David Parkin on Soviet-style rewriting history, army manoeuvres and board meeting horror shows

AT the recent Eve of Tour de France dinner hosted by Welcome to Yorkshire and Leeds City Council, guests leaving the first direct arena in Leeds were given a goody bag.

And rather than full of the usual flyers and 10% off vouchers for hairdos, it contained quite an interesting book which I decided to delve into during a sleepless night earlier this week.

How Leeds Changed the World pitches itself as ‘Encyclopaedia Leeds’, a compendium of remarkable facts about the city.

Throughout 240 pages it promises to illuminate the reader will fascinating facts about Leeds. Apparently the city was the birthplace of the world’s first functioning locomotive, the pencil rubber, the mapping of DNA, kidney dialysis, lads’ mags, the telescopic sight and the world’s first disco.

It is written in a rather flippant way by author Mick Mcann. In what way? Well on the back cover it reads: “Guess which British city spawned the current three most successful high street chains in the UK? That’s right, Bristol. Only kidding, but can you name them?”

As I started to read through it, I remembered that the late Jimmy Savile used to boast that he started the first disco by playing records at a dance in Leeds.

Given the book was published by Armley Press in 2010, that was before the revelations emerged following his death that reveal him as Britain’s worst ever sex offender.

So I turned to the S section of the book to see what was written about the former Jim’ll Fix It presenter and couldn’t find any reference to Savile, but then noticed that page 194 was next to page 199 and on closer inspection that two pages of the book had been neatly clipped out close to the spine.

I quickly turned to look up ‘d’ for disco and, low and behold, four more pages had been removed leaving a gap between the entry on page 60 for Liz Dawn, who played battleaxe Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street, and Wordsworth Donisthorpe, who apparently produced the world’s first moving images before Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers but couldn’t find funding for his invention.

So someone, in their wisdom, had decided to erase Jimmy Savile from this history of the city in which he was born.

What it is claimed Savile did to hundreds of children and vulnerable people is disgusting. The fact that no evidence of these claims emerged during his decades as a popular celebrity is  very concerning.

But not talking about him and the Soviet-style clipping references to him out of books doesn’t mean he didn’t exist. Radio stations probably won’t play a Rolf Harris record ever again, but his recent conviction as a sex offender doesn’t mean he wasn’t a hugely popular entertainer for half a century.

I bet the city councillors who advocated changing the name of the airport, or renaming City Square in Leeds to honour Jimmy Savile in the weeks after his death are relieved their ideas weren’t adopted.

It cost an estimated £50,000 to rebrand the Saviles Hall venue at the Royal Armouries to New Dock Hall.

It would have taken decades to live down the humiliation of naming a square after a sex offender.

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THERE was only a few hundred people watching a parade by the armed forces in Leeds to commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War.

The parade was held in Millennium Square with the Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire and the Lord Mayor of Leeds taking a salute from members of the Parachute Regiment along with other soldiers, sailors and air, sea and army cadets and members of the British Legion.

A band in scarlet tunics belted out an entertaining range of tunes, including the theme from the A Team, Tom Jones’ It’s Not Unusual and Michael Buble’s Haven’t Met You Yet.

It is a pity more people weren’t there to see it, but it begs the question how does a council get its news out there if less people are reading newspapers and Twitter followers are too busy sipping lattes and browsing their timelines?

As the veterans stood ramrod straight in their blazers and berets, the heat of a summer Saturday morning was claiming victims among the cadets, with NCOs dashing into their ranks to prop up the wilting youngsters, helping them to the side of the square where they were given water and treated by medics.

The veterans didn’t comment, just swapped stories about dodgy knees and aching backs.

As I walked away at the end of the parade I bumped into a friend of mine, Nathan Lane of Campfire PR, who had also been watching and observed: “That will go down in cadet history as the Battle of Millennium Square, where the cadets sustained 40% casualties.”

If any of these youngsters do join the armed forces, I just hope they drink plenty of water and have an early night before they see active service.

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APPARENTLY Yorkshire-based ‘multi channel brand agency’, The Space People has recently appointed two new non-executive directors.

One of them is a hedge fund owner who glories in the name Alexander Viscount Frankenstein.

I’ve got images of board meetings resembling a scene from a Hammer House of Horror film.

Have a great weekend.