. Lanterns are traditionally made from willow (withies) and tissue paper, and the parade’s costumes and imagery revolve around time - often with clockfaces - while changing theme year by year to keep the symbolism fresh.

In recent years, the event has embraced an idea of ritual: months of workshops, schools and families building lanterns; a massed, volunteer-led procession; then the moment on the shingle when hundreds of handmade lights are surrendered to flame as the year turns. Same Sky describes the burn as a collective letting-go - people investing lanterns with hopes, wishes and fears before passing them into the bonfire. 

The modern run of Burning the Clocks has also been shaped by disruption. Severe winter weather forced a cancellation in 2009, and the festival later lost two consecutive years to the pandemic era; in 2021, organisers cancelled again as the Omicron wave accelerated and national restrictions tightened. The returns that followed carried an added charge: the same streets and seafront route, but with an obvious emphasis on reconnection and participation after enforced gaps. 

Themes have become the event’s way of threading topical meaning into the fixed solstice format. In 2021, the announced theme was ‘All Animals’, inviting reflection on shared life and the time spent apart - though the parade itself was ultimately called off that year. In 2023, publicity around the event highlighted ‘Clocks’ explicitly as the organising motif, aligning the lantern-build with timekeeping imagery. In 2024, organisers announced ‘Voyager’, framing the procession around journeys and the city’s welcome to people on their own voyages, while keeping the traditional solstice structure. 

This year’s cancellation is different in tone: not a safety call made days ahead, but a planned pause. Same Sky is still marking the date with a public display in central Brighton today: a large lantern sculpture designed and built by associate artist Nikki Gunson. The organisation has already commissioned the 2026 effigy and named the theme ‘Magicada’, using the cicada idea - rest followed by a loud re-emergence - as a metaphor for the event’s return.

See Visit Brighton and Crowdfunder for pics.

Not a whopper in sight

Walk Brighton Beach often enough and a pattern emerges: miles of shingle, a working sea, and yet almost no sign of shore anglers at any hour of the year. This absence is striking not because fishermen avoid crowds - they always have - but because even in winter, at night, or on raw, empty mornings when the beach belongs only to dogs and weather, rods remain rare. The explanation lies less in human activity than in the character of the beach itself: a steep, exposed shingle shelf fronting an open Channel, offering little reason for fish to linger close in, and even less incentive for anglers to wait unless conditions are exactly right.

Brighton’s shoreline is dominated by a steep shingle shelf with shifting sand and shingle underfoot. Unlike classic surf beaches where fish school close to a recognisable break, the seabed just offshore in Brighton rarely provides stable structure or cover. That makes it less attractive to fish in daylight or calm conditions, and unless predators find food close in they tend to stay further out. The water can also appear deceptively shallow near the pebbles, leading many casual observers to assume an absence, when in fact deeper water lies just a few casts out.

Another big factor is visibility and timing. Most species - bass, plaice, whiting and others known from Brighton’s coast - are more active at dawn, dusk and night, and on solunar and tidal patterns. Local reports also show that reports from social or public forums are sparse - not because nothing is caught, but because many sessions result in blanks or modest catches and aren’t widely shared online. Even when catches do happen, they’re often subtle flatfish or small bass in the fading light, not the dramatised hook-and-battle many pictures and social posts favour. 

Contrast this with more visible fishing marks in the area, such as Brighton Marina’s sea walls, where deeper water, structure and bait concentrations attract more anglers and more reported catches. Apps like Fishbrain show a steady tally of bass, plaice and mackerel from the marina compared with the main beach.

The Waltzer’s yaw and whip

The Waltzer on Brighton Palace Pier belongs to the modern era of the pier’s ‘funfair at the end’ identity. That shift began after the Noble Organisation bought the pier in 1984 and, two years later, removed the old theatre, freeing the seaward end to fill with rides and amusement structures rather than staged variety.

A Waltzer is a classic British flat ride: cars sit on a rotating platform and spin as they run over an undulating track; the rider’s weight shifts and the ride’s motion combine to make each car yaw and whip. Operators traditionally add to the chaos by giving cars an extra shove as they pass. That basic mechanics-and-showmanship mix is why the Waltzer has stayed so closely tied to British and Irish fairground culture, even as safety rules and fixed-site queuing have changed how it is run.

The pier’s own ride page bills the Waltzer as a ‘true fairground classic’, warns that ‘this ride spins’ and you should be ‘ready to get dizzy’, and sets the published height rules: 1.2m to ride, and 1.4m to ride unaccompanied (with riders between those heights needing a ‘responsible adult’ who also has a ticket). The same page lists the practicalities that shape the ride experience on a busy, windy pier: no loose items, hats and scarves off, phones forbidden, and closure possible in adverse weather.

As for this specific machine, ride databases record the current installation as an A.R.M.-built Waltzer that was ‘new to the pier’ in 1991, replacing an earlier Waltzer listing. These photos underline why it works so well in a compact pier-head funfair: the canopy’s stars-and-moons, the bulb runs, and the big lettering do half the job before the motors even start.

