A Shrine to Light Entertainment

Blackpool has the world’s only shrine to light entertainment. It sits towards the end of Central pier, behind a locked and chained doorway. It is only opened for close family and those who are established in the business. You might hear about it after hours, but you’ll have to work a few good years before anyone suggests that you visit.

There’s always a key keeper. These days it’s Alex Hap. He sells cheap sweets from a booth – although they’re less of a bargain than when he started. He never forgets a face once someone has been introduced to him. For your first few visits you’ll need someone to bring you – ideally a few different people, so that Alex sees you’re all right. Then maybe you can come by yourself and contemplate the shrine alone.

The room is small, barely the space to kneel down. Most of it is taken up by the shelves that house the skulls – one hundred and forty-six at last count, from trapeze artists to chorus girls. Everyone wants to end up here, but few do. It’s a great honour to have your headbone decorated with sequins, ribbons and make-up to take a place on these shelves.

Those who come here sometimes hold the skulls in their hand and think about those lives. One of the world’s greatest comics never played more than a mile from the tower; “sometimes blue, but never a bully” was his boast. There’s Back-End ‘Arry, famous as the best back-legs man in the pantomime horse game. He shunned the limelight, but still earned his place in the shrine. There is Diamond Liz, who performed only in darkness, able to close a show with her voice alone.

The great venues on the Golden Mile are fading, long since ruined by the cheap package holidays that brought Blackpool’s downfall. “But you never know,” says Alex Hap. “Climate change is going to put those Spanish resorts out of business. Then where will people come for their holidays? They’ll be flooding back to Blackpool.”

The skulls wait in the shrine. When the time comes, there’ll be a new generation of performers, ready to learn showbusiness secrets from them.

Background

We used to visit family in Blackpool a lot when I was young. The town seemed magical back then. As I grew older, I saw that the lights were actually gaudy and the entertainments disappointing. But I still can’t help feeling excited when I’m approaching the town and catch my first glimpse of Blackpool Tower.

Recently, I moved to Yorkshire, a simple train ride from Blackpool, and my friend Muffy moved to the town itself (hi, Muffy!). I’ve been there quite a lot lately, and I’m falling in love with the place again. The latest attempts at regeneration include a showbusiness museum and an IMAX cinema, both of which I love. But I also like some tackier attractions, such as the £1 DVD store and the horror cafe.

A paragraph about this shrine hung around for a while in my notes file. I thought I would delete it, then the rest of the story came out of nowhere. I do wonder if I’m cheating with the rule of three in the 4^th paragraph. I love writing triplets like this that point to other ideas, but I wonder if I overuse then. But then, as much as I like the idea of Back-End ‘Arry, I think the idea of him is better than the details would be.

Recommendations

I’m going to be annoying and recommend a place you can’t visit, that you’ll think I’m making up. I spent some time in Blackpool around 2008/9, unwinding after my MA. I watched movies, haunted cafes and worked on some writing that went nowhere. While I was there I went to visit a basement conspiracy museum.

This basement had dummies made up to look like different aliens and photographs downloaded from UFO websites. It was a chaos of information. On the wall near the exit, print-outs had been tacked to the walls claiming that the 7/7 London bombings were an MI6 plot.

It was a deeply weird place and, of course, I took lots of photos. But when I tried to download them, none of them had been saved to the SD card. I regret not going back and taking some more, as when I look for information on this place, there’s nothing online, only traces of a later incarnation of the museum.