York Mystery Plays

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Interview with John Scott

Interviews : Reporter John Scott talks to Delma Tomlin (transcription)

Item type: Interviews
Archive reference: YMP/C/6
Date/year: 2002
Description: Transcription of Interview 12/3/2002 at The National Centre for Early Music, York.  Also in the archive as audio, here.
Interviewer: Delma Tomlin MBE, Director of NCEM
Interviewee: John Scott, BEM, veteran reporter 
Recording Reference: INT/03 (Transcription begins at 1'58'')

JS: My name's John Scott, I'm a reporter and I'm here to interview Delma for an article I'm doing for the Dalesman magazine.  While doing that, she's asked me to.tell her a little about the early Mystery Plays, because my memory of them goes back to 1951, the first one, and I was a junior reporter in York, and this was a very very exciting time, shortly after the war, the Festival of Britain was.coming forward, and York was chosen for one of the.regional centres for the festival, and they decided to revive the Mystery Plays, and I think it was the first time they'd been revived for about four hundred years.

DT: But who is 'they' at that point, John?

JS: It was the City Council, but again, I think the Civic Trust were involved, J. B. Morrell and John Shannon, and it took off in the city.   The atmosphere in those days was much more like a village than it is today, and  there was tremendous excitement in the city, everybody seemed to be involved.the whole idea was that amateur actors would get involved, all the ladies would do all the costumes, and it was a real family event but the family was the whole city, which was quite remarkable.  And the early productions, I don't think it's distance lending enchantment, but there was a magic about them, which I don't think the later ones really caught, it was probably just the first time, but I think the city was very fortunate in having Joseph O'Conor as the first Christ, I remember there was some controversy as to whether his name should be used, whether the actor should be kept anonymous, and I think it eventually sneaked out into the newspapers, so, it was, he became well known as a result of that.

DT: He did, but he was under very strict instructions not to go into a public house and not to drink anyway.

JS: To behave as if, almost....

DT: Exactly.

JS: But O'Conor's presence on stage was quite remarkable, and I always remember the first time he appears and walks forward in the lights, there really was a hush, in, in the grounds, it was quite incredible, and his first words were, I think 'Peace be unto you' and the whole place shivered! It was really, you know, quite, quite spooky.

DT: Can I just ask you John, how long before, as it were, Corpus Christi '51, was this, all this being developed in the city? Can you remember?

JS: I think the incentive for it was, they decided there was going to be a Festival of Britain, and then they said, right, regional centres, and York was picked out.  And I think there was quite a bit of a shock within the city and they thought well, what are we going to do? And I think it was Canon Purvis who did the translation that they used.

DT: He did, actually, yes.

JS: I think he sort of maybe put the idea forward.

DT: And what was Canon Purvis at the time? I mean obviously he was a canon, was he attached to the Minster?

JS: He was a clergyman in York.  I can't remember a great deal more about him, but he put up the first translation, and his name was on the first.publicity sheets for it.  And as I say, we had a devil as well, who, I think the word went round, was a bit of a devil, van Eyssen, terribly good looking, charming fellow who used to sort of go into tea-rooms and say 'I am the Devil!' [laughter]

DT: Yes, good line.

JS: But he had a wonderful rapport with Christ, it really was wonderful.  And the other thing which, I think everyone still speaks about, the play, the early plays finished with a tableau, framed in the windows of the abbey, and, you had these angels with golden tresses, and the light shining on, and they froze into a tableau, and then it faded slowly away, and that was the end of it. It really was quite an incredible thing. And that family feeling of participation went on for quite a few Festivals afterwards, but of course they then became bigger and bigger.

DT: Yes, because there was a real sea-change, wasn't there, between the sort of fifties and sixties, in a way, 'cause you get '51, '54, '57, which I'm presuming were still part of the family.sort of set-up, and then it changed much, much.  Did you see all of those productions?

JS: I saw all of the productions. And my memory in York during festival time was, in the evening, there seemed to be tidal flow of people heading towards the Museum Gardens, and you could tell where they were going, because they nearly all had blankets, and they had cushions, [laughter] and they had picnic flasks, and all the rest of it, and they were going in there, because I think there was a little feeling that one had to suffer for one's art.  It was gonna be a bit cold, it was gonna be a bit difficult to sit down there, and I think really if everyone was honest, the early scenes.tended to be a bit boring, the amateur element was very much to the fore.  But soon as darkness fell and you shut out the surrounding, and the professional actors came into their own, the whole thing took off and became quite magical, and.they really were an event, the city almost came to a standstill when the festival was going on.