A.R.M. is usually expanded as ‘Amusement Refurbishment & Manufacture’, and the company is recorded as having previously traded from Oxford, after earlier trading as ‘Turnagain’. That lineage places Brighton’s Waltzer in a very particular strand of late-20th-century British ride-building: firms that didn’t just import new concepts, but modernised, rebuilt and re-engineered established crowd-pleasers. An example survives in an archive note on Turnagain/ARM’s work manufacturing the Trabant ride from the late 1970s, describing an Oxford-based engineering outfit producing updated machines and iterating designs for greater visual impact. Brighton’s 1991 Waltzer sits neatly in that same world: a classic form, built for heavy use, engineered to be maintained, and designed to shout ‘fairground’ in lights

Public feedback on the pier’s Waltzer tends to cluster around three themes: intensity, operator-led ‘extra spin’, and nostalgia. The pier promotional text urges visitors to ‘be daring’ and ‘scream to go faster’. In visitor reviews of Brighton Palace Pier, the Waltzer is regularly singled out as the ride people go on to feel properly flung about, the one that still delivers that unpredictable, stomach-lurching swing between laughter and mild panic. And on nostalgia threads and comments, ‘the fastest waltzer’ is often the hook people use when they talk about Brighton’s seafront amusements and the rites-of-passage of teenage summers.

Waltzers also remain a staple beyond Brighton in static seaside parks (not just travelling fairs), which is one reason the ride reads as ‘traditional’ even when the machine itself is relatively modern. Dreamland in Margate keeps a Waltzer as part of its retro mix. Skegness Pleasure Beach lists ‘Waltzer’ among its core line-up. Clarence Pier in Southsea is another long-running seaside setting where a Waltzer is treated as part of the expected soundtrack of lights, music and spin.

Sources include Wikipedia, the Fairground Heritage Trust, and Dreamland. 

The Punch and Judy tradition

Punch and Judy arrived on Brighton Beach during the great 19th-century seaside boom and quickly became part of the town’s visual identity. The glove-puppet act that Samuel Pepys first recorded in his diary in 1662 had, by the 1840s, settled into the striped booth familiar from Brighton’s early tourist prints. Local collections hold mid-Victorian puppets explicitly labelled as part of a ‘Brighton Beach’ tradition, and by the Edwardian years a Punch and Judy booth pitched on the shingle with Palace Pier behind it was one of the resort’s standard postcard subjects.

Brighton’s own performers helped weld Mr Punch to the shoreline. A Punch and Judy was once performed by royal command for Queen Victoria at the Royal Pavilion. The West Pier and the promenade around it became the recognised pitch: oral histories, home movies and postcards consistently show a little theatre set up between the West Pier and the bandstand, children in the front row and parents watching from deckchairs. Well into the 20th century a Punch and Judy booth was as dependable a seafront sight as donkeys, kiosks or deckchairs.

Glyn Edwards (see this YouTube recording) became the modern custodian. First captivated by a show under the West Pier in the 1940s, he began performing his own Brighton show in the late 1950s and spent more than half a century working the front. His ‘Original World Famous Brighton Punch and Judy’ effectively made Brighton one of the tradition’s national centres; for decades his striped booth was a summer constant between the piers and later outside the West Pier Centre. Edwards gradually stepped back in the 2010s, giving only occasional performances for heritage events before retiring fully. He died in 2022.

Beginning in 1974, Mike Stone (often known as ‘Sergeant Stone’) operated a classic booth on the beach for around 25-30 seasons - see  My Brighton and Hove). Although he overlapped with Edwards, their roles were different: Edwards was considered the tradition’s public champion, museum/heritage presence, national advocate, long-term ‘brand’ figure. Stone, however, was the day-to-day beach showman, delivering regular summer performances to holiday crowds throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Today the active public-facing Brighton Punch and Judy presence is carried by newer performers, notably Professor Dill, who presents traditional shows under the Brighton Punch and Judy name and keeps the craft visible on the seafront during events and summer bookings. Alongside him, the Brighton Fishing Museum maintains a permanent Punch and Judy display in the old fishing quarter, while the West Pier Trust continues to use Mr Punch as a lively ambassador for seafront heritage through exhibitions and occasional performances. The shows themselves are brisker and a shade gentler than their Victorian forebears, but the essentials - the swazzled voice, slapstick, crocodile and baby - still float out over the shingle.

See also: Brighton Toy and Model Museum; The Guardian; Mary Evans Picture Library; The Regency Society (b&w pic); West Pier Trust; Wikipedia.

The famous Brighton novel

Brighton has inspired scores of writers, but none has left a deeper mark on the seafront than Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. The novel, which has been published in hundreds of editions (see Good Reads), portrays the beach, the pier and the summer crowds as a stage of glittering daylight and hidden menace, a version of the city so sharply drawn that anyone crossing the shingle can still feel its shadow.

Graham Greene, born in Berkhamsted in 1904, spent long stretches of his early career as a journalist and later as a roving novelist and reviewer. His first known stay in Brighton came during the mid-1930s, when he took rooms near the front while researching a short story; he returned repeatedly while working on Brighton Rock in 1937, walking the Palace Pier, the racecourse, the lower promenade and the warren of streets behind the seafront. (The photograph of him below was taken in 1939 not long after Brighton Rock was published for the first time in 1938.)

Although the town appears in several of his other works, it is Brighton Rock that locked the place into his imagination. The novel follows Pinkie Brown, a teenaged gang leader determined to cover up a murder on the seafront. He courts and marries the innocent waitress Rose to prevent her testifying, while the indomitable Ida Arnold, half sleuth and half conscience, pushes back against his fatalism. The story is set largely between the pier, the racecourse, the shabby boarding houses off the front and the bars and kiosks that once crowded the lower esplanade. Its famous opening, set just yards from the beach, establishes at once the collision of sunlit day-trippers and the violence brewing beneath. The Brighton of the book carries the familiar rhythms of the beach in season - music, heat, the gulls, the press of crowds - but all refracted through Greene’s stark moral universe of damnation, innocence, chance and fear.

