A portrait of Naomi Jacob: A true Yorkshire character

This is the story of Naomi Jacob, possibly one of the biggest Yorkshire characters of the twentieth century and I want to revive her name. I do have a vested interest as she was my great great Aunt.

With a gruff Yorkshire accent and well known for wearing men’s clothes, she was often mistaken for JB Priestley. But she was best known a prolific author, playwright, journalist, broadcaster, actress and a political activist.

Known as Micky, she is best known as a writer. Walk down the large print section of any library, if they haven’t been shut down, and you’ll find many of the 80 plus books she wrote in a 30 year career.

Unfairly compared to pulp fiction authors like Barbara Taylor Bradford or Barbara Cartland, she tackled issues such as anti Semitism in the 1930s when many authors were barred from producing works on this subject. This is possibly due to the fact that it was seen as women’s fiction rather than serious, weighty literature.

In 1935 she won the Eichelberger Prize for "services to humanity" but was forced to reject the accolade because she shared it with Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Naomi grew up in Ripon; the granddaughter of two time mayor Robert Ellington Collinson and owner of the Unicorn hotel. Her father Samuel Jacob was the son of a Jewish Taylor who had escaped the pogroms of Western Prussia and settled in Towcester. He had converted to Catholicism, had become a teacher and moved to Ripon to become the headmaster at the Ripon Grammar school.

But Naomi became the daughter of divorced parents when her mother left her father due to his unreasonable behaviour.

Her mother and sister left for the south and, later, on to New York. Naomi wanted to stay in school and moved around a fair bit. She finally went to a school in Middlesborough where she became a student teacher on leaving.

It was during her time at school when she fell in love with the theatre. Repremanded for wearing trousers and for her care of her pupils beyond the classroom, she soon lost her job and became a PA for a music hall star.

She was the married Marguerite Broadfoote and Naomi also became her lover. She slowly climbed the ranks to become a successful character actress, mainly in rep. But Micky loved the music hall –knowing all the great names like Little Titch, Fred Karno, Vesta Tilley and Dan Leno. Other people she associated with were the Gielguds, Du Mauriers, Henry Irving and Sarah Bernhardt.

Marie Lloyd was another of her friends and shortly after her death, she wrote the first official biography. One close friend said of the book “[Naomi Jacob] doesn’t let facts get in the way of the truth.” Although some have questioned the accuracy of the book, it remains true to Marie Lloyds spirit and a truer image can be brought to life by reading it.

Naomi also had a political side to her, standing as a Labour PPC despite coming from a staunch Tory background. She was also a suffragette, Once sealing a clock in a biscuit tin and leaving it on the holiday home of then Prime Minister Lloyd George’s seaside retreat. The bomb was made safe when a panicked aide found the ticking device and hurled it into the sea.

When World War one, “Micky” claims she fooled the navy and joined as a male rating. She also spent time in the women’s corp managing a munitions factory.

TB took hold, an illness which would take her to Lake Garda in Italy, an enforced exile where she started writing with the stage no longer a long term option. Here she lived in the British ex-pat community with her Pekinese Sammy, associating along with people like Radclyffe Hall, the celebrated actor, who lived there with her partner Una Troughbridge, a woman Micky had a serious crush on.

During the Second World War, she came back to England working for the Minister of Information and then for ENSA near the front line, where she contracted Malaria.

She returned to Italy and at one stage was asked to bring her papers to the town hall under German occupation. The daughter of a Jew, she marched in and demanded they mark her papers as such, embarrassing the town’s officials and ordered to leave without the J being stamped on her documents.

Micky had also helped the many Jewish refugees in her home in Sirmione during the ends of the conflict, a fact I only recently learnt from an article on CNN’s ireport.

This stubborn Yorkshire women lived out the rest of her life in Italy, writing cook books on Italian food (“boil past for 30mins”), churning out novels and returning for many appearances on Woman’s Hour.

How many other strong regional accents featured on key BBC programming around this time?

It’s time we took another look at a truly remarkable Yorkshire woman.

But the story is not over with one of her books turned into a movie script. What an end to the story if the project were to get financial backing for a major film?

(Adadpted from a presentation for Bettakultcha: Bradford)

Review: Where's Your Mama Gone

One of the things that struck me when I was a publishing student was the understanding that the white space around text on a page is as important as the black squiggles that form the words. So what struck me when walking out of Where’s Your Mama Gone was what wasn't said in the play which is as important and powerful as the words of spoken by the cast of six at the Carriageworks in Leeds.


The play is only half the story and it is the questions and thoughts that leave with you out of the door that are almost as important to the work as the performance itself – but this is only possible by experiencing the play. The set also has this quality - A plain black stage, with black chairs and harsh white lighting, focusing attention on the players and their words without distraction.

There was an added dimension during the performance. Richard McCann.

Richard is the son of Wilma McCann, the first of the Yorkshire Ripper’s victims and it was his book Just A Boy that inspired Brian Daniels to write the play. It was what Richard didn't say as he quietly left the auditorium that was important. A tacit approval, a shared experience and slight smile at the end of what must have been a deeply moving experience for him. On Twitter he commented that it was a: “Bloody powerful play, for me and some of the acting was extremely close to reality.”

