Stan Laurel Birthplace Moved!

I have been passed a copy of a report from a recording made in the artists' dressing rooms of the old Eden Theatre in Bishop Auckland. It relates a conversation between those stalwarts of the silver screen Laurel & Hardy.

"Now, Stanley, it's time to smarten yourself up because you have been chosen to help with promoting tourism in your old county of Durham."

"But why Durham, Olly?"

"Because, Stanley, as you should know, Durham is the place where you were born."

"I don't think so, Olly. In fact, I don't think I have ever been to Durham"

"Nonsense, Stanley! It's written here in the new Tourist Guide to Durham and they have printed 50,000 copies, so it can't be wrong. This Eden Theatre used to be managed by your dear old dad and we are here to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of your birth in 1890. We didn't cross the Atlantic in the middle of a war to come to commemorate your birth in a town that you never lived in."

" But, Olly I have still got the birth certificate given to me by my old mother and that definitely says that I was born in Ulverston, in Lancashire. I lived with Grandma Metcalfe and went to school in Ulverston."

"So, what do we do now? I thought you went to school in Bishop Auckland and Tynemouth. We are invited to a presentation in Bishop Auckland to tell the world about your life of poverty in the back streets of this fine English industrial town."

" But, Olly, I don't think Tynemouth is in Co Durham either. And I was only there for a short time,"

" No matter what I do, nothing changes . This looks like another fine mess you have got me into, Stanley!"

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How the city fathers of Durham have got themselves into this mess - without any help from the late Stan Laurel - no one can know. But they have actually printed 50,000 tourist brochures that claim that Stan Laurel was born inside the boundaries of Co Durham. It is easy to be confused. The local government re-organisation of 1972 shifted towns and villages into enormous and idiotic conglomerates that had little point to them then and still haven't. Some towns have escaped the bureaucratic nightmares but many are still swallowed up in these London sponsored tidy boxes - it can't matter much anyway because it's all just Up North! But Ulverston, the true birthplace of Stan Laurel has not, to my knowledge, ever been part of Co Durham. It used to be part of Lancashire but now is a parish in the Furness District of West Cumbria - and what that means, is a problem for the citizens of that noble town. It is true that Stan Laurel's father did manage the Eden Theatre in Bishop Auckland and Stan did go to the local grammar school but he certainly was not born there.

Durham has now admitted to the cock-up but due to government cuts, they cannot afford to have the brochures re-printed. So Stan Laurel remains a son of Durham. It's all very confusing.

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