In world literature, Brighton Rock occupies a rare place as both a crime novel and a major novel of belief. Its Catholic undertow - Pinkie’s terror of damnation, Rose’s trust in redemption, Ida’s secular certainty - gives it a depth beyond the gangster genre. Critics routinely class it among Greene’s finest works, alongside The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter, and it remains a touchstone for how fiction can convert an ordinary English seaside town into a theatre of metaphysical conflict. For Brighton, the book is an ambivalent gift: it fixed the Palace Pier, the shingle, the boarding houses and the summer crowds into an international literary image that still shadows the real beach today. (Sources include Notre Dame Magazine, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the full book can be read online at Internet Archive. Green’s own much later introduction to the novel can be read in this edition.)

Here, then, are the great novel’s opening paragraphs, so quickly drawing the reader in: ‘Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him. With his inky fingers and his bitten nails, his manner cynical and nervous, anybody could tell he didn’t belong - belong to the early summer sun, the cool Whitsun wind off the sea, the holiday crowd. They came in by train from Victoria every five minutes, rocked down Queen’s Road standing on the tops of the little local trams, stepped off in bewildered multitudes into fresh and glittering air: the new silver paint sparkled on the piers, the cream houses ran away into the west like a pale Victorian water-colour; a race in miniature motors, a band playing, flower gardens in bloom below the front, an aeroplane advertising something for the health in pale vanishing clouds across the sky.

It had seemed quite easy to Hale to be lost. in Brighton. Fifty thousand people besides himself were down for the day, and for quite a while he gave himself up to the good day, drinking gins and tonics wherever his programme allowed. For he had to stick closely to a programme: from ten till eleven Queen’s Road and Castle Square, from eleven till twelve the Aquarium and Palace Pier, twelve till one the front between the Old Ship and West Pier, back for lunch between one and two in any restaurant he chose round the Castle Square, and after that he had to make his way all down the parade to the West Pier and then to the station by the Hove streets. These were the limits of his absurd and widely advertised sentry go.

Advertised on every Messenger poster: “Kolley Kibber in Brighton to-day.” In his pocket he had a packet of cards to distribute in hidden places along his route: those who found them would receive ten shillings from the Messenger, but the big prize was reserved for whoever challenged Hale in the proper form of words and with a copy of the Messenger in his hand: “You are Mr. Kolley Kibber. I claim the Daily Messenger prize.” This was Hale’s job to do sentry go, until a challenger released him, in every seaside town in turn: yesterday Southend, to-day Brighton, tomorrow -’

NB: ‘Sentry go’ is an old military phrase meaning a turn of sentry duty - a shift of walking a set route, keeping watch, following a fixed pattern until relieved.

Lost Mary found

Found on the beach: Lost Mary. This BM6000 Triple Berry disposable vape is a sub-brand of Elf Bar, made by Shenzhen iMiracle Technology in China. It is a high-capacity, single-use device with a lithium-ion battery and pre-filled nicotine salt e-liquid, non-refillable and not intended for disassembly or routine recycling. According to Wikipedia, Elf Bar’s vapour products are known for their fruity flavours and colourful appearance and were, by 2023, the world’s most popular disposable e-cigarettes.

These vapes have become a common form of coastal litter across the UK. Beach-clean groups consistently report rising numbers of single-use vapes on Brighton’s shoreline, where they join other modern waste such as wet wipes and bottle caps (see this Argus article from 2023). The devices leak plastic fragments, residual nicotine solution and small amounts of battery metals into the environment and must be disposed of as electrical waste, though in practice most end up in general rubbish or on the street.

Nothing about the brand name ‘Lost Mary’ has an official explanation. It was probably crafted to sound personal and provide a narrative, suggesting a figure who is ‘lost’ in a way that aligns with the escapist themes often used in vape marketing, reinforced by pastel, dreamlike packaging. Some reviewers have speculated that ‘Mary’ nods to the slang ‘Mary Jane,’ giving the brand a faint counter-cultural echo without referencing cannabis directly.

UK Vape Scene offers this review: ‘I opted for the Fizzy Cherry flavour, and once the super-quick setup was complete, I was now ready to start vaping. My initial first few puffs on the device were great - the flavour was very tasty without being overly sweet, and Lost Mary seem to have nailed the airflow. There isn't any airflow adjustability which can sometimes be a problem with other kits, but for me the default setting on the BM6000 was just how I would have set it anyway. Although the flavour was great, the one thing I didn't like too much was the nicotine hit. Being someone who uses 10mg nic salts in my usual vape, doubling my strength to 20mg was something I couldn’t get used to right away. Don’t get me wrong, the hit was smooth and wasn't very harsh but it was noticeably more intense than what I usually get from my 10mg Ultimate Nerd Salts.’

In memory of the Palace Theatre

One hundred and thirty years ago - on 4 December 1896 - a violent winter storm tore through Brighton and shattered the already-condemned Royal Suspension Chain Pier, its timbers battering the under-construction Palace Pier and scattering wreckage along the seafront. The loss cleared the last obstacles to completing the new pleasure pier - and with it the Palace Pier Theatre, the end-of-the-pier playhouse that would dominate Brighton’s skyline and seaside entertainment for much of the 20th century.