The play, set in Leeds, tells the story of non-identical twins Stephen and Carol and the effect the murder of their mother. It deals with how they deal with the stigma of being “Kath Connor's” and how there life was dominated by what was missing and unseen. The flip side of the play shows the story of a serial killer, his motivations and his background.

While there is a macabre interest in the serial killer, it is a tough subject and yet it is surprisingly unusual to have a work focusing on the aftermath and the individual.

Having only had a few previews, Charlie Harrison and Emma Gordon have developed a powerful on stage relationship in the lead roles. Despite the deliberate physical mismatch, there quickly becomes a genuine family bond and togetherness which allowed the pair to create a microcosm of their own on stage. A protective bubble that sees the other characters interacting with their world rather than with the twins as individuals. Like the proton and the neutron, they get agitated the closer they are, yet the more distant they are, gravity brings them back together.

The timeline is mixed but the story flowing, taking you on the journey through their lives but losing the sense of stability and home, what Brian Daniels' calls heritage. Loss is a big part of the work and the characters spend most of the play searching for faint memories and something that isn’t there. Most of the Dialogue is delivered in monologue, interrupting the action and giving the innermost thoughts of the characters. But even in the monologue there is a feeling you aren’t getting the whole story. The feeling that Stephen and Carol cannot be honest about what lurks in the dark part of their mind.

Brian Daniels acknowledges there are more themes running through the play than you can deal with, but that is a consequence of the situation rather than a desire to cram more in. Serial killers, institutionalisation, care homes, abuse, broken homes, community, loss, family ties, addiction, domestic violence, drugs and more are touched upon. The way Carol jokes about being beaten and sexually abused by her father in a throw away comment could almost be the subject for a play in itself. But it is just a phrase within a sentence - the white space on the page.

The play turns on a scene between the Serial Killer and twin Stephen during a prison visit. Will Fox gives a compelling performance as Peter Sutton. He walks a fine line between normality and madness. It would be easy to ham up the performance of such an obvious villain, but there is just a hint of something not right which makes his performance chilling. It is the similarities he has with the twins that are as disturbing as the differences.

The twin’s mother haunts the play. Carolyn Eden plays her character on stage and you get the feeling she is of her time background. Again, there is a fine line in her character between caring mother and street worker.

Seeing Christa Ackroyd in the play as herself also adds an interesting dimension. Having trained as a journalist in Leeds and worked the patch, I met a lot of journalists who worked at the time of the ripper and a few policemen. She is someone who experienced the fear of the ripper as a young female reporter, not only a potential victim, but someone talking to the victims’ families.

Like the play, there’s a lot to cover and there is a danger of over running. However, Brian Daniels' play feels slightly unfinished. Again, this is deliberate. You could add twenty more minutes and the feeling would be the same. The characters will carry on being haunted the whole of their life, but the ray of hope offered is how they chose to accept their legacy and deal with their emotions.

A new play with limited stage time means there will be more improvement and development. The scene changes need smoothing out as the flow often slipped between scenes. I’d also liked to have seen more use of the sound effects used very well but so sparingly. The comic relief is needed and needs polishing to bring it to the forefront. But these are small gripes and it will be interesting to see the show closer to the end of its run.

Where’s Your Mama Gone isn’t a performance you watch as pure entertainment but it is an experience worth going through. After the applause, you can tell it has made people think as the normal chatter is replaced with near silence as they contemplate what they’ve seen.The play runs until the 28th May at The Carriageworks Theatre, Leeds.

Some of the issues tackled can be summed up in Richard McCann's self written article here.

Contemplating Jaume Plensa

Normally when I sit down to write up a blog of an event or happening, I like to sit down straight away and relate the experience while the memories are still fresh in my mind.

Due to a hectic four days, I've not been able to this time and, in a way, I'm glad because I've reflected on the Jaume Plensa exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is also fitting as, in his introduction, Jaume told us "We do not spend enough time in our own space just thinking."

This is demonstrated by a pair of glass brick boxes, just smaller than a telephone booth, that both cut you off from the outside world yet are open and airy. I thought that entering the box would be claustrophobic but far from it. The muffled sounds of the outside world and bright lit space was calming and a place to think, even if its thinking of nothing.

Jaume also said the themes of his work were the self and in the confusion caused by conflicting communication channels that dominate our lives. I personally felt the work was more of the self.

Despite promising to visit for more years than I can remember, this was my first visit to the sculpture park. Jaume Plensa's imposing crouched figures make an impact from the moment you enter the park, with a figure high on a plinth. The figures placed in the park look part of the outstanding scenery across the Valley despite being far from natural.

The silvery bodies view the vistas in calm reflection as if considering themselves and their lives, taking inspiration from their surroundings. Made of letters, these stunning and lifelike sculptures are meant to show how something as simple as a letter turns to a word, sentence, idea and on to being something more like a book.



