That's Entertainment Those Were the Days

For more than half a century,

the BBC have captured the changing face of everyday life

in Northern Ireland.

It all seems so innocent today, but without these moments,

something of who we are now would be lost forever.

These are the archives, and those were the days.

I quite enjoy looking back at those old films.

I think sometimes now we try to be too clever,

and that just actually telling the story

is not a bad way to go about things.

Hearing people talk about their lives,

that's priceless, and we should be proud of the footage we have

of our people talking about their lives.

I've always believed it's healthy to look back.

Memory is the root of the past.

Memory is where we came from.

Memory is what lasts when other things have gone.

It's Coleraine. It's 1980,

and a fledgling 15-year-old entertainer

is dreaming of the big time.

# Paint the town... PIANO MUSIC

# And all that jazz

# Rouge your knees and roll your stockings down

# And all that jazz

# Start the car, I know a whoopee spot...

It wasn't so much Cold Feet - more hot-shoe shuffle,

as the as-yet unknown hoofer showcased his raw talents

and shared his steely showbiz aspirations.

# And all that jazz #

PIANO MUSIC

How about you, James? I think you've got ambitions in the theatre.

Yes. I'd like to have a go at it,

because there's nothing else I'd want to take up as a career at the minute.

Are there many opportunities for children in Northern Ireland?

Now that the Ulster Youth Theatre's been formed,

in future I'll be able to work with professionals and children,

and just hope that I and others can get the right break.

Of course, James Nesbitt did fulfil his dream.

But back in the '60s,

our swinging society was more chained up than heading out -

especially on a Sunday.

Sunday in Belfast -

a Sabbath day in this capital city of Northern Ireland,

that's considered by many a stranded visitor

to be about as sombre an experience as it's possible to get.

The pubs are soundly shut.

The swings in the park are chained and silent.

Sunday in Belfast is a declaration of where you stand with God.

# Ave Maria...

But in the Holy Cross Parish in Belfast,

entertainment on a Sunday was positively encouraged.

Fresh-faced youths started their day in solemn worship,

but ended it at a strictly exuberant Sunday-school dance.

# Ave Maria #

There were a number of fascinating things.

First of all, a number of the men in it I knew.

The priest walking up and down in his black habit is Father Paul,

who died a couple of months ago.

The second thing was how well the children were turned out.

All of these ones, when they came to the church,

put on, as their mams said, their Sunday best,

which is a completely different era now.

"TONIGHT" PRESENTER: Between 3:00 and 3:30,

the priest shows them inside the gates of heaven.

Heaven is where every day is like Christmas Day...

Then it came to this magnificent bit of dancing,

and you saw these youngsters,

and they must've been drilled to dance!

They were great - putting one hand behind their back, the other,

wee jigs and steps, shapes they were throwing -

they were absolutely brilliant! I don't know where they came from,

but they were magnificent.

ROCK MUSIC PLAYING

That's Sunday disco.

It was a chance for the young kids to get out and do something.

As I say, in Ardoyne there's not much to do.

ROCK MUSIC PLAYING

And the disco was somewhere to go and lower your long hair,

let your hair down and go a bit daft,

try your touch for girls.

There was the two wee girls which were absolutely fantastic,

and there's me, and there's a fella called Tommy Foster.

SONG: "Hippy Hippy Shake" by The Swinging Blue Jeans

And the two wee girls were going buck mad,

and I'm trying to keep up with them. And the cameraman kept saying to me,

"Get out of the way, get out of the way."

But there was not a chance.

MUSIC CONTINUES

So the two wee girls are going buck daft, really crazy,

and no wonder he wanted that, cos when I watch them myself,

I can see why he wanted to videotape them and not me.

They were absolutely brilliant.

What I really loved about it was, though,

that many of the people of that time

were preaching that it was a mortal sin to do the twist.

And here was this boy taking a shilling from the kids

so that they could do the twist, and do it better than anybody.

I saw no sin in it. It was lovely.

But this was 1964,

and just five years later, the optimism of the Beat Generation

would be shattered by an altogether more sinister soundtrack.