The Brighton Marine Palace and Pier Company had begun work in 1891, but money and engineering problems meant the pier opened in stages. A 1,760-foot promenade deck with oriental domes and minarets welcomed its first visitors on 20 May 1899. The ‘marine palace’ proper - a large pier-head pavilion with a 1,500-seat hall ringed by dining, smoking and reading rooms - was finished in early 1901, and opened on 3 April with a concert by the Pavilion Orchestra and the town’s Sacred Harmonic Society for some 1,500 guests.

Initially more concert hall than playhouse, the pavilion was remodelled in 1910-1911 as a full theatre and café. Its Moorish exterior - arcades, minarets, a great domed roof - remained, but inside it gained raked seating, a deep stage and improved backstage areas. With around 1,300-1,500 seats looking out over a proscenium arch set above the sea, the reworked Palace Pier Theatre specialised in variety and music-hall attractions. Brighton quickly became a key date on the national circuits: both Stan Laurel and Charlie Chaplin honed early routines here before leaving for America.

From the start the pier-head building was used inventively. Alongside orchestral series and choral festivals, it was showing moving pictures by 1907. Film impresario James J. Russell secured exclusive rights in November 1909 to screen certain Kinemacolor films in Brighton, making the pier one of the town’s earliest regular cinema venues. Programmes mixed films with live variety long before that became common elsewhere, with audiences stepping straight from the promenade into songs, sketches and coloured films while the Channel rolled beneath the piles.

Between the wars the theatre settled into the classic end-of-the-pier pattern: long summer seasons, touring plays and one-week engagements testing new work. It became an important pre-London try-out house, with productions such as ‘Dr Syn’ (1926), ‘Dr Angelus’ and ‘Cosh Boy’ running here before wider tours or West End success. Legitimate drama and variety sat side by side, feeding promenade crowds into matinees and two-house nights.

The theatre closed during the Second World War, reopening in 1946 to resume summer shows. The post-war years are often remembered as its heyday. Performers’ memoirs list comedian Tommy Trinder, Elsie and Doris Waters, Dick Emery, Gertie Gitana and Gracie Fields among those appearing in pier revues or nostalgic ‘Music Hall at the Palace’ bills. Variety and panto regulars such as Bob and Alf Pearson and Nat Jackley featured in a 1973 ‘Music Hall at the Palace’ programme - one of the last surviving records of its casting. For performers like Margery Manners, the Palace Pier stage remained a prestigious stop alongside venues such as the Palladium and Liverpool’s Royal Court.

By the 1950s and 1960s the theatre followed a steady rhythm: brisk summer variety, winter and spring runs of plays and thrillers, and occasional cinema or special events. Local exhibitors, including Myles Byrne - later associated with the Brighton Film Theatre - helped run it as part of a wider circuit of cinemas and live venues. For audiences the setting was as memorable as the bill: walking out along the boards, buying a programme in the sea breeze, then stepping through Moorish arches into a plush, enclosed auditorium with the tide surging below.

The end was abrupt. In 1973 a storm tore a 70-ton barge from its moorings at the landing stage; driven by waves, it smashed into the pier-head and ripped away deck and ironwork around the theatre. Badly damaged, the building never reopened. Brighton theatre historians date its working life as 1901-1940 and 1946-1973, with the 1973 storm effectively closing it for good. When the pier was sold to the Noble Organisation in 1984, permission to remove the derelict theatre was granted on the understanding that a new one would be built. Instead, in 1986 the old auditorium was demolished and replaced by a tubular-steel geodesic ‘Pleasure Dome’ of amusement machines, the pier-head beyond filled with rides and rollercoasters - a clear shift from live performance to fairground operations.

The programme cover above is taken from Palace Pier by Albert Bullock and Peter Medcalf; and the two other images are from  Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove. Sources and more pictures: Arthur Lloyd, Brighton Pier, Wikipedia.

The Fortune of War

Tucked into the Kings Road Arches between the piers, the Fortune of War has traded in some form on the beach since the 1870s, when Louis Pagani ran a refreshment bar on the lower esplanade, serving beer straight onto the shingle. By 1882 it was firmly established as a licensed beer house in one of the new arches, part of the council’s effort to let out the lower promenade to traders who could serve Brighton’s booming excursion crowds. Early accounts describe a simple open-fronted bar with drinkers spilling across the pebbles.

The pub’s nautical identity came later. The present upturned-boat interior - the curved ribs, heavy timber and rope rails - emerged gradually through twentieth-century refits. By the post-war years the ‘ship’s-hull bar’ was already a Brighton curiosity, sitting amid fishermen’s craft, deckchair concessions and the daily bustle of the working beach. In the 1950s and 1960s it became part of a busy strip of seafront music bars remembered for accordions, drums and early rock and roll played almost on the tide line.

The pub survived later waves of nightclub competition by trading on its eccentricity and location. By the 1990s it was often described as the last true beach-side pub in Brighton, a below-deck refuge outlasting themed neighbours along Kings Road. Ownership had by then settled with the company now known as Laine Pub Company, the major local operator whose Brighton portfolio also includes several of the city’s best-known venues. Day-to-day management has been handled on site, most notably by Laurence Hill, who by 2015 had run the pub for more than six years and publicly aligned it with the local Living Wage campaign.

