MARTIN DAWES - Why it's Bognor Regis mon amour
YOU may have noticed a little story in the papers last week about the silly burghers on Bognor Town Council requesting the rest of Britain to refer to the Sussex seaside town by its full name of Bognor Regis.
"We got fed up with people making fun of us and calling us plain old Bognor or plain old Regis," local councillor Don Eldridge was reported to have said.
Now this news might have passed me by if I had not lived and worked in the town in the Seventies.
Bognor was then, and obviously still is, proud of being given the Regis title in 1929 by King George V who had convalesced in the resort.
Until then it had struggled on gamely for over a thousand years or so as just plain Bognor.
Mind you, and I can say this as a former resident, Bognor didn't have a lot to be proud of.
It had a pier, the end of which was damaged in a storm and not repaired. But it did provide the setting for the Birdman of Bognor competition when every year idiots dressed as birds or in homemade flying outfits, attempted to fly a certain distance to win a prize.
Working in the Bognor district office of the evening paper, the Brighton Argus, I could always be sure of a half page picture special the following Monday.
Astronomer Patrick Moore, who lived in nearby Selsey, made a great master of ceremonies. Sadly, the council made the owners pull down the end of the pier and what was left was in too shallow water so the Birdman flew off to nearby Worthing.
Bognor also had a massive Butlins holiday camp, which together with a free press pass gave a young reporter an added boost to his social life.
For out of season - and the season was very short in Bognor - it was just another delapidated seaside town although I hear things have perked up since.
I would spend the money in the camp I had earned sending local television stations late night reports.
Quickly grasping that the editors would favour items for which they had stock TV footage, the viewers of Southern Television became intimately acquainted with the interminable on-off plans to restore a local building, Hotham Park House.
Easy entry into Butlins was a bonus. The camp was a target for local youths because of the number of girl campers. Sadly for them, non-holidaymakers had to be out by six. To emphasise the point it was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. For some lads, this was a challenge.
I still remember a local copper telling me of a chap who had impaled himself while trying to shimmy over.
"He'll be inno state to get what he was after," grinned the desk sergeant.
Now journalists never like to use two words where one will do and the style of the Argus was to call the town Bognor Regis the first time in each story and Bognor thereafter.
It worked.
I fear that the town council's request to give the town its full title will fall upon deaf ears in newsrooms across the country.
In fact, they may well echo the words of George V himself who, despite his stay for the benefit of his health, had no great love for the town.
Legend has it that when on his death bed courtiers murmured in his ear that he would soon be well enough to visit, the king muttered "Bugger Bognor" and expired.
Got a view? Leave a comment below.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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