The Troubles started in that parish in 1969,

and I wonder, people in Ardoyne looking at that tonight,

will they recognise some people who are maybe no longer with us?

# The hippy hippy shake...

And you see yourself, the life and the innocence of children

is beautiful, but they didn't know what was ahead of them.

None of the rest of us knew.

But they enjoyed their time whilst they were there,

and it was wonderful.

# The hippy hippy shake #

"The Courtney Brothers Playhouse and variety show

are now playing in Carrickmore nightly at eight o'clock."

"Doors open eight o'clock,

curtain 8:45."

If childhood innocence had been lost at the end of the '60s,

the enduring charm of traditional entertainment

was heading the same way.

Since the 1920s, theatrical luminaries the Courtney family

had brought their fit-up theatres to towns and villages across Ireland.

But by 1969,

the cavalcade was in decline for these travelling players.

SONG: "On The Road Again" by Willie Nelson

# On the road again

# Just can't wait to get on the road again

# The life I love is making music with my friends

# And I can't wait to get on the road again...

To my understanding, fit-up theatre was a travelling troupe,

and they would travel round and they would set up theatre.

They would fit up a tent, a big marquee,

and they would put seats into it,

and they would self-publicise through the community.

# On the road again

# Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway...

In the rural communities there wouldn't be a picture house,

there wouldn't be a theatre, so this was an opportunity

for those rural communities to see something of entertainment.

# On the road again #

"Tonight's play is The Blacksmith's Curse."

It was a simple way of life, and it was a nice way of life,

and there was no great pressure on anyone.

There could have been anything up to 100 companies in Ireland

in fit-ups going round, cos you'd no cinemas,

and in actual fact, the way I see it,

it was probably the forerunner of the modern-day television.

But now it was the fit-ups that were on television,

in the first colour documentary made by BBC Northern Ireland.

The programme would capture a family business

that Mrs Courtney had passed on to her three sons,

and in the driving seat was oldest brother Michael.

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

My brother Albert and myself, we done all the hard work.

Michael wasn't too happy about dirtying his hands,

I can tell you that. But in saying that, he was a great PR man,

because he'd talk his way in and out of anywhere,

and he'd go here and there, and naturally he was promoting the show,

"I'm here in town with the show", and he was a great talker.

He was probably one of the biggest liars you ever met in your life, but he could talk!

A funny thing happened to me on the road today.

We were driving along in the car.

Same joke, different place name.

I knew it was wrong. It was radiator trouble.

You're the comedian off-stage as well as on,

and if the comedian isn't any good, the show's the same.

I got down off the bonnet, and I had a half a bucket of water left.

Word-of-mouth, the cruellest bush telegraph going,

so make them laugh now and they'll be there tonight.

What do you think I have here - a water hen?

THEY LAUGH

Each night the family would prepare for a variety show,

whose crowds had been wooed by the ebullient Michael.

BURLESQUE-STYLE MUSIC

But how long the Courtneys stayed depended on the extent of each night's takings.

A flash of thigh, and the main man on piano

seemed just the ticket for locals eager for some live entertainment.

# Nowhere could you get that happy feeling

# When you are stealing that extra bow...

One of the things I did find really interesting about it was,

when you looked at the audience, and it was the quantity of men!

# Yesterday they told you you could not go far #

Aspects of the performance

are about seeing the lovely ladies doing their dancing,

and a little bit of leg and a little bit of cleavage,

all that side of it, but I still was very surprised

at the quantity of men.

You met people from all walks of life.

You met people from different parts of Ireland,

different cultures, different everything.

And it was nice! They were good days.

'It was a very unthankful job, standing at the door.

'"Is that all?" the boys would say to me.

'"Is that all that was in tonight, Millie?"

'"Yes, that's all that was in tonight," I'd say.

'I'm bored stiff with show business,

-'but I haven't got enough money.'

-SHE LAUGHS

I think it was an incredibly hard life - really, really, hard.

No glamour about it.

There was no showbiz glamour about that whatsoever,

and I loved Mrs Courtney's comment, where she talked about

she was sick to the back teeth of show business,

but she still had to do it, cos she hadn't enough shillings gathered up.