In 2014 the Fortune of War was forced to close temporarily after structural issues in the arches above prompted emergency engineering works to the road and promenade. It reopened with renewed emphasis on DJs, live music and seasonal outdoor service, strengthening its long-standing claim to being Brighton’s oldest beach-level pub. Its ‘beer garden’ remains the central stretch of shingle, animated from midday to late night through the summer.

As for the name Fortune of War, this comes from an old seafaring and military phrase capturing the sheer luck that governed life on campaign or at sea, a fatalistic acceptance that storms, battles, wrecks, or windfalls could change a man’s prospects overnight. Pubs with the name clustered in port towns and garrison districts from the 18th century onwards, and Brighton’s own beach-level version long traded on that heritage, its arches and terraces nodding to the hazards and hopes bound up with Channel fishing, merchant crews, and the town’s maritime identity.

Sources: Camra, The Guardian, My Brighton and Hove, Living Wage (source of the portrait above), Restaurants Brighton, and Wikipedia.

Where have all the punters gone?

The Christmas season in Brighton is gathering pace: the Palace Pier tree is up (see yeterday’s post), the promenade lights are on, and this week three very different Santas have announced their festive plans - one greeting families high above the city, one in the heart of the pier, and one welcoming children beside the lifeboats. 

Brighton i360 has unveiled its full programme, with ‘Santa in the Sky’ returning from 11am on selected dates. Flights are scheduled hourly, and each visit promises a meeting with Santa in the clouds, a small gift, photographs, and the satisfaction of being, as the blurb puts it, on Santa’s nice list this year. Tickets for adults are £23.50, with the pod transformed into a mid-air grotto and Santa surrounded by elves and decorations.

For families wanting a longer experience, the i360 is also offering ‘Breakfast with Santa’, a one-hour event starting at 09.00 in the Drift restaurant. A full English breakfast comes with juice or a hot drink, and children can decorate their own bauble, write a letter to Santa, and post it via the ‘Northpole post box’. After breakfast the whole group takes a pod flight at 10.00 to meet Santa in the Sky, with gifts and photo opportunities included. Adult tickets are £32.50.

Down on the seafront the Palace Pier is running its own grotto in the Palm Court Restaurant, with Santa in residence on selected December dates. Families can book a traditional pier-side visit, complete with the arcade lights, deckchair colours and winter sea views that are part of Brighton’s festive backdrop. It offers a more classic, ground-level encounter for those who prefer Santa without the altitude.

Across town Santa will also be putting in a shift at Brighton RNLI, whose volunteers are once again running their own grotto experience inside the lifeboat station. The photographs used in their promotion - Santa in full costume, perched cheerfully beside the D-class inshore lifeboat, yellow wellies and all - underline the RNLI’s characteristically practical approach to Christmas. Families can book timed entry slots, meet Santa in a working coastal rescue environment, and support the lifeboat station’s fundraising at the same time.

Although the three events could not be more different in setting - one 450 feet in the air, one on the pier, and one at beach level beside the Atlantic 85 - all speak to the variety of Brighton’s seasonal offerings, and to how central the Santa visit has become to local December traditions. 

Between the i360’s cloud-level grotto, Palm Court’s pier-side classic, and the lifeboat station’s shoreline version, one might wonder if the place wasn’t over-run with Santas, and whether there are any actual punters left!

Pier Xmas tree is up

The Palace Pier Christmas tree is up. A tall Norway spruce now stands on the pier forecourt beside the clock tower, strung with oversized coloured bulbs that sway in the onshore wind. It seems that Brighton has no official record of when this seasonal marker first appeared, but photographs show a large decorated tree in this exact spot by 2013, and by 2014 it was already being treated as a familiar feature of the seafront in December. Images from 2017 onward confirm it as an annual fixture, always in the same position, always forming part of the pier’s festive display rather than the city’s wider Christmas lights scheme.

Although the space sits hard against the public promenade, the forecourt immediately in front of the gates is managed by the pier’s operators, now Brighton Palace Pier Group plc. Seasonal decorations placed there follow the pier’s own branding and schedules, and in 2019 the tree was given a formal ‘lights switch-on’ hosted by the pier and handed to local children’s charities, leaving little doubt about ownership. The tree has never appeared in council lighting budgets or BID-funded lists, and it has never been tied to a sponsor. Everything points to it being a privately installed and privately funded tradition maintained by the pier’s operators.

This year’s tree matches the pattern: a full-sized spruce brought in early, anchored on the forecourt and fitted with the pier’s preferred warm-coloured bulbs. For more than a decade, thus, it has acted as the seafront’s unofficial marker that Brighton’s festive season has begun, standing just long enough to see out the winter storms before disappearing, and the bulbs heading into storage.

Sources: Urban75, Latest TV, Alamy, and Ebay.

Prof. Powsey’s West Pier feats

At the height of the Edwardian seaside boom, few spectacles drew a crowd like the high dives of ‘Professor’ Powsey. From a spindly wooden tower on Brighton’s West Pier he hurled himself into the Channel from 80 feet up, sometimes head first, sometimes astride a bicycle. His name appeared on countless postcards, his performances billed as ‘Professor Powsey’s Sensational High Dive of 81 feet’ or ‘The Great Cycle Dive’.

