SHOWBIZ YESTERDAYS
Accommodating and entertaining generations of holiday-makers for well over a century, The Grand Hotel in Scarborough is now alas attracting headlines for all the wrong reasons. Mark Ritchie remembers the time when the tide began to change within the walls of this architectural masterpiece on the Yorkshire coast.
Butlins left The Grand Hotel Scarborough over 20-years ago and since then the magnificent premises have passed into the hands of the people running The Britannia Hotels organisation.
I remember the late great agent producer and comedian Tony Peers running the show up and down the country in Butlins Hotels in Scarborough, Blackpool, Llandudno and Folkestone. Towards the end of his tenure as head of entertainment, I remember Tony holding court in The Grand hotel bar with the representatives of the new owners. I had just finished one of my shows next-door, in the ballroom cum cabaret room. I recall the audience would either use the dance floor table seating, or venture up the ornate Victorian staircase to repose in the tip-up theatre-style seating, where a birds-eye view of the whole aesthetically delightful scene could be enjoyed.
Soon after, Explosive Productions, a company run by a nice man called Syd Simms took over the supply of the entertainment at The Grand. The hypnotist Ken Webster supplied the visiting cabaret.
On one Scarborough evening, faced with an elderly crowd who seemed to want nothing more then a sing-song and a dance, I changed my set to include a wee bit more music. It seemed to go well, but I never worked there again.
When Britannia Hotels originally acquired The Grand Hotel, they ploughed in £7m towards the building restoration and refurbishment. Their vision for the future of this building, which dominates the South Bay skyline in this much-loved resort, seemed to me opaque and incongruously ill-fitting within their chain of more modern hotels and holiday centres. We should not forget that Britannia also acquired the Pontins chain a decade or so after they moved into Scarborough. Some people have observed that the South Bay in Scarborough resembles in some ways the Italian coastline around Porto Fino. If that were true, Alas the Grand Hotel itself now seems like Venice with acne!
It is unclear whether the Britannia Chain of over 60 UK-hotels, which also includes The Metropole Hotel next to the North Pier in Blackpool and the once magnificent Norbreck Castle hotel on the outskirts of the same resort, is being run in a parsimonious way, or if the whole thing is under-capitalized? I would suggest neither claim is completely accurate. Perhaps acquiring and simply keeping up with the huge costs involved in maintaining such historic and important sites is proving too much for individual managers and their area funding schemes to keep track of.
The Grand Hotel Scarborough stands on the spot of a house where the writer Anne Bronte was living at the time of her death. Indeed, the author of classic novels Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is buried in the churchyard at St Mary’s Church, which also shares a similarly spectacular view over Scarborough South Bay with The Grand Hotel. Ms Bronte’s work has been restored and updated by other authors. Does the same happy fate await the hotel situated on the spot she lived and died on? We can only live in hope.