DT: Fantastic.

JS: [pause].I remember as a journalist always sort of writing about the things that went wrong! [laughter] That's what, that's what always made the fun and games for us, and I remember we had tremendous protest because Christ was being crucified, and the trains started shunting and banging, over in Leeman Road, which sort of destroyed the atmosphere a little.  And at other times in really dramatic scenes, the pigeons, not the pigeons, the peacocks [DT: The peacocks, yes, of course.] would get out and they'd be squawking around.  So someone was then delegated to go peacock hunting before every performance and they were all locked up in cages to keep them out of the way, all of which was very great fun, and then of course we had the, all the Virgin Marys. Judi Dench, I think she was the first one.

DT: Well, we'd have to look that up, I think it may be '54, [actually 1957, her third participation]

JS: But she was quite early on, Mary Ure was another one.

DT: Mary Ure actually was 1951.

JS: Yes, early on. I always remember there was tremendous excitement beforehand, who was going to be the Virgin Mary, although it was an extremely small part, I think.  When they actually appeared on stage, we said oh well, is that it, you know! [laughter] don't we see her again?  So it was, that was always an element. I remember there was great excitement one year when there, a very pretty girl was chosen, and then she went on from that to fame and fortune for being the first girl to advertise condoms on telly. [DT: Oh!] And there was quite an outcry about this, because to go from the Virgin Mary to being a TV advertisement for that, that caused a bit of fun and games.

DT: I can imagine.  And did you, sorry, did you know the Dench family? And the De Little families?  Because there were obviously huge family units involved in the early days.

JS: There were indeed. I didn't know them all that well, I interviewed Judi Dench once.   For the life of me I can't remember what it was, but she was coming up from London, and I had to meet her at York station and catch her when she whistled through heading for a bus to go home! And it was to ask her about something, a show that she'd done, but, I, what it is, I wish I could remember what that was.  But if I ever met her I'd say "I've met you before" but I can't remember what the  occasion was! What else could I tell you about it.the different, different productions?  I know Hans Hess, who was the Festival Director at one time, one of his productions, I always remember he said 'This will sort out the sheep from the goats.'  And what it was, he'd persuaded them to put in the Murder of the Innocents, which was one of the more horrific plays.  And you had these crude, rough soldiers murdering babies, pretend babies, and knocking their brains out on fonts and all the rest of it, it was quite horrific.  And there was a crucifixion scene I remember which caused gasps of shock and horror because it was certainly.not sanitised at all, when Christ was nailed to the cross, he let out a tremendous scream, and curled himself over the nail.

DT: Can you remember, can you remember what year that was?

JS: I can't, it was fairly early on, it was Hans Hess period.  As I say, I remember him when we were saying, you know, are you going to really get away with this?  He said -  he was a German gentleman - [Director of the Art Gallery] [German accent] 'This will separate the sheep from the goats. This is reality, this is what it was like, people don't realise what cruelty was involved.' And he was right, too, I suppose.  I remember we had a God was played by a coloured gentleman, I remember.

DT: That was 1984. [Keith Jefferson]

JS: Yes, and God was played by a child, I think? A young boy.  [1988 Jon Lacey-Colson]

DT: Yes. When did you stop seeing them, John?

JS: I saw them until the Festival stopped. When did the.....

DT: 1992 was when it moved into the Theatre Royal.

JS: Yes, that would be it, because  I retired, yes.  I missed the Theatre one, and I deliberately missed the Theatre one, because I thought, it can't possibly live up to the outdoor variety. But I'd seen them all up to that. And then I saw the one in the Minster as well, [2000] so I saw them.  But the trouble with having seen them all, is, you never enjoy the last production, because.the best bits from every one, merge in your mind and become the perfect Mystery Plays.

DT: Yes, you become the director really, don't you!

JS: They become it. You know, you say, oh this bit wasn't as good as that, that bit wasn't as good, oh, that bit's good, you know, that was better than the one so and so, but you always come away slightly disappointed because you remember something better.

DT: Do you remember anything about the music of any of them?

JS: Umm, not really, no. There's some sort of electronic music I remember.

DT: In '84 again, it was, it was written specially as an electronic production.

JS: Yes, it was electronic music.