The most widespread image of his act shows him riding off a platform above the West Pier, still in the saddle. But other, less common photographs do still exist - such as the two on the left above that passed through Toovey’s auctioneers at one time or another.

Powsey’s Brighton Beach performances took place around 1905-08, part of a circuit of seaside stunts that included Margate, Blackpool and Scarborough. Yet Brighton became his signature setting. On clear afternoons he climbed the narrow frame above the pier, waved to the crowd, and dropped into a small patch of sea fenced off by boats. These were feats as much of nerve as of balance, undertaken in unpredictable tides and wind.

The diving tradition continued with his daughter, Miss G. Powsey, who performed on the same pier a few years later. A postcard from the Royal Pavilion & Museums collection shows her captured in mid-dive before the domed concert hall, continuing the family’s blend of danger and elegance that had thrilled the seaside crowds. See also Powsey Family History.

Picture credits: Top left - Toovey’s; top right - Wikipedia; bottom left - Toovey’s; bottom right - Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

The Thruster Buster

Found on the beach: a Thruster Buster single-shot firework, its casing damp and salt-streaked among the Brighton pebbles. The label still legible - ‘Shooting Direction’ helpfully printed for whoever last took aim - links it to Kimbolton Fireworks, one of the best-known British brands. Each tube launches a single 30 mm shell, a quick pulse of lift and colour before silence returns. 

Kimbolton began life in Cambridgeshire in the 1960s, its founder Reverend Ron Lancaster combining chemistry teaching with pyrotechnics. The company became a by-word for organised displays, providing fireworks for royal jubilees, university celebrations, and village fêtes alike. Though the business was sold after Lancaster’s retirement, the brand endures in the retail market - its modest ‘single shots’ now scattered through supermarket shelves and, it seems, Brighton’s shingle.

The Thruster Buster is a small and simple firework: one lift charge, one burst, a few seconds of applause in the sky. Retailers describe it as a low-cost alternative to a rocket, designed to minimise debris (an ‘eco-alternative’ to a stick rocket because there’s no wooden stick to litter the ground). On Guy Fawkes Night it might have soared high over Madeira Drive, blossoming briefly above the Palace Pier before falling unseen into the sea or onto the pebbles.

Half Blind’s Horrible Halloween

Daltons on Brighton Beach, just east of the Palace Pier, plays host tonight to ‘Half Blind’s Horrible Halloween’ a seafront celebration of Brighton’s loudest and strangest. The event, staged by local DIY promoter Half Blind Promotions, promises an unruly mix of metal, punk and alternative energy, all spiked with Halloween atmosphere. Doors open at seven, costumes are encouraged, and anyone wandering down to the arches should expect noise, sweat and spectacle until late.

Headlining are Primal Damnation, a five-piece thrash band forged in Brighton’s metal underground. Their sound, built on classic speed-metal riffs and relentless rhythm, nods to the old school while staying raw enough to rattle the room. The band have built a loyal following on the local circuit, playing with the kind of grit that the sea air seems to sharpen.

Sharing the bill are Dunce, a fast-rising punk outfit with a sly experimental edge. Their recent material veers between furious guitar work and sudden bursts of absurd humour, a collision that keeps audiences off-balance. Creeping Embers, also Brighton-based, brings a newer spark to the scene, their music thick with distortion and youthful intent. Bats in the Belfry add a touch of gothic theatre, fusing punk drive with macabre imagery perfectly suited to Halloween night.

Rounding off the line-up is Puppet Midnight, an angular indie-punk solo act built around bass, loop, and spoken-word fragments. The songs mix myth, madness and dark wit - tales of puppets, animals and burning mattresses delivered with a kind of melodic menace. It’s an artist who seems tailor-made for Daltons’ close-packed stage, where nothing ever feels quite contained.

Half Blind Promotions, the outfit behind the night, has spent recent years cultivating Brighton’s underground from the ground up, offering stages to acts too strange or too noisy for the mainstream. The name ‘Half Blind’ may sound like a throwaway joke, but it carries a streak of irony - a nod to seeing things differently, to championing bands the rest of the city might overlook.

As the tide rises along the beach, Daltons will glow with orange light, fake cobwebs, and the echo of guitars bouncing off the arches. ‘Half Blind’s Horrible Halloween’ promises to be another small, glorious act of local defiance - proof if you like that Brighton’s musical heart still beats hardest in its basement bars and beachfront haunts. (See also King of the Slot Machines.)

Houdini’s West Pier stunt

The extraordinary escapologist Harry Houdini died 99 years ago today, on 31 October 1926. He appeared several times in Brighton and, on at least one occasion, performed a spectacular stunt from the West Pier. Many years later a young Ronald Cunningham - who would become The Great Omani - came across a second-hand copy of The Secrets of Houdini which inspired him to follow in the master’s footsteps - even to the extent of repeating the same stunt from the West Pier on the fiftieth anniversary of Houdini’s death.

Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini rose from vaudeville beginnings to become the world’s most famous escape artist, thrilling crowds with feats of endurance and ingenuity. In December 1904 he topped the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome, and local tradition records that as part of his visit he staged a shackled leap into the Channel from the West Pier, a publicity stunt that packed the promenade with spectators. He remained underwater for close to two minutes before surfacing free of chains.

