I was born in Great Yarmouth.
Claims to fame for the place you were born
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
Musings on the byways of popular culture
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I was born in Great Yarmouth.
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Lord Nelson was also born there.
Myleene Klaas to.
It also has an album named after it. By David Boulter. I like it.
Bless. And look at you now ..
Very happy and a truly balanced chap thanks to my Great Yarmouth experience.
Left it finally in 1987 after graduating and would never go back though!
Birmingham. The Move and Sabbaff. I’ll take that
Mike Oldfield
Charlie Brooker
Kate Winslett
Ricky Gervais
John Sykes
Lucy Worsley
Jeremy Kyle
Michael Foot
Chris Tarrant
Matthew Syed (year below me at school)
Glasgow. Big place. Take your pick.
Same here.
Sarfend-on-Mud.
Longest pier in the world.
Mentioned in Jane Austen’s Emma.
Ecko radios.
Viv Stanshall, Gary Brooker, Robin Trower, John Fowles, Mickey Jupp, Trevor Bailey, Dick Clement, Helen Mirren, Simon Schama, Rachel Riley, Stephen Port (serial killer), Colin Ireland (serial killer)…
Er…Southend United.
Lee Brilleaux, Wilko Johnson
(or does Canvey Island not count as Sarfend)
Didn’t want to presume – always thought Canvey was the badlands myself.
I’d let Canvey join, and Basildon if push comes to shove.
So we also get:
Eddie and the Hot Rods
Depeche Mode
Erasure
Alison Moyet
Yazoo
The Horrors
and of course, Busted
I just remembered I wasn’t born there 🙄.
Croydon? No idea.
Captain Sensible
Kate Moss
Stormzy
Kirsty MacColl
Roy Hodgson
The Brit School
Johnny Moped
Not having it. Basildon being part of Southend is a bit like Iceland being part of the USA.
I meant Greenland.
The Annexation Of Basildon.
Doesn’t quite have enough ring to it, does it.
Dublin , too many to mention.
Me too.
My first address was Eccles Place, Dorset St. just around the corner from Leopold Bloom’s home address in Joyce’s Ulysses.
Lived in Dublin for the first 7 years before moving to England, Whitebeam Road Clonskeagh.
Bathgate. It’s in a Proclaimers song. Nearly spat out my tea when I heard it on The Tube.
Used to pass through Bathgate on my way from Shieldhill to Lockerbie.
The Proclaimers used to have a gardening business, until they were let down by B&Q.
Big job cutting grass, so they went to
Bathgate … no mower
Linwood … no mower
Methil … no mower
Irvine … no mower
No more …
Manchester- so much to answer for.
Hemel Hempstead. Dave Vanian and Steven Wilson. Punk and prog.
I only lived in the place I was born for the first ten days but it appears notable people are
John Noakes.
Percy Shaw.
Shirley Crabtree.
Wilfred Pickles.
Anne Lister.
Eric Portman.
Dorothy Wordsworth.
Lots of sportspeople of which I know nowt.
Musically.
Don Lang.
Tom Bailey
and Ed Sheeran!
To add to the Halifax info, there’s a link to The Man Who Broke the Bank in Monte Carlo.
https://new.calderdale.gov.uk/leisure/local-history/glimpse-past/people/joseph-hobson-jagger
Kenneth Branagh
Van Morrison
CS Lewis
Louis MacNeice
George Best
Mary MacAleese
And many many others
I was born in Barking Hospital, as was The Edge a few years before me. And probably Billy Bragg too. Oh, and A Man Needs a Maid from Neil Young’s Harvest was recorded in Barking at the Town Hall.
Tracy Beaker
Wellington New Zealand
A few film directors – Jane Campion, Peter Jackson, Taika Waititi
Couple of comedian/musicians – Flight Of The Conchords (Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement)
I always thought that the guy’s name was “Jermaine” Clement, but it isn’t.
It turns out there’s no ‘r’ in his name: he’s Jemaine Clement.
You are correct sir!
I was born in Tredegar, Blaenau Gwent (never lived there though):
Aneurin Bevan, Neil Kinnock, Ray Reardon, James Dean Bradfield amongst others. Not bad for 15,000 population I suppose.
Nicholas Lyndhurst born here 1961
Plus famous residents include
Albert Finney
P G Woodhouse
Lt-Gen Sir Brian Horrocks
Sir Peter Blake
Bridgwater. Uhmmmmm…
There’s the Half Man, Half Biscuit album Trouble Over Bridgwater.
Didn’t Joe a strummer live there for a while? He was an occasional customer when I worked at Waterstone’s in Taunton.
