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Published: January 12th 2013
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Not so many people have been to Norwich,but millions know that Norwich is in Anglia. They wouldn't have looked in an atlas or zoomed into the satellite photos on google earth to know it. Nor would they have had to have paid attention in schoolroom geography lessons. Gazillions know Norwich is in "Anglia" ....because the telly told them every Saturday.
Just as we've got the jist about where New York sits because of The Apprentice and cop shows, so the same is true with the English jewel in the incredibly near east. Anglia is a local British television station. Their most renowned telly show of all time (the seventies) was intimately bound with Norwich and was introduced,
"Live.
From Norwich
It's the Quiz of the Week."
However, instead of featuring a brash whacky haired Donald Trump or a pool ball smooth headed Kojak, on the Sale of the Century we were given the ultimate in slickly coiffured English question masters; Nicholas Parsons.
"Norwich" to English folk born in the 1960s means Nicholas Parsons and a set of kitchen knives. Norwich means Nicholas posing a question for contestants to win the kitchen knives and Norwich means Nicholas announcing the kitchen knives are coming up on an Instant Sale. Norwich means peroxide bimbos draped over lounge suites or perched on a "complete set of family bicycles - one hundred and twenty seven pounds" in the final mega Sale of the Century, you are the winner sale.
Norwich means a strange electric organ played by ….. (someone please remind me of his name, Peter Fenn?) building up the anticipation and tension for the arrival of our Nicholas running down the steps through the grannies in the live audience, every one of them delighted to have got free tickets and to be on a group outing.
My paternal grandparents lived just outside Norwich in Ormsby St Margaret. It’s a smashing village marooned in an ocean of pea farms and quite close to the Norfolk Broads. Olive and Frank fitted like a hand in a Morrissean glove into the Sale of the Century audience demographic. They drooled over those kitchen knives. Nicholas Parsons was their patron saint.
Their retirement bungalow was a mere one hour up the country lanes from the red bricked "Anglia" TV studios. In school half term holidays they treated me and my sister with a trip to the shops in Norwich's city centre and a tour of the frightening medieval armoury in Norwich’s castle. We'd pass the TV Studios on the way in. From the back of their Morris Marina we'd pipe up with the fanfare and intro music to "Sale of the Century". Oh, it was quite the thrill to see the door Nicholas used when he rolled into work.
However, those very same buggers at Anglia's TV studios were responsible for me failing idiotic school geography tests, those that test your memory to correctly label the English counties.
If you've been to Norwich you will know that Norwich is in the county of Norfolk. Norwich is actually the county town of Norfolk, though I forget what it is that makes a "county town" a "county town".
On some of the road signs it said "Norwich. Norfolk." Which made marking Norfolk on my county Test of the Week a doddle. On other signs, "Norwich: A Fine City", and believe me, it was. It seemed the sign writers couldn’t leave off penning a snippy tag line.
But it was the telly that implied around Norwich there was an "Anglia".
Only in my later years did I understand that "Anglia" is a figment of our English cultural imaginations. "Anglia" doesn't exist. Wessex doesn't exist. Camelot doesn’t exist. They’re made up, they’re fictitious spaces. Labels used to make us feel something about an English past with the workers sharing common lands and the landlords being nice at Christmas. Or something. "Anglia" was created for the telly people as "Wessex" is a Thomas Hardy-esque handle donated to the posh literary shire crowd. Suffolk (the one south of Norfolk) nearly, so very nearly, remains Suffolk. But some will know that Suffolk is increasingly and sickeningly being marketed, for the oil painting appreciating tourists, as "Constable Country".
Thomas Hardy, he gets a county, all Arthurian and providing scenes for Hovis commercials. Shakespeare gets one in the Midlands. Then there's Emily Bronte. Her county is up in Yorkshire I believe. And Wordsworth has got his spot in the Lake District. No doubt Postman Pat and Harry fuc'king Potter will be assigned a swathe of Britain in years to come. If they haven't already.
But Norfolk, as far as I know, still remains Norfolk. "Norfolk; Nicolas Parsons' Country" as a cultural-geographical-pull-in-the-punters-label probably won’t happen. And that's a shame. Nicholas is as much a part of Britain as any bloke dibbling his knife in his oils or any bird twiddling a pen. Surely Nicholas' Instant Sale Steak Knives are as culturally relevant as Constable's horses and haycarts stuck in the rivers, or the baird's plays performed by sixth form students.
In my dreams I would like to see this Gramscian cultural hegemonic county labeling shattered into tiny pieces. Come the revolution I would relabel these with the earthy 1970s place labels that we had as kids. Labels that meant something decent was kicking off after Blue Peter. I’d hazard a guess my world map was fed more by the cathode ray tube and comics than it was by classroom novels.
Granada, land of Coronation Street.
Yorkshire, home of Emmerdale.
Tyne Tees, the place of incomprehensible weathermen.
Central, Crossroads Country and Land of Motels.
Thames, which turned into London Weekend Television on a Friday lunchtime and bounced back to being Thames by after school Monday.
But of all the local telly networks "Anglia" creams the lot and lands spontaneous top of mind awareness and salient associations. "Anglia" has the best music and the best logo. The logo gave us proper history and proper Norwich-ness.
I think that out of all the telly stations it was the only logo done in 3d rather than some muppeting around with letraset and felt tip pens because the graphic designers had spent three years stoned out of their trees at art school. The Anglia logo is a cracking stainless steel knight wearing full Norwich Castle armour. The knight even had a silver flag flapping on the top of his lance. What's more, the whole lot revolved on an automated cake stand ("Instant sale pricefour pounds"). Fabulous. That what Britain's about. Steel. Black Princes, Henry V, Jousting.
I’m writing this in Thailand. This is where I now watch my telly.
Here we get 'Channel Seven' and ‘Channel Five” among other numbers – they’re military controlled channels. The army bods in charge of Thai Culture lash out their station names with dodgy spatial or royal significance. They play full on nationalist imagery bordering on the fascist before their game shows... Tsch, it's so very, very un-Anglian.
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