DT: I think '76 was brass band.

JS: I think they did have.

DT: Yes, the Railway Institute Band.were doing a lot of the music.

JS: Yes, that was the sort of the.peasant-style atmosphere sort of building into it.

DT:I think so, absolutely. And do you remember, Christopher Timothy was Christ in 1980, do you remember any of the Christs as it were, or the particular professional actors that you enjoy?

JS: David Bradley? I remember David Bradley, my daughter was a teenager then, and she auditioned for, for the Virgin Mary, actually.  But she got a part in the crowd scenes, and she and her friends, they got very friendly with Bradley, he was a very, very nice chap.  And, we have photographs, I think, of all the girls and  David Bradley, who of course, has gone on to fame and fortune, hasn't he?

DT: Absolutely. Yes, yes.

JS: Yes, he was at the National Theatre.  Yes, as I say, the memory of Christ really goes way back to Joseph O'Conor, nobody in my opinion has ever come anywhere near him.

DT: No, I mean we're obviously been extremely unlucky, because he died last year, no two years ago now, and we hadn't managed to catch him [to interview], which is a great shame.

JS: The difficulty is, trying to make a proper judgement of it, over the years - whether it was just the atmosphere of the first plays and the first depiction of Christ there, which.suspended people's belief a little bit, made it seem better than others.

DT: And what do you remember about the politics of it all?

JS: Umm.  I can't recall, as a journalist, politics ever sort of surfacing too much outside.  I think later on, all the hullabaloo over the cost of it and who was going to sponsor it, that seemed to degenerate into financial problems.

DT: At what point do you remember that happening?

JS: Ooh, the years blur.[pause].  Let's see, I retired in 1990, probably be the Eighties, maybe, people were saying, oh, it's going to cost forty thousand pounds to put the scaffolding up, and there's going to be problems over insurance and safety things, it's not worth a candle.  I think there was, wasn't there an attempt to make a peripatetic production, where you moved round the Museum Gardens.

DT: The idea was for 1992 that it would move around the Gardens, which of course is what, to some extent, what killed it off in the Gardens altogether. [until 2012]

JS: I remember then there was, we got the sense that there were lots of ugly arguments going on in the background.  But, I don't think it surfaced in the press.  There was one theory at one time, I don't know whether Hans Hess had the idea, that they were going to have people sitting in the Museum Gardens facing the river, and the pageant wagons would be barges!

DT: Oh, wow, fantastic thought.

JS: And they would drift along, and be performed in a sort of almost like an amphitheatre setting, with people on the banks looking over the esplanade.

DT: Yes, because it is a natural dip down to the river, yes absolutely lovely!

JS: Yes, there's a natural dip there so that was one idea which was floated, but they couldn't find enough coal barges I don't know - it floated, argh! [laughter] unconscious puns.  Yes, that was it.  But as I say, I didn't go and see the.the one in the Theatre Royal for the simple reason I thought you can't squeeze this indoors, you just take away all the magic.

DT: It did change it, tremendously.

JS: And I was very excited at the thought of it being in the Minster, and I thought the spectacle of it in the Minster [in 2000] was magnificent, but whether it's old age and poor hearing, I missed large chunks of the  words.

DT: I would have thought actually after fifty years you would have known it all! [laughter]

JS: I did, really.  But I was, you know, my ear was straining, I thought I've lost this, I've lost this.  It wasn't just myself, I think other people said the acoustics could have been, could have been better.  And we had,  again, one of the images I always had, I think it was John Westbrook, don't know who it was, some double-barrelled name like that, he was a famous actor in those days, he played the archangel Gabriel. {Archangel Michael in 1954 and 1957] He had to climb right up on the top of the abbey ruins and stand on the corner in golden armour with a golden sword, and so I picked him up, and he confessed afterwards he was terrified, he said because there was just a dark abyss all the way around, he thought every night he was going to come tumbling down.  Again, one of the images which never seemed to have been repeated, he used to bring his sword down over the multitude and say 'Stand ye not all together' and crowds sort of parted with the sinners on one side, and it was a moment of absolute sheer drama.  But later productions never seemed to pick up that moment, and every time I used to wait for it, and used to think 'ah, missed it!' [laughter]