Sheffield – birthplace of Michael Palin, Def Leppard, Jessica Ennis, Joe Cocker, Joe Root and many many more.
As a child we used to live just down the road from where Sean Bean was born – but as he’s eight years older than me, I didn’t know him.
I grew up round the corner from Sean Beans house also… we must be from the same neck of the woods!
@thegp – I used to live on Old Retford Road from about 1976/77 until I went off to Uni in 1985. I believe Sean Bean was somewhere on the Ballifield estate ?
@Chrisf ah you’re a bit older than me but I used to live down Handsworth Road from 80’s to 90’s
He did live on Ballifield then when he got famous think he bought them a big house near the snooker place
Used to see him swanning about the local pub in his United shirt…
I’ve not really been back much to that part of Sheffield since going to Uni – my folks moved to Edinburgh whilst I was at Uni (they did tell me where though), so my recollections are a bit vague….. Handsworth Rd was the continuation of Retford Road (and nearer to the Handsworth centre where I went to primary school at St Josephs)
I presume by big house near the snooker place is not referring to The Crucible?
Correct on the road
Definitely not the crucible.. snooker hall formerly the bingo on Handsworth top
Born in the same hospital as Nigel Farage.
It’s ok, we won’t let on to anyone.
swapped at birth?
Well, my Dad was a member of UKIP. I got to cancel his membership when he died.
Hillingdon is a bit tricky to connect people to but according to wiki I was born in the same hospital as Ronnie Wood and possibly some actress off of Shameless.
George Ezra, the Budapest Hit Maker. His mum taught me at school and served me pints in the Old Barge pub in the evening.
Rupert Grint aka Ron Weasley.
Where I am now: the Rev W Awdry wrote Thomas the Tank Engine. My local pub has some of his paintings of trains on the wall.
According to the town’s wiki page, Deep Purple formed there, although the band’s page disputes this.
According to his DID appearance the other week, actor Stephen Mangan had a scholarship to the posh school on the other side of town, round the corner from my friend Gary’s house.
West London’s Chiswick:
John Entwistle
Kim Wilde
Ian Gillan
Phil Collins
I’m guessing these could have been born in the same maternity hospital as me as it used to serve a sizeable number of West London suburbs like Richmond, Barnes, Hounslow, Isleworth, Feltham etc and like me, it’s more likely that anyone born in that hospital was probably likely to not actually be “from” Chiswick at all even though it’s listed on our birth certificates.
Aberdeen. Stood up Annie Lennox (true story).
Do tell.
Short version of a story told on here before. Finally managed to get her to meet me. Saturday night, parents already out. Closed front door. Realised my jacket with money and keys still inside. Door locked. No phones in them days.
Monday morning she walked straight by me. A few years later I move to London and next time I see her she’s on Top of the Pops
You could have been Dave Stewart and shagged one of Bananarama. Sliding door moment eh?
@henpetsgi
You could have tried to do what I once had to do, arriving with my girlfriend at her parents house who were away she realised she didn’t have her keys. Looking up I saw there was a velux window open on the roof.
I decided to shin up the drainpipe get to the window and let myself in.
Climbed up the drainpipe and waved to the neighbour (a work colleague) on passing. I climbed to the chimney and launched myself across to the velux and promptly started to slide off the roof, caught hold of the chimney before sliding ‘close to the edge’.
Decided to climb higher to the apex and line myself up with the window and hope for the best.
Luckily it was successful as there’s a good chance I may not be here.
My parent’s flat was on the 10th floor of a multistorey. I suppose I could have absailed down from my mate’s balcony on the 12th floor but, Aberdeen after all, it was raining.
Another close shave, Lodey. Has me wondering also if you could have also squired my first wife, given she was at the same school Ms Lennox was head girl at. Might have saved me some bother if you had clicked, if depriving me of two fab kids.
@retropath2. Don’t think Annie was ever Head Girl at Aberdeen High? Very shy, head down, always carrying a music case. I was up the road at at The Grammar so at 415 every weekday both schools collided around Holborn Junction in a melee of lust and pimples.
Ah well, maybe a prefect. Anyhoo, the ex-Mrs Path recalls her quietly imperious presence.
I must have dated at least half a dozen lasses from The High (dated means went to the pictures at least once, may even have kissed twice) so there’s a possibility I was dumped by Mrs Path
I was born in Islamabad. Weirdly I don’t appear on the Wikipedia page ‘famous people born in Islamabad’. Nor do anyone I’ve ever heard of. Not even cricketers. Make of that what you will.
Give it a chance, it hasn’t really been around for all that long. Sort of Pakistan’s equivalent to Milton Keynes, it’s a planned city from the 1960s and still has a much smaller population than Lahore and several other towns and cities there.
