Articles by RayDusky Nights at Old Slab SquareWritten for Nottingham Essence website, 2011
I never wanted to be here. Not at all. Not in Nottingham. I was born and brought up grammar school in Northampton and went to London for pleasure – only an hour away. When I was 16/ 17 the pattern of life was Monday to Friday in the VI form and I enjoyed my time in school where I was not the brightest button nor a sporting ace, but immensely popular. The pattern of life then was on Friday night or Saturday morning I’d slope away on the train if there was money or hitchhiking if not to troll round Piccadilly Circus as a sort of rent boy. I was handsome . I liked the company in the pubs The Standard, White Bear and Wards. I liked the attention. I liked the sex which I was good at. I liked the money and I liked the boozing. Never had or heard of any trouble. Odd so many things then were illegal but went on more accessible to more people than today. The Society then was much more free than today. And another thing... Read the full article Every man’s meat - Berni InnsFrom In Britain December 1980
There is a corner of every British town, it seems sometimes, that is forever Berni: a brightly lit, olde worlde façade where good value all-inclusive meals are available in plush surrounding that belie the price. Ray Gosling, a life-long fan of Berni Inns, tries to convey the taste of success. MY FRIEND John is a bachelor, and like many people who live alone for ten years or so, he’s become a fair cook. We wanted to go out to eat, and he wouldn’t have a tandoori, or a kebab. First we went to a trendy ‘English” peppermint-parlour type of new place where all the waitresses look like Mary Quant, and the waiters wear day-glo short trousers, and the walls are chromium and mirrors and blown up photographs of Humphrey Bogart and the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, but we just had a drink. Then we went to a Berni and the steak was good. Read the full article |
The rise of the skinhead
Guardian article - 1969
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This England: the Pennines: A Writer’s Notebook
From the TV Times 1980 – four 30 minute films made with Granada meeting people on a summer trip through the Pennines. Film maker and writer Ray Gosling is on his travels again, this time through the Pennines where landscape and character seem to fit.
The people who live on England’s rooftop by Ray Gosling
The “star” of these short summary films is quite literally and physically the backbone of Britain. The English countryside, and the films’ object, is to give pleasure: to look at spectacular scenery, and now and then to drop in on some fine and interesting local people we met in the Pennine hills. Fine as in fine ale, interesting as in a life well played; the honest to goodness people for whom the North Country from Skipton in Yorkshire to the Scottish border is famous.
I wasn’t born in the country. I’m a townee, through and through. But I like to visit it, and I think we all do. Of course, being in a film crew, beavering our way through two months of driving round hairpin bends, we saw more than a normal tourist. We entered people’s lives. Independent people.
Read the full article
The people who live on England’s rooftop by Ray Gosling
The “star” of these short summary films is quite literally and physically the backbone of Britain. The English countryside, and the films’ object, is to give pleasure: to look at spectacular scenery, and now and then to drop in on some fine and interesting local people we met in the Pennine hills. Fine as in fine ale, interesting as in a life well played; the honest to goodness people for whom the North Country from Skipton in Yorkshire to the Scottish border is famous.
I wasn’t born in the country. I’m a townee, through and through. But I like to visit it, and I think we all do. Of course, being in a film crew, beavering our way through two months of driving round hairpin bends, we saw more than a normal tourist. We entered people’s lives. Independent people.
Read the full article
The Gosling Trail: a place-taster guide to the unexpected
Article on Gosling’s Travels from the TV Times 1975 - 30 minute films made with Granada, subjects covered: Goole, Bath, Liverpool lunchtime, Aldershot, Trafford Park, Caravan Park between Rhyl and Abergele, Oil rig at Nigg, Cambridge, Ebbw Vale, Cruise ship and Whittingham Mental Hospital
So I’ve been on my travels again; and if you wonder is there any logic in where I go – there isn’t. Unlike almost all other telly documentaries, I go as I please. The places are randomly chosen in this series as they were in the last.
Apart from a visit by the Queen, the only time a place gets any national mention is when something dreadful happens, like a Glasgow fire, or the Cambridge rapist. Some lock out, strike or redundancy. A dazzling phenomenon like the Liverpool Sound. An awful disaster. An Aberfan. Some doom impending like a motorway over the meadow. The peril of pesticide to Norfolk broads.
I exaggerate – but not a lot. The old adage still runs, that the only news they print is the bad news.
And most documentaries are background to the news.
This past 12 months I’ve really noticed the difference between what I’ve read in the daily Press and what I’ve seen with my own eyes as I travel.
Read the full article
So I’ve been on my travels again; and if you wonder is there any logic in where I go – there isn’t. Unlike almost all other telly documentaries, I go as I please. The places are randomly chosen in this series as they were in the last.
Apart from a visit by the Queen, the only time a place gets any national mention is when something dreadful happens, like a Glasgow fire, or the Cambridge rapist. Some lock out, strike or redundancy. A dazzling phenomenon like the Liverpool Sound. An awful disaster. An Aberfan. Some doom impending like a motorway over the meadow. The peril of pesticide to Norfolk broads.
I exaggerate – but not a lot. The old adage still runs, that the only news they print is the bad news.
And most documentaries are background to the news.
This past 12 months I’ve really noticed the difference between what I’ve read in the daily Press and what I’ve seen with my own eyes as I travel.
Read the full article