Bradford and its People
Carl Gresham |
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CARL GRESHAM started a career as a broadcaster, but soon ventured into employment as a columnist, disc jockey, actor, presenter and a musicologist. While fulfilling these wonderful roles, it was perhaps inevitable that he should develop personal friendships with many of the stars who he later employed when he launched his "Personal Appearances" company.
Not that all his earlier career moves were meticulously planned! After being sacked by his local record shop for taking the job as stand-in for TOM COURTENAY in the film "Billy Liar", Carl was promptly fired when the producers read the local press story of how he had got the job. Undaunted, he went on to other ventures - and, if you look very closely at the early "Coronation Street" episodes, you might just catch a glimpse of Carl when he played Jerry Booth's cycling club mate!
It was the late seventies when he launched the exclusive "Celebrity Personal Appearance" booking agency that arranged everything from the booking of the Star to the production of posters. He recalls one occasion when WOOLWORTHS booked thirty-six celebrities to appear in thirty-six different stores throughout the UK, and all on one day! "I had to dig deep for that job" says Carl, "Where on earth would I find so many star names available at one time?" He managed it!
He also started his "Business Gift House" company in the late seventies, specialising in sourcing and personalising luxury and promotional products. He continues to concentrate a great deal of his time on offering high quality and value for money service to his clients who range from sole traders to international corporations. Constantly introducing new lines requires him to regularly up-date his main catalogue with supplements.
The entertainment broadcaster at Bradford's local radio station, BCB 106.6 FM, hosting his show "Carl Gresham and Friends" Sunday's 11am, attracting celebrities to his show, as can be seen from the many Youtubes filmed at the radio station. world ranks high amongst Carl's clients as he supplies presentation gifts for television companies for their TV Quiz shows, as well as souvenir merchandise for theatre shows and concerts. And, of course, he has a vast range of specialist pantomime merchandise always available from stock. One of his biggest sellers every Panto Season is his Foam BOO! Hand that the kids love to wave and "Boo" at the baddie every time they appear.
Carl still lives in Bradford, still running his business "Business Gift House", and is also active as a
Carl has lived most of his life in Bradford, and even though he travelled all over the UK, he was always based in Bradford, living at Bankfoot, Runswick Grove. He still keeps in touch with a number of his friends from the city, celebrating his birthday in April (19th) at the "The Chapel House", inviting friends and celebrities to the event. Carl , recently had a book published, giving an overview of his life. The book's called "THE GRESH a Lifetime in Show-Biz", and features many pictures of that bygone era, when the likes of Morecambe and Wise, Hughie Green, Peter Wyngarde, ruled British TV. Click on to his website to find out how to order one of the last few autographed copies, and learn a little more about this former Bradford Theatrical Agent www.carlgresham.co.uk |
 Stephen Goodfellow
Along with a vast number of those living in Bradford, I’m an incomer, originating on the banks of the Tyne, starting my life in Blaydon, then moving up the hill to Winlaton where my mother could live near to her mother. When I was 17 local Government reorganisation moved us from County Durham & into Gateshead, so after a year of this I moved to the south coast.
At 18 I was seeing how the other half lived, teaching in a prep school near Hastings with a strange cast of educational misfits and a pupil roll including a viscounts son, a Thai prince, the son of a high ranking Japanese businessman and a scrap metal merchants son from Essex. This was always just a gap year job, but it’s strange how it was to send echoes through my future.
I went back to the north-east, at Newcastle University, being learnt psychology, watching bands in the most incredibly creative musical era of the late seventies and generally spending taxpayers’ money in grand style. (Although I did also take paid employment in a hotel bar to keep beer and belly together.)
What I also got from that time was a duodenal ulcer which ended with me in the RVI having an operation to “cure” it. This held up my career choice by a year, via a short stint in department store which specialised in selling on tick – that is to say through a ticket agent. Want to know more? Then look no further than the huge new headquarters of Provident Finance on the edge of Bradford’s fine Citypark.
Like most students of the time, with no idea of what we wanted to do for a job, I went into teaching. This meant moving to Crewe, now the throbbing financial heart of South Cheshire, but in those days the sort of town where you had to make your own entertainment. Even the radio was in black& white.
Having survived the rigours of teaching practice in Runcorn and Ellesmere Port, I relaxed and moved north, lining up interviews in North Shields and Whitley Bay, thinking that my ideal job would be near home and handy for the coast. Imagine my delight when I received a telephone call from the Head teacher of Tong Upper in Bradford, asking if I’d like to go for an interview. Wisely I turned him down, but... Courage should be made of sterner stuff. I was offered a temporary job, which again I refused. Everyone has his price though, and the offer of a job for one year prevailed. That was in 1981 and I’m still here.
What have I been up to in the past 30 years? I taught science & Language development in secondary and middle schools. I was an officer of a teachers union, as treasurer, president and health and safety rep for the NUT. Leaving teaching, I worked in arts administration in Bradford and Halifax, but the paid opportunities are few and far between and it’s a massively competitive scene. After a couple of years I got the best job I’ve ever had as a filing clerk at the Inland Revenue, then, needing money I took on a manager’s job. Least said.... For the last 6 years I’ve worked at Acas, joining the great commute to Leeds. To be honest, it’s been the most interesting and varied period of my working life and I can’t see me moving before I retire. Then I can get on with deciding what I want to do with my life.
Mind you, that’s only how I got my living. Besides that, I’ve always had a creative side to my ambitions.I joined Bradford Playhouse in the early 90’s having been invited to play a small role in Rose by Andrew Davies. At the time the role was ideal. I was a drunken artist who lounged on stage and smoked - always a method actor.) More acting & backstage roles followed and I can say with total honesty that our performance of Lysistrata truly brought the house down. This was the play in production on the night that a huge fire burnt the theatre down and I was in it. (The play, not the fire.) The remarkable thing is that we didn’t miss a single performance, transferring it to the theatre workshop next door within 24 hours and finishing the run.