I was born in Karachi. Birthplace of Lenny Zakatek (Alan Parsons Project) and Angela Thorne (Marjorie Frobisher in To The Manor Born).
It’s not quite Manchester or Southend on Sea, but, well.
The Beatles went there to listen to the Maharishi. And Cynthia missed the train from Euston. Fiddlers Dram had a lovely time there.
But turns out it was the wrong one…
Northampton – Sir Malcolm Arnold and Alan Moore are the pick of the bunch but my favourite is Violet Gibson who attempted to assassinate Mussolini. She took a shot at him and the bullet grazed the bridge of his nose. She spent the rest of her life at St. Andrews Hospital, where I used to work. Quite a formidable lady.
Sorry Northampton = worlds best shoe
Museum surely
I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never visited the shoe museum. I’ve also never visited the Charles Rennie Mackintosh House at 78 Derngate. I really need to get out more.
Maybe better not to in Northampton. Its the only place we’ve ever visited where my other half insisted on locking the car doors before driving gratefully away, and that was on a pleasant summer day.
I lived in Northampton for over 10 years in Kingsthorpe (dead posh like) where abouts are you in town noisecandy?
Lived in Abington most of my life, near The Abington pub. Now living in Lakeview. There were two armed policemen running up the street where we live on Monday. Apart from that it’s nice and quiet.
Abington = quite posh
Quite posh but noisy, but I’m knocking on a bit.
World’s best shoe museum? Cobblers!
I’m also a former St Andrew’s worker, I think most people in Northampton were at some point. I was there from 1996 to 1998.
It’s a small world, we must have crossed paths a few times. I should have mentioned the English poet John Clare, who also spent his final years at St. Andrews and had a ward named after him, as you will already know.
my wife worked at St Andrews too
I note the drift from ‘claims to fame’ to ‘who else was born there’.
Main claim to fame – service station on the M6.
For those of a literary bent, Elizabeth Gaskell, though born in Chelsea, was raised from the age of 13 months and eventually married and was buried in Knutsford. She based her novel, Cranford, on the town, oft serialised on the telly.
The thing of which I am most proud of my home town (apart from being able to shop at Booths) is the works of the eccentric architect Richard Harding Watt, who built Italianate edifices out of context all over the town.
Neatly, there is a Venn diagram overlap, in that he designed the Gaskell Memorial Tower that graces our high street.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaskell_Memorial_Tower_and_King%27s_Coffee_House
Other things my home town (all 10 days of them) is famous for the Gibbet which may have given Guillotine the idea for the erm guillotine., and Wainhouse Tower the tallest folly in the world.
It was mentioned in the Beggar’s Litany by John Taylor (1580–1654), a prayer whose text included “From Hull, from Halifax, from Hell, ‘tis thus, From all these three, Good Lord deliver us.”
Which somehow ended up in The Dalesman’s Litany, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that, let alone quote you the lyrics.
Salwarpe has a post box dating from the reign of Queen Victoria.
This isn’t a personal boast, but a fact about my childhood village. The 13th Earl of Warwick was also born there. Not bad for a place with fewer than 180 residents.
Sarf London, innit. Naaah guy, listen, lists too too long to be dealing with that shit bruv, that’s what Google’s for, y’know worrimean bruv. Peace, out.
?
No one understands us.
I thought you were from Harrow Weald Slug?
I spent about 16 or so years in Wealdstone and then Harrow Weald, but was born in New Malden and was there till the age of 13. So I think of it as my “hometown”.
hard to beat
Mike Harrison, lead singer of the band Spooky Tooth
Melvyn Bragg
Mike Figgis, film director
Lee Brennan, member of the boy band 911
Helen Skelton, Blue Peter presenter
Margaret Forster, novelist
Eddie Stobart, haulage contractor
yes of course it’s Carlisle!
St Asaph. Birthplace of Gas Top
The man of Alarm fandom and kids TV?
Gaz, innit.
(Deep voice, hand in air, Fred Dineage too: “HOW”!!!)
And Jack Hargreaves.)
Gaz. That’s it. And the Taskmaster, Greg Davies too.
Woking – the Martians landed there in war of the worlds. Probably some bands too.
Also Helen Shapiro, Peter Davison, Susie Dent, Harry Hill…
I grew up in Woking but was born in Portsmouth. Just like Charles Dickens, James Callaghan, Peter Sellers and Amanda Holden.
South Shields: birthplace of Dame Flora Robson, Ridley Scott, Eric Idle, Sara Millican, the Angelic Upstarts and half of Little Mix (amongst others). However, we Sandancers are mostly famous for hosting the finishing point of the Great North Run.