Who's there?

It's your fiancee.

The cruel twist of this dramatic plot

was that the very medium that lovingly portrayed their life on the road

was the same that would spell the end of their business.

Television done an awful lot of harm to us. I blame...

well, not blame - that's evolution - the singing pubs and television.

They came in big time. That was it. You were gone.

On the stage, Frankenstein's monster would rise from the dead,

but off-stage there would be no such revival

for the Courtney brothers, who, at the end of this run,

would go their separate ways.

Just before the trucks roll away at the end of the film,

there are a few shots of empty seats,

and I found that a really sad and true kind of analogy.

To see those empty seats, and then going to the trucks and the wagons

pulling out, you knew that it would be no more.

# Yes, the fair's moving on

# And I'll soon be gone...

The big open landscapes... I'm not sure if it was Tyrone or Donegal,

but there was that sense of long, open, cold, sore journey.

Not easy journey,

and I'm sure, deep within themselves,

the Courtney family knew that that was really the end.

# Till then

# The fair's moving on #

What a day for show business in Northern Ireland this was!

For many, it had been a long time since they'd felt like seeing a show

in the centre of Belfast, and there they were,

queuing on a cold, damp winter's afternoon.

And what were they waiting for? This.

Do you know the concert's been postponed?

-You're joking!

-I'm not joking. I'm sorry to say it.

Oh, for heaven's sake!

It's not a snub to Belfast at this particular time.

# Have you seen the old man

# In the closed-down market...

When the curtain opened on the 1970s,

Northern Ireland had entered a dark and difficult decade.

The ongoing Troubles overshadowed every aspect of our lives,

and entertainment couldn't escape its grim grasp.

# Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news...

There was a sense of desperation, I think, in Northern Ireland

in the 1970s, because we were so starved

of any acts coming to this country. People just didn't come here.

As people resigned themselves to security checks

and handbag searches, a cancelled concert

by singer-songwriter Ralph McTell only reinforced their entertainment-starved existence.

How do you feel about tonight's concert being cancelled?

I'm disappointed because I'd looked forward to seeing him.

He's a very good star, and not often you get to something here.

# And have you seen the old girl...

Bear in mind, this is 1974.

This is Ralph McTell at the peak of his powers.

This is Streets Of London being a huge hit single,

so a wide range of people coming to see Ralph,

and they look very disappointed, but I think a lot of it comes down

to the fact that it's a big night out in Belfast,

very rare in that period.

# So how can you tell me you're lonely...

McTell is suffering from nervous exhaustion,

and he can't do this date this week

or any of his other dates in England.

I love the fact that the guy at the door is incredibly polite.

He's incredibly detailed, explaining a whole range of dates that Ralph might come back.

So you can either hold on to your tickets for a future date,

possibly the 26th of January...

If there hadn't been a camera pointed at him, it would have been,

"It's not on. Usual story - Troubles. No Ralph McTell. Clear off."

# And have you seen the old man

# Outside the seaman's mission...

Sad streetscapes of bricked-up venues

were defiling a once-vibrant city, and it didn't help

that many international artists had clauses in their contract

saying they wouldn't play Northern Ireland.

Promoting entertainment here was no easy gig.

# For one more forgotten hero

# In a world that doesn't care #

The most disappointing day I suppose a promoter could have

is the day on which he returns £5,000.

I think it's very poignant to see Jim Aiken in the Ulster Hall.

Sorry, gentlemen, you caught me here on a night like this.

You can see the disappointment in his eyes,

and it's not just losing money.

It's because, with somebody like him, it's a passion.

It's poignant to see him walking around that empty hall,

reminiscing on other acts that had been there and had been great,

"But you've chosen a bad night tonight, lads, to be here,

because our promoter has lost £5,000."

£5,000 probably wouldn't cover a backstage rider

for most bands these days. But at that time,

that's a significant knock. That's a significant blow

to a man who really was trying to keep entertainment alive

in Northern Ireland, at a time when there was nothing.

At night, Belfast city centre was a virtual no-go area.

But, as these archives show,

BBC Northern Ireland reported on one cabaret club

and its performers meeting a challenge head-on

and keeping the punters entertained.