And this is where my own reflections come in to play. The day after my visited, I was at Twycross Zoo with my family. The zoo specialises in caring for monkeys and I saw how they, like the statues, sat crouched with their arms wrapped around their legs contemplating their surroundings. Monkey's also see a smile as threatening behaviour and they show happiness when relaxed and with a downward turn to the mouth.

Thinking about the pieces in the Yorkshire Scultpure Park, it shows how Jaume Plensa has created something primal and slightly melancholic. But the melancholy isn't something sad, but just a reflective mood that shows a future hope and renewal of spirit.

One of the pieces is made from mesh and have a ghostly quality. You can never quite see them and the they don't impinge on the view but are always there and present. Another sees a series of figures hugging saplings in a quiet area of the gardens.



The exhibition is in two distinct areas. As well as the sculptures in the gardens, there are those in the underground galleries. You move from the brightness of the outside to the dark subterranean world. Had Jaume Plensa not said so, this reserved Englishman would have missed half of the exhibition. The experience is as much about touch and sound as it is about the visual art.

The galleries have a long curtain of verses strung from floor to ceiling separating the outside world from the interior. Running your hand across the letters make them chime, with the tintinnabulations evoking Jaume Plensa's memories of a beaded curtain from his childhood home.

The first gallery has the same crounched figures on the wall in the see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil. The evil here is the stress and anxiety of modern living rather than behaviour. The theme is replicated in the next room with three giant heads looking inwardly at each other.



The third gallery is an experience in itself and photographs do no do it justice. The six foot high elongated heads are lit brightly in a dark room and are so unexpected compared to the other rooms. Similar to the giant head Jaume created near St Helens, these androgynous and beautifully lifelike faces are calm and serene. Although digitally created, they feel ancient and almost living. Their feels to be a presence in the room as if something living inhabits the heads, may be only opening the closed eyes after midnight. A magical set of sculptures.

The final gallery is filled with gongs of varying tones which resound throughout the exhibition space. These red gold gongs are in a circle, filled with the words from the song of songs in the old testament.

The end room shows more detail and information about Jaume Plensa's life and work. It includes a mobile, lit deliberately to make the shadows as much part of the work of art as the figures clinging on to the mobile almost for dear life. This work is constantly changing as the strands of the mobile move round.

Before leaving, I climbed the hill to see the one, major sculpture as tall as a house, looking out across the valley. The work is totally different viewed from the inside than from the outside. With the light fading, it was also fascinating to see how the silver letter sculptures changed from bright silver to red tinged figures to dull grey before being lit up to being almost white beacons shining across the panorama.

My overall impression was this was as good an art exhibition as I remember seeing. This is partly down to the setting of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Having also been to the Compton Verney gallery in Warwickshire a few days after, the vistas of Capability Brown have nothing on the Yorkshire countryside when finding locations for sculptures. No white room in a London gallery could do the sculptures justice either.

The alabaster heads in the third gallery stayed with me, along with the inner contemplation of many of the works and will for a time to come.

The exhibition is on between the 9 April 2011 - 25 September 2011. For more information, visit the YSP website

A Farewell to Screen Yorkshire and inward investment?

The problem with cuts is they just remove expenditure.

To reduce debt, you have to do a whole lot more than cut costs. In fact, cutting costs can result in further problems down the line.

Screen Yorkshire is a case in point as it sees its funding under threat. As the BAFTAs bestow accolades on films made with Screen Yorkshire’s help, the organisation is looking at shutting its doors. The Kings Speech used the Odsall Stadium and Elland Road.

The end of Yorkshire Forward would always see a number of the regional development organisations biting the dust – but at what costs?

Some of Yorkshire Forward’s funded bodies might have been a white elephant than a great white hope, but Screen Yorkshire has been a net contributor to the region’s economy.

I haven’t all the figures, but the last report suggests £70.6 million invested in the region as a result of the organisation between 2006 and 2009. I’d heard a figure of £82 million, suggesting a further £11.5 million being invested in the last year.
The investment from Screen Yorkshire last year was £5 million.

So we save £5 million and potentially lose around £10 million. Add to this the tourists brought to the region and the knock on effect of having associated businesses busy with supporting the film crews, and the benefits are probably greater.

Not all the filming will cease but it will make a big dent into the region’s film economy, already suffering from the centralisation of TV production.

The funding is difficult to directly replace as the ‘benefits’ don’t come in a big cash sum paid into the bank. Private capital won’t get the 100% return in the same way that the region’s businesses and councils benefit from the money spent across the region.

So we trust Manchester and London based organisations to represent Yorkshire? Would they be more likely to promote a cobbled street in Salford or Bradford? A railway arch in Brixton or Leeds? Or maybe the loss of support sees films moved out of the UK altogether?

If the financial side didn’t add up, fair enough, but we need small businesses to grow through investment and prosper. This is the only way we can stimulate the economy to get business booming again. The tax take increases and we can start to pay off the debts of the past government.

Yorkshire has a fine tradition of film making from Louis Le Prince to Billy Lair; from This Sporting Life to The Railway Children and from Brassed Off to Four Lions. The loss of Screen Yorkshire wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of this heritage, but it certainly would make it harder for the next Yorkshire blockbuster.

For more information on Screen Yorkshire, click here.