DT: Did you interview the various directors?
JS: Yes, we did, every time.  There was Martin Browne, I think was the early one, and I think I told you earlier, better tell you again, the image of Martin Browne was one night when it was throwing it down with rain.  The rule was that they would continue despite the rain unless - two things - unless the costumes were going to get so wet they couldn't be dried out for the production next day, OR if the staging became so wet it became dangerous for the actors. And they went on till the crucifixion scene, and Christ was nailed to the cross and the two thieves were on either side, and the rain was coming down and everybody was weeping.  And into this weeping group came the director in a black mac with a great big black trilby on and water dripping down the edge.  And he stood there in the lights and he looked all the way around and then he waved his arms and said 'Cut.' And the crucifixion was ended [laughter] and this sepulchral voice said 'The plays have been discontinued.' And that was it. [laughs]   But no, we interviewed them all, and they all had their different ideas.  They were all going to select certain plays and alter other plays, they all had different ideas.  Towards the end it was very much the difficulty of like doing Hamlet, you know, let's do it a different way this year.

DT: But did any of the directors particularly catch your imagination, or....?

JS: Not, frankly, no.

DT: There's a lot of talk of Patrick Garland, particularly, with the '80, 1980 production, because he was a Christian and because he had himself a huge interest in it.

JS: Yes, I remember interviewing him, yes, but I can't bring to mind exactly what it was all about, as I say, they do terribly tend to blur.  When the Festival times came on, we just went round interviewing the same people all over again.  I think they were as bored with being interviewed as we were with interviewing them, you know, but, sort of 'here we go again!'  There was always fun and games with the costumes, 'cause the costume ladies had this huge wardrobe of costumes, sort of all-purpose costumes. 

DT: Do you remember Betty Doig?

JS: Yes, yes.  And they used to sort of do the costumes up in different ways and, I think that every director was more or less presented with the wardrobe and told 'This is it.'  You know, you can't afford much more.  We got that feeling anyway, they stuck a few horns and tinsel on and, tried to make them a bit different, I suspect.

DT: Did that make it a bit dreary to look at?

JS: Umm. I remember one year, where the designer said that they were going to take all the colours from the stained windows, stained glass windows, I think. Various people came up with various ideas.

DT: Certainly by 2000 that was very much the idea, in the Minster, that the colours came from.

JS: Yes, pick out the colours that were already there.

DT: And of course they were all made specially for that particular production.  There was no question of using what was then the wardrobe by that stage.

JS: I think my abiding memory was of the family City, the village concept of it in the beginning, and then the sort of slow commercialisation of it.  The feeling that somebody said let's have it every year, No, let's have it every three years, ooh, it's coming round a bit quick, should it be every four years?  Should we really continue it at all?  There was an awful lot of discussion, and then I think (you'll know better than I do)  that the financial aspects of doing it more or less decided what was going to happen whatever the cultural feelings were, the cost was just going to be a bit too much! That's the feeling we got, as journalists on the outside looking in.

DT: Yes.  Thank you John, very much indeed. Was there anything else you wanted to add in for posterity?

JS: I don't think so, let me have a look at my little list.

DT: Your little list.

JS: I don't think so, no.  I just sat down over a pot of tea, and I thought about it.  As I say, the pageant wagons were, were very good fun, because they had a herald on a large cart-horse in the early days, and he rode along ahead of it, with a herald, and they announced, 'this is going to be performed tonight'  and they used the pageant wagon as a bit of an advertisement for the Gardens.

DT: So how did that work then, where did the pageant wagons go from to?

JS: He started off, I seem to remember, from the Mansion House, and then I think he went round to the Minster, he did a sort of circuit round.

DT: Right, who was he?

JS: Umm. I don't know who the pageant, he was a herald on a horse, there was one on foot and there was one on a big white horse, and then a wagon, I think it was the Flood, Noah, yes. [DT: Oh, okay] It was a good comedy one! 

DT: I see, did that happen every night?

JS: Yes, in the early ones, yes, the wagon went round every night, yes.  The idea was, this is how the plays were done then, now go and see how we're doing them now.

DT: Oh, how interesting!  Were you, when the Queen came, were you involved?

JS: Yes, I was sort of running around in the crowds and reporting on them.

DT: And that was when, '57?

JS: '57, yes, we had the Household Cavalry, and that was quite terrifying, because the Household Cavalry were stationed on the Knavesmire, and then they went through the streets of York which are extremely narrow, as you know, and we had the Household Cavalry go by three abreast, trotting, not going slowly, trotting through the streets at a fair old lick, and it was quite terrifying.