Adelaide, South Australia – biggest turnout for The Beatles (the legendary 300,000 in ’64)….that’s about it.
Newcastle. So dozens of the buggers.
Though the precise place of my birth and upbringing is a place just over the lip in Northumberland. And there’s not a soul from there you’d know.
However the huge and very expensive housing estate that abuts it is pretty much a greenhouse nursery for Newcastle United footballers. Shearer still has a house there. My wife once found herself being innocently followed round Waitrose there by Peter Beardsley while both shopping.
There’s a very well thought of Indian restaurant in the village which Ant and indeed Dec have been seen in together and separately on occasion.
Ah Ponteland, I was helping some friends with a Teddy bears picnic at nearby Belsay Hall and we had to visit the Waitrose to buy shaving foam to make up plates for a ‘custard pie’ fight. I think we bought their full stock and I like to think that their computer system realising there had been an unprecedented boost in shaving foam sales, had ordered in stacksof boxes and that they are still trying to shift them to this day.
The curry restaurant is good too.
Indeed, the beloved Ponteland. The Monte Carlo of the local area.
Where the toilets are all inside and the baths have almost no coal in them at all.
As my Newcastle family say ‘Why Darras Hall. They’ve got inside netties n’all’
It has that rep. Some parts of it are very smart.
However I’m from the village. From a cooncil hoose. Though as I’ve since seen, a council house in Pont is not a council house you might expect elsewhere.
Even so, clarify as I might, I’ve been asked by residents of Cowgate, Benwell etc where I’m from and summarily dismissed as a Darras Hall nancy.
Hove. Wiki fail to difffentiate from Brighton, but there’s a difference. O yes, there’s a difference.
Isn’t it known as ‘Hove, Actually’?
Hove actually Darling, actually.
Cumbernauld. Home of Gregory’s Girl and Craig Ferguson (who wasn’t born there but was in the same school class as me).
Hull. Famous the world over (oh yes!) for the chip shop pattie, Chip Spice…and obesity.
I might be the only Hullensian who hates patties and Chip Spice. Yet I’m still obese. Life’s just not fair.
Liverpool – where do l start? Born in the same hospital as Macca.
Melbourne. Was the richest city in the world in the gold rush.
Bands with international success:
Birthday Party
The Seekers
Men At Work
Little River Band
Kylie
Gloucester. Fred West.
I mean also the Domesday Book, the invention of fan vaulting and EMF. But people mostly just remember Fred West.
I thought EMF were from Cinderford?
Certainly the Forest of Dean. And Fred West didn’t move to Gloucester until he was in his late 20s. Which raises point of order about how one claims someone famous, or infamous, as ones own. Is it based on birth, upbringing, whether they lived there during a formative period of their life. Or all of these ?
My own hometown was where Wilfred Owen and Ian Hunter were both born, but left when young. Barbara Pym and Jesse Armstrong stayed throughout their childhoods Frank Bough and Alan Ball weren’t born in the town, but lived and went to school there. Ian Woosnam was born in the town, because that’s where the hospital was, but lived and went to school in a nearby village. And so on. I will be up all night worrying about this. Possibly.
The thread title is ” Claims to fame for the place you were born” so Fred West moved to Gloucester and now as @hedgepig says that’s probably what people first think of when Gloucester is mentioned.
Funnily enough, I don’t think anyone I know under the age of 35 has heard of Fred West, save perhaps the odd serial killer story fan.
Oswestry?
Don’t forget Alan Whitehead, drummer with Marmalade.
As a matter of interest, did you go to OBHS and if so how old are you?!
Yes and Yes. 63 in July.
Ah, ok @ernietothecentreoftheearth . . . 12 years behind me so our paths will not have crossed on Holbache Road!
Indeed, although I suspect we shared a number of teachers.
Ian Dench went to school in Gloucester so I’m claiming them
Bradford:
David Hockney (his brother knew my mum)
J B Priestly ( lived next door but seven to our Phil … admittedly a good few decades apart)
Kiki Dee
Tamsin Archer
Terrorvision (Tony used to work at the same printers as our Phil)
Smokie (Terry used to live on our Oval)
Peter Sutcliffe (lived on t’same road as Killer Whale – our swimming teacher)
Now, up in Bradford a chap named Radford
While taking part in a local play
Was intercepted and then suspected
Of going ooh-wakka-doo-wakka-day
Unexpected hamper on this one.
I’ll add it to the pile in the garage.
Anyyone wants some Corsair Chicken Fritters?
Stoke-on -Trent
Lemmy
Slash
Robbie Williams
Next town along (they’re pretty much contiguous), but I think I can claim Norman Cook and Disclosure.