The only source I can find for this event is a memoir written by Omani. In the memoir, he says he once met a retired theatre electrician, Bert Croyle, who claimed to have worked with Houdini and seen the West Pier stunt. I’ll let Omani tell the tale (from The Crowd Roars, QueenSpark Books, 1998).

Chapter: A salute to Houdini

Once it was my privilege to meet an elderly gentleman in his late seventies, by the name of Bert Croyle. In his early days he had worked in London as head electrician in many of the big variety theatres. He had worked with many famous artists and vaudeville stars of yesterday. Me knew the Ching Ling Soo, who met an untimely death on stage when presenting the ‘catching a ballet in the mouth’ trick. He also knew and had worked with the legendary Great Houdini. He told me that Houdini was a very pleasant and polite man to work with, though conceited and at times very temperamental. But then what great artist isn’t temperamental? 

During his tour of England, it appears Houdini had visited Brighton and had appeared top of the bill at the Brighton Hippodrome. Sadly, like many other theatres, the Hippodrome is now a Bingo Hall. Only the ghosts of yesterday tread the boards to the phantom music of bygone days. One day, Bert Croyle and I were sitting down sipping a glass of wine when he suddenly said. ‘You know. I actually saw Houdini perform his famous death jump from West Pier. This was a publicity stunt to advertise his show at the Brighton Hippodrome. He was handcuffed, chained and padlocked and jumped from the pier into the sea and escaped underwater in about two minutes. The pier was packed. What a showman he was that night. As always with Houdini, the theatre was sold out. I asked Bert how long ago it was that Houdini performed on the West Pier. ‘About fifty years ago,’ he replied. ‘Right,’ I said, you’ve just given me an idea for my next stunt. I will perform Houdini’s jump from where he performed it on the West Pier, with handcuffs and chains, as he performed it fifty years ago. I will present it as a salute to the memory of the world’s all time greatest escapologist.’ 

This was a very good story and I had agreed to sell it to a well known London agency called Features International as an exclusive. The morning before the stunt was due to take place, Bert Croyle and I had an interview with one of the BBC radio stations and we discussed the forthcoming stunt. One question the interviewer asked Bert was ‘Do you think that Omani is as good as Houdini? He has done some amazing things.’ Bert hesitated, turned to me and asked what I thought. ‘Simple,’ I said, ‘Houdini was the greatest of all time. Long after our names are forgotten he will still be a legend.’ ‘You may be right,’ said Bert, ‘but Omani is the best we have got today.’ 

Several years had passed since I had performed on the West Pier. It had changed owners and now belonged to the Métropole Hotel, Brighton. The morning of the stunt arrived and Frank Durham, a director of Features International, and his camera-girl arrived to pick me up at my house. With my suitcase packed with manacles, chains and a pair of bathing trunks, I got into his car and we headed for the West Pier.

On arrival we were in for a shock. A battery of about a dozen cameramen and reporters were waiting for us. A gathering of the media such as one might expect had the rumour got around that Dolly Parton was going to appear topless!’

See also The Great Omani. Picture credits: Wikipedia, Brighton Hippodrome, and ChatGPT.

Drops and jolts

Galaxia at Brighton Palace Pier, now over 20 years old, opened in May 2004. This is a Jump & Smile style ride manufactured by the Italian firm Sartori Rides to its Techno Jump design, able to accommodate up to 42 riders per cycle. Over the years, Galaxia has become one of Brighton pier’s landmark attractions, with its rainbow-lit arms rising above the deck and blue cars spinning visitors through sudden drops and jolts while offering sea views.

Enthusiast sites and visitor blogs have described the ride as a mid-range thrill compared with the more extreme boosters on the pier, noting it as a good choice for those less keen on heights. Some riders, however, have commented on the over-shoulder harnesses being uncomfortable and the motion feeling rough compared with smoother coasters. On one fan forum it was memorably summed up as a ‘crappy coaster . . . but what a stunning location’.

In its two decades of service the ride has remained a consistent part of the pier’s fairground offer, promoted by the operators with the promise of ‘lifts, drops and spins you around at speed, so strap in, hold on and take in the views as you whizz round’. Despite the challenges of constant exposure to salt air, high winds and heavy seasonal use, Galaxia has retained its place among the pier’s most popular thrill rides, demonstrating both the durability of the Techno Jump design and its role in sustaining Brighton’s long tradition of seafront entertainment.

Other examples of Sartori’s Techno Jump model can be found at several parks and fairs worldwide, each trading under its own name. Fantasy Island in Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, has operated a version since 2004, while Tivoli World in Benalmádena, Spain, installed one in 2005. A travelling unit owned by the Piccaluga family appeared on Clacton Pier between 2004 and 2016 before returning to the Italian fair circuit, and a larger 14-arm portable model has toured in Mexico under the name Alegre Fantasia. The same ride type is also produced by other manufacturers under titles such as Smashing Jump or Hang-Jump, but the Brighton Galaxia remains the UK’s most prominent permanent Sartori installation.

Remembering the Wheel

This week 14 years ago today - on Monday 24 October to coincide with school half-term - the Brighton Wheel formally began turning on Dalton’s Bastion, east of the Palace Pier. The privately funded, 45-metre transportable wheel - variously branded the ‘Brighton O’, the ‘Wheel of Excellence’ and simply the ‘Brighton Wheel’ - was promoted by Paramount Attractions and cost about £6m. 