DT: And where was the Queen? Was she behind them somewhere?

JS: The Queen, the Queen was all over the place! [laughter] I remember standing watching her outside the Assembly Rooms.  There was a [laughs] there was consternation about the colour, we had to describe the colour of the Queen's dress, or coat.  We got hold of the Ladies-in-Waiting and the Lady-in-Waiting said it is certain colour of lime green, so we said lime green and it was whistled into the papers lime green.  But when the photographs came out, it was the early days of colour photography, and they processed them - it came out as a funny sort of yellow colour! [laughter]

DT: Oh dear!

JS: So it was a question of do we print the photographs or.....

DT: Or do we stick to lime green, yes, quite!

JS: I was on the edge of the reporting that.  She was in the Assembly Rooms, the Mansion House, she had lunch or dinner with the Lord Mayor and that sort of place.  Yes, it was a very very big day.  That of course was why Tourism took off in York, we had the Mystery Plays 1951, and then we had the 1971 celebrations, the 1900 commemoration of founding York, and we had a series of royal visits which gave tremendous publicity.  Part of the Minster fell, was falling down, the central tower was in trouble, so we had national publicity for about a decade, one after the other.  That was the result of tourism taking off in York, it just never stopped.

DT: How interesting.

JS: And if they'd had to pay for all of that it would have cost them millions, but they got the publicity for free.

DT: And what happened in '51, there wasn't a royal visit of any description? [JS: No.] But I think the Prime Minister came.

JS: I think so, yes.

DT: Do you remember any of that sort of hype about it all?

JS: I don't, no. I mean I wasn't - how old was I? [calculates] I was 21!

DT: [laughing] Well, you could have recognised the Prime Minister! [laughter] [Clement Attlee]

JS: I should have recognised the Prime Minister, yes!  

DT: As a journalist, but there we are!

JS: But as I say, I was very much the junior reporter there, I was the one stuck in the crowd and making sure that.nothing dreadful happened, and get back to the office quick and tell us what happened.  It was all very exciting, but we always remembered from then on that York did not seem to be out of the news.  Up to then York was a very dingy backwater and dusty place, you went into York Minster and the old battle flags were hanging from the top, and they were rotting, and it was grey and dirty and dingy.

DT: And was Millner-White the Dean at that point?

JS: Millner-White was the Dean then, yes.

DT: And was he involved very much with the plays in 1951, that you are aware of?

JS: Yes, yes he was. We had a royal visit then, yes, the Queen, that would probably be the same time, because the Queen and the Duke were shown round the Minster, and we were taken in with him by the.Buckingham Palace public relations officer, and the Dean was most upset that the press were allowed in.  He came up waving his arms at him and said 'Hide yourselves somewhere, behind a pillar!' [laughter]

DT: Lovely!

JS: Oh, I remember that, so we cringed behind pillars, while he showed the Queen round, that was it.  As I say, I've been involved in various organisations to do with tourism since then, and they're saying that as an ancient city York is frightened of change - this was some consultancy brought in - and I said nonsense, I said this city has changed out of all recognition in my lifetime. 

DT: So when did the Minster, as it were, start to take the flags away, and become that bit more.smart?

JS: Well, it was when they found out the central tower was falling down, I forget the date of that, fifties or something.  They discovered the whole thing was about to collapse, so they launched all these appeals for money.  It was then, really, that the Minster came into the news, and money poured in for it, and then we had the fire, of course, later. 

DT: That was '84, yes.

JS: Money poured in for that, in fact, so much money poured in for that the Dean and Chapter got a little bit embarrassed about it, in the sense that they said this money has been given to repair the fire damage, and it will only be spent on repairing the fire damage, but.with the overspill of it and grants coming in, they just did the whole building.  And once you start cleaning one bit it looks dreadful somewhere else, so they just went over the whole thing, so the Minster now, compared to what it was......

DT: It looks superb, doesn't it.  Absolutely superb.

JS: It's superb. Absolutely wonderful. I was involved on a weekly basis with.the repairs on the Minster, and that's another story.

DT: It is. [laughter]

JS: Every year we had to write a special newspaper on York Minster, and we wrote them for about a decade.

DT: And do you remember the Esher Report?

JS: Yes. [laughs] I'm sorry.

DT: No, it's good, because it's fascinating for me, because I obviously came into the city in the early eighties.