This is one of the few cabaret clubs still operating in Belfast -

the Abercorn, which serves as a rare showcase for local talent.

It's situated in a security area in the centre of the city,

so the audience feel relatively relaxed.

They're a typical cross-section of city life,

wanting nothing more complicated than a few drinks, a few songs

and a few laughs.

Well, I was in love with performing and singing.

I always got the buzz from that,

when you had a house full,

an audience.

You're singing, and hopefully they were enjoyed what you were doing.

There must be another birthday here somewhere.

-She looks like she's been celebrating. What age are you?

-25.

Get away to hell, you are not! 25!

That's the third or fourth time she's been 25 in here.

'Something happened, Trouble-wise.

'Very few people were in the club.'

You won't get annoyed if I give you a kiss for your birthday.

Happy birthday. That was nice.

The night after they introduced internment here,

we had six people in the audience,

and we had to do the full show to those six people.

# So have a happy birthday, baby...

'Communities became very polarised in those days,

'and it was quite bad, and there were some nights

'when it was really, really awful.'

# This special day, I'd like to say I wish you...

'There was times, in the middle of a show,

'the police would walk in and say, "We've had a phone call."'

"There's a bomb in the place." We knew there wasn't.

Probably somebody had been barred at the front door,

and went down and used the phone.

# I wish you a happy birthday, baby mine #

It was very difficult to generate the enthusiasm

and the energy that you need to do that six nights a week.

Um, we did our best.

# A police car and a screaming siren...

As the '70s embedded itself in our psyche,

a new wave of artists, performers and writers

were taking inspiration from these troubled times.

# That's entertainment

# That's entertainment...

Citizens and Saracens shared the streets,

and a grittier realism had set in.

Against this foreboding backdrop,

the local creative scene was writing a new, straight-talking script,

and, as one BBC TV profile revealed,

the stage had found its everyman

with the emergence of Belfast playwright Martin Lynch.

# That's entertainment...

I suppose I'd just had a couple of years

of suddenly finding myself as a professional playwright.

I was new to public appearances,

giving interviews about who I was, what my da worked at,

all that kind of stuff,

and that programme was a culmination of two years of that.

# That's entertainment...

While it's nice for people to ask who you are, what you do

and what you think, looking back on it,

it's not so nice.

It's like Paul Simon says, that every song he ever wrote,

he would rewrite, and I can feel that about your previous interviews.

Five years ago, few people had heard of Martin Lynch.

Today he's one of our most talked-about dramatists.

Two plays have made his name -

Dockers, and The Interrogation Of Ambrose Fogarty.

Both are notable for social and political comment,

laced with uproarious Belfast humour,

and both had their source in Lynch's background.

I did fancy myself as a playwright. I thought I was OK,

a decent storyteller, but, you know, I'm not Brian Friel

and I'm not Arthur Miller. I know that.

But I have a good... I'm good at searching out stories

and I'm good at dramatising for the stage.

The stage came naturally to me.

OFF-MIC DIALOGUE

Watch it, lads! Here's the Brits! THEY LAUGH

What began as community-based West Belfast theatre

depicting working-class life in Turf Lodge,

soon moved to the other side of town,

and onto the illustrious stage of the Lyric theatre.

OFF-MIC DIALOGUE

When I arrived at the Lyric in the '80s,

I brought the West Belfast crowd that I had built up,

the audience I had built up in the late '70s, with me.

So when Dockers went on,

people remarked that there was an unusually wide social spectrum

of people coming to the theatre -

people who didn't know that you didn't smoke in the auditorium,

or you didn't bring your drinks in with you,

or you didn't shout across the foyer.

APPLAUSE

Lynch's first work at the Lyric's Ridgeway Street home, Dockers,

became a pivotal play in the development of Northern Irish drama.

Sober and unsentimental, it was a celebratory depiction

of life in Belfast's Sailortown.

Here. Take a wee drop of that. It'll even you up, kid.