When the theatre re-opened after rebuilding, I saw the opportunity to extend the artistic activities of the centre, creating an art gallery in the basement bar. I curated exhibitions there for 3 years, showing work from a wide range of artists working in the region, including holding an exhibition of my own work.
More exciting revelations of my artistic life to come..
 Councillor the Reverend Geoff Reid
The River Tyne in Newcastle has steep sides and the Scotswood Road area of Newcastle was once laced with streets running down towards the river consisting of "Tyneside Flats." They disappeared in the slum clearance of the nineteen-sixties but I lived in a two roomed flat until 1954. My father had joined a self-build scheme in which thirty-two men spent three and a half years of their spare time constructing thirty-two semi-detached houses. This meant that we moved across the city, some years before the Council would have re-housed us, to the shabbily genteel suburb of North Heaton, where people of modest means persisted in electing Tory Councillors.
I did not enjoy school all that much until I entered the sixth form when it became much more interesting. As a Library Prefect, I looked after the newspapers. I started reading what was then the Manchester Guardian, a habit which I still maintain. At the age of sixteen I started training to be a Methodist Local Preacher within the Newcastle Methodist Mission. At the same age I joined the Liberal Party.
Just before I started a course in English Language and Literature at Newcastle University, I went to my first Liberal Conference in Scarborough. I was given a thousand leaflets and asked to re-establish the Liberal Society at the University. In my second year I lost an election (for the Students Representative Council) to Kate Adie. At the end of her year of office she asked me to stand again to replace her. However I declined, saying that I had been elected President of the Methodist Society, I had finals coming up - and I was candidating for the Methodist ministry,I moved directly from Newcastle University to Cambridge where I added a Theology degree as part of my training for ministry to my Newcastle English degree. My first two year appointment was in Wallsend beside the shipyards on the Tyne, during which I married a medical student, who later became a GP. We moved to Rotherham where my two children were born. In October 1974 I was the first Liberal candidate since 1918 for the huge Rother Valley seat which surrounded Rotherham. I later stood in Barnsley Central (1983) and Eccles (1992), seeing myself as a good candidate for hopeless northern seats.
From Rotherham I moved to Barnsley in 1979 to set up the Barnsley Methodist Team Ministry with two other ministers. Along with our families, Rev Brian Jenner and I also established a scheme of community living with eight of us occupying a large Victorian Methodist manse. At the very end of my seven years in Barnsley, I completed relatively amicable divorce proceedings and married Chris, one of the Church Council Secretaries (also a Secretary in her day job) just before moving to Salford where I joined the ecumenical Salford Urban Mission. My ex-wife chose to move to Salford to facilitate shared child-care on a complicated rota system which Ben and Cathy understood even if it baffled their friends. We lived in a 1910 terrace house straight out of Coronation Street - the soap used the newspaper office round the corner and Ben and Cathy occasionally appeared in school scenes, until they decided that they had better things to do on Sunday mornings. Chris did a stint on the Community Health Council and stood in local elections.
After eight years of community ministry in Salford, I became Team Leader at the Methodist Touchstone Centre at 32 Merton Road, Bradford. The manse was next door at no.30. Thus for fifteen years I specialised in city issues and interfaith work, bringing my previous experience of team ministry, politics and working in northern cities to bear on one of the most demanding and exciting jobs in the Methodist Church. Working with good colleagues, mainly women, and a strong management committee, I was able to develop Touchstone to the point when it was recognised both as an ecumenical asset for the city and a nationally recognised flagship project of the Methodist Church. Over the fifteen years I also edited the Faith Matters column in the Telegraph and Argus. In my final years at Touchstone I was an Honorary Ecumenical Canon at Bradford Cathedral.
From the outset (as a veteran of the Campaign for Real Ale) I became a regular at MacRory's Bar at the end of our back lane, eventually being recognised as resident "beer taster and spiritual adviser". The pub is sadly now closed but amazingly Touchstone is now raising funds with the aim of taking over the former pub and hotel as replacement premises.
As retirement from active ministry loomed, my work at Touchstone was recognised by Bradford Council when I received a Community Harmony Award. Finally the City marked my retirement with a Civic Lunch in City Hall, whose corridors I knew well as City Centre minister.
However when I did retire, Chris and I found ourselves with nowhere to live. The Ministers Housing Society changed their rules at the eleventh hour so that they were unable to buy a property in Bradford, where we wished to remain. We rented a rather large spare Methodist manse in Shipley while looking for somewhere to live.
In 2010 I gained the Eccleshill seat for the Lib Dems, the pivotal ward which we had to take for David Ward to become the MP for Bradford East. This involved me tramping the steep streets of Eccleshill right through a very hard winter but David and I were both successful. In a surprise development Chris became a Councillor for Idle and Thackley (someone else had withdrawn at a late stage). In my second year on the Council I became Chair of the Council Group, as well as the Bradford Lib Dem representative on West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority. Other responsibilities included Standards, SACRE, Planning, School Transport Appeals, as well speaking for the Group on housing.
It is not everybody's idea of retirement but I enjoy what I do – half- time Councillor and half-time politician! I preach about once a month and fill in on Sundays when other ministers are sick.
In 2011 Chris and I bought a house in Woodlands Close, Idle, just opposite Thorp Primary (and close to the Brewery Tap and the Symposium). This is my first experience of conventional owner occupation - becoming a first time buyer the same year as getting the state pension!
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Bradford and its People