Temporary planning permission, granted in April 2011, allowed operation until May 2016 and set opening hours from 10am to late evening in the East Cliff conservation area. A Highway Licence followed in August; the German-built R50-SP wheel, fresh from service at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, was shipped to Brighton in September while foundations were laid at the seafront site.

Construction saw the partial removal and later reinstatement requirement for listed railings above the site, and sparked local debate about overlooking and heritage impact balanced against economic benefits. The finished installation had 35 standard gondolas plus a VIP pod, a stated 12-minute, three-revolution ride cycle, and typical operating hours of 10am-11pm. Promoters projected about 250,000 riders a year and said around 30 jobs would be created.

Operationally, the Wheel settled quickly into the visitor landscape as a mid-priced panoramic ride east of the pier. But its permission was explicitly time-limited and linked to plans for the i360 ‘vertical pier’ on the west seafront. (See i360 stranded sky high - with sky-high debts).
In 2015 the council rejected a request to extend the Wheel’s stay, and so it made its final rotations on 8 May 2016. Dismantling beginning that same week. The structure was advertised for sale and then put into storage, with no confirmed buyer announced locally. After closure, the site at Dalton’s Bastion was repurposed for a permanent seafront zip-wire (see The windy stairs.)

A large fairground wheel did, however, make a brief comeback: a similar but different structure was hired for the Brighton Christmas Festival in late 2021 and set up on the Old Steine. But it was the Brighton Wheel on Madeira Drive that has left an imprint on the city’s seafront story. More details can be found at Wikipedia and the Brighton Toy Museum. A defunct Brighton Wheel Facebook page can still be visited (and is the source of the night time image above). A time-lapse series of photographs of the The Rise And Fall Of The Brighton Wheel can be found on Jason Arnopps’ website.

Brighton Beach Scumbags

This day in 1991, Steven Berkoff’s play Brighton Beach Scumbags opened at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Brighton. Directed by George Dillon, it was the inaugural production for the Brighton-based Theatre Events team and quickly gained notoriety for its raw depiction of two East End couples on a seaside outing. The play’s unflinching treatment of casual homophobia, class prejudice and sexual tension caused a stir in the city, while its setting gave Brighton audiences a distorted mirror of their own seafront culture.

Berkoff, born in Stepney in 1937, trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and went on to build a reputation as one of the most distinctive and provocative voices in British theatre. After working in repertory, he founded the London Theatre Group in the 1960s and began writing and performing plays marked by a visceral physicality and a confrontational use of language. Works such as East (1975), West (1980) and Greek (1980) established him as both playwright and performer, while his career on screen brought memorable roles in films such as A Clockwork Orange, Octopussy and Beverly Hills Cop. His stage adaptations of Kafka and his Shakespeare productions have also drawn international acclaim.

Brighton, though, was not just a convenient setting for Scumbags. Berkoff’s own early memories of the town were affectionate. In his memoir Diary of a Juvenile Delinquent (JR Books, 2010) he writes: ‘Now that the war was over we were able to travel and get around a bit. One day Dad rented a car to take us all on a trip to|Brighton and as it drew past the pavilion, I was gobsmacked at my first glance of the deep blue sea; it was also a perfect summer’s day. We were booked into a pleasant, cheap-and-cheerful B&B and the landlords, a young woman and her husband, looked after us really well - so much so that we all wanted to stay a few more days while Dad went back to Luton since he probably had to work (you never knew with him). We walked everywhere in an idyllic post-war [Brighton] played ‘housy-housy’ on the pier and took the miniature Volk’s railway to Black Rock swimming pool. It was a marvellous lido and this was a blissful time in a typical English summer. (Just above Black Rock is the so-elegant Lewes Crescent, where 40 years hence I would be sitting on my own balcony, watching the sunset from the first-floor flat of a splendid Regency house.)’

That mixture of nostalgia and confrontation runs through Brighton Beach Scumbags, premiered on 23 October 1991 (and revived in 2009 by Loft Theatre). The characters revel in their trips to the beach while simultaneously turning it into a stage for crude outbursts, prejudices and fears. A synopsis of the play can be found at the RDG website. The following extract, from Plays 2 (Faber, 1994), captures the tone:

DINAH: Oh yeah, before you come we had a drink ‘cause we always went there you know, always made a bee-line ‘cause you could sit outside, when we courted Derek and I would drink there . . . got the train from Victoria, a quid return, a quid, went swimming by Black Rock, by the cliffs, lovely it was . . . it was then . . .

DEREK: Oh it was a treat, definitely a treat, walk to Rotters, Rottingdean, tea and scones, jam and butter and cream.

DINAH: Sat outside, it was a bit Continental, or we had a plate of fish and chips.

DEREK: Yeah, and we swam cause we loved swimmin then until one day we saw that turd swimmin in the water, well I could never get in there again . . . never.

DINAH: Horrid!

DEREK: Never!

DINAH: Just horrid.

DEREK: I did say at the time that it was probably an isolated turd, not a fucking sign like of sewage seepage, probably a one-off turd by some little bastard who couldn’t hold it, but I never got in there again.

DINAH: Horrid, it just floated past my ear.

DEREK: Before that we’d love a swim, just let the waves grab you and throw you abaht a bit, love it that, triffic, a wave would pick you up like a dog wiv a bone and bung you down again on the shingle, cor didnarf sting at time but it was handsome, then we’d got for a tandoori in the Lanes, triffic place, did a right handsome prawn vindaloo!