HE REPLIES, INDISTINCT

There is so many stories around Dockers,

about the characters that Martin created out of it,

the impact it had on audiences, how people, again the majority men,

were flooding down Ridgeway Street to see themselves being represented

back to them by actors,

and almost going just to see if they could pull it off.

I'll buy you a drink, Barney.

The History Of The Troubles, Chronicles Of Long Kesh

and Dancing Shoes are just three more plays

that bear witness to Lynch's 30 years

reflecting our cultural and political landscape.

And these works have entertained and provoked not just local audiences

but many others around the world.

As a playwright, I'm influenced by what my life is about.

If my front door was 25 cricket fields in front of me,

I would probably end up writing a play about cricket.

But that's not what's right in front of me.

That's not what's on my doorstep. That's not what I see in Belfast,

and my... Ironically, the theatre is a make-belief world,

and yet I find the theatre to be a place...

a fantastic place to search for the truth.

SONG: "Save The Last Dance For Me" by The Drifters

In 1924,

an Italian who had come from Scotland at the turn of the century

opened a dancehall in Bangor. He was Enrico Caproni,

and for over 50 years, the beautiful young things of North Down

and Belfast and far beyond met there to dance

and fall in love, and eventually, for many, to marry.

But while Martin Lynch's players were reigniting local drama,

the lights were fading on the Northern Ireland dancehall scene.

These ballrooms of romance were once THE place to be,

as movers and groovers shook their winklepickers

to the latest sounds.

Well, Caproni's was in Bangor.

It was THE dancehall, really, I suppose,

in - what? - the '50s, '60s, '70s.

It was an iconic building, I would say, of its period,

and it was known throughout the length and breadth

of Northern Ireland.

It was also known for the fact that it was totally dry.

No drink! You could get maybe a tea or a coffee,

or some of Caproni's famous ice cream.

-# You can dance

-# You can dance

# Go and carry on

# Until the night is gone and it's time to go...

I think the attraction of somewhere like Cap's,

which is what everybody called it, was that that was what you did then.

They didn't have clubs and things like that.

It was a great place for good-looking girls.

I think it said on the doorway,

"Some of the most beautiful girls in the world

pass through these portals."

And, as television and other distractions

dazzled a new audience, the curtain came down

on those dancehall days.

But it wasn't quite over for Caproni's faithful followers,

as they took to the floor in their droves

for that final, bittersweet ballroom blitz.

We're totally sold out on tickets.

We have 1,000 tickets printed, and completely sold.

So there's no point in anybody coming on the night

to pay money. You won't get in without a ticket.

SONG: "Come Dancing" by The Kinks

The night that we did the filming there,

it was amazing, the number of people who were there

who had met their life partners, met their husbands or their wives.

They'd kept going for years, and they just absolutely loved it.

A really packed ballroom. I'd never seen it as full as that, you know,

of people really, really looking jolly.

# Come dancing

# All her boyfriends used to come and call...

It was a real good party atmosphere.

It was like saying goodbye to a good old friend,

and they were all bopping their heads off, actually,

as you can see.

I remember it so well. It was in the summer of 1957.

Dave Glover was playing at Caproni's,

and June and I met in this very glass room behind us here.

We were married in the same year,

and we celebrated our silver wedding this year,

and we had to come tonight. It's pure nostalgia, and we're enjoying every minute of it.

# Come dancing

# Just like the palais on a Saturday

# And all her friends would come dancing

# Where the big band used to play #

Caproni's closed, and there were all those other big dancehalls

like the Flamingo in Ballymena, and there was one in Portstewart.

I wasn't allowed to go to it, either.

There was Portrush, and I wasn't allowed to go there! The Arcadia.

But it's still there, so maybe they should open it up

and see if they could get it to work again.

You could have Strictly Come Dancing in the Arcadia, couldn't you?

# Once upon a time there was a tavern...

The story of entertainment is one that we can sit back and enjoy,

but it is also the story of how we used to live.

And thanks to a rich archive and the magic of film,

we can bring those bygone days back to life.

# Those were the days, my friend

# We thought they'd never end

# We'd sing and dance

# Forever and a day

# We'd live the life we'd choose

# We'd fight and never lose

# For we were young

# And sure to have our way #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]

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