JS: Well, I'll tell you a tale about the Esher Report, Lord Esher came in and did this report, and it was presented to a special meeting, a secret meeting of the City Council. And within twenty-four hours, somebody who, even to this day, shall remain anonymous, contacted a small group of journalists and said this is dreadful, this is disgraceful, this is what he is proposing to do.   He gave us a version of this secret report on how the city should be done up.  His version of it was very much geared towards business, business was going to be lost, in his opinion if Esher's schemes came in.  So we rang up Lord Esher and we said we have been told this that and the other, is this true? And of course he absolutely hit the roof, and said 'this is secret, this is going to be brought out later on, I've been sponsored by the government to do this, you mustn't do it' and all the rest of it.  Well of course all the newspapers had been told, we couldn't trust each other to keep quiet, we had to publish, so a sort of gobbledegook version of this did come out, and a huge enquiry went on in the Evening Press, about the City Council, who on it had leaked this, and the press, to be fair to them all, the press, all the journalists, we never said, we're still not saying, who did it.  But the only thing was, I got approached, and they said 'look, people's jobs are on the line here on the Council' so we agreed, we went as far as to say that no Council official had been involved in this leak, which put it firmly back on the Councillors.  But they never found out, they guessed.

DT: And is he still alive?

JS: No, he's dead.  He's dead and gone so it doesn't matter, but I better not put it out.

DT: No [laughter]

JS: Somebody might still be gunning for him!

DT: Yeah, absolutely.

JS: But that's when, my memory of Lord Esher, and, as I say, in the aftermath of it, the man was absolutely brilliant.  I mean, he made the most profound remark about York, he said the problem with York is traffic. There are two ways you can solve it, he said you can let the traffic in and knock down the streets to accommodate it, in other words widen up the streets and let the cars come in, he said.  OR you can keep the streets as they are, and keep all the traffic out.  He said, it's a simple choice, that's it, and we still haven't really faced the fact that it is a simple choice.  That's it, you know, you keep the traffic out, and all the other things, you know, Aldwark and all the rest of it.  But trouble was, the City Council did a sort of pick and mix with it, you know, we'll do that but don't do that.[mutters] That was my memory of Esher.  He really focussed the city on itself, in as much as it's a historic city, people are coming to York because it is a historic city, for god's sake don't start tearing it apart.

DT: But presumably that's also part of that re-building of the city as a tourism venue, isn't it, I mean you say it's getting all this publicity in the press.

JS: Well that was another thing, [DT: Absolutely, at the same time, yes.] everybody was focussing on York, and then you get a government department saying, I think they picked four cities, and York was one of them, and they said Right, we want an examination of a historic city to see how it's going to progress, tourism and all the rest of it, what can we do to keep it viable and historic etc? And York was one of them, so again that sort of meant, oh, York must be important, it's been one of the four, and .it'll all help.  But I mean, Aldwark was extremely successful, although I gather now, with all the talk of Hungate, they're saying that Aldwark is dead, they say there isn't enough activity going on, but I bet the people who are living there are quite happy with what they've got.

DT: Yes, nice and peaceful from their point of view!

JS: It is very peaceful, you don't want a bistro next door or a coffee bar with everybody shouting and singing, so it's a question of what you want.  But yes, I'm sure, he was a brilliant fellow, but as I say, he was most upset with the newspapers [laughter].

DT: Was he aware of the plays, I mean did the plays in anyway figure in the report, in terms of the historic side of the city?

JS: No. It was really economic, I think one of the main factors was the centre of the city was dead, the shops shut, everybody disappeared out to the suburbs, it was essential, he said, that you have a living community within the city, and that was what Aldwark was all about. Keep the traffic out, maintain the old streets in order to attract the tourists.  He had once been, I think he had four roads coming in to the city and dead-ending at huge multi-storey car-parks, cunningly placed and hidden away, so you couldn't cross the city by car. You drove in, and if you weren't going to park.you'd no where [right?] to be there! [DT: Yes, clear orwf!] You know, you drove in, and you either drove out, you parked your car and you went to the city and that began.  The first thing they did was 'ooh, we can't build a multi-storey car-park there', so that side of it disappeared fairly early on.  There was a lot of rhubarbing, 'cause he said 'take the package, take the package, but they didn't.

DT: It's interesting, very interesting indeed. 

JS: Well there you are.

[End of interview]


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