Comedy of the Week - Mark Steel's in Town

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Mark Steel's In Town - Margate“...a nice spot not vulgarised by crowds of literary people...” Oscar WildeIn this first episode Mark visits the lovely seaside town of Margate in the Thanet district of Kent.A magical place where T.S Eliot wrote a verse of The Wasteland, J.M.W Turner painted views of the Harbour, Tracy Emin spent her formative years and Pete Doherty has his name on a wall of fame in a cafe for eating a "mega breakfast" in under 20 minutes.Mark visits Dreamland and its 100 year old rollercoaster, the famous Crab Museum and the historic Walpole Hotel before perfoming his show in the Cliff Bar and snooker hall under the iconic Lido Tower.This is the 13th series of Mark's award winning show where he travels around the country visiting towns that have nothing in common but their uniqueness. After thoroughly researching each town, Mark writes and performs a bespoke evening of comedy for a local audience.As well as Margate, in this series, Mark be will also be popping to Stoke on Trent, Malvern, East Grinstead and Coleraine in Northern Ireland.Written and performed by Mark SteelAdditional material by Pete Sinclair Production co-ordinator Katie Baum Sound Manager Jerry Peal Producer Carl CooperA BBC Studios Audio production for Radio 4

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts I like Margate because it's erm erm erm Oh it was the first seaside town. Was it the first seaside town? Oh yeah! Sunsets. I love the beach in winter when there are no people. The lady who did the unmade bed. Tracy Emin. Tracy Emin. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's policy. We've got the Turner Contemporary.

We've got TS Eliot who wrote a very famous poem. Wrote part of the wasteland at the bandstand there. Dreamland. Dreamland, you can still see the big wheel. The teacups. The Enterprise. The Walters. It was very rickety.

You would fear for your life, but you'd still go on it again. Much less rough now. There's no worse than anywhere else. I really like it. It's like a little mini Las Vegas. They're really bloody good sunsets. Can't complain. Mark Steele's in town.

CHEERING Thank you so much. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE Thank you so much and welcome to Mark Steele's in town, which this week comes from the Kentish Riviera, where you can barely see across the harbour as it's packed with luxury yachts. We're in Margate, where you come into town and the first thing you see is the sign that says dreamland because that is exactly what your dreams look like if you had post-traumatic stress disorder. Dirty brickwork above a cinema that's been

shut for many years next to a shopping centre that was burnt down in suspicious circumstances. Who doesn't have a dream like that? And it is true, you often see the elite of London sauntering across Marine Terrace in their Range Rovers because they've got lost looking for Witzable. There are so many classic buildings here in Margate and none more famous than Arlington House. Margate's Taj Mahal. The biggest building in Margate, visible from many miles away, a symbol of the town, because it's deceptive Arlington House. From a long way off it looks like an ugly, dirty, huge concrete block. But as you get nearer you realise, oh it's even worse than I thought.

And Margate is of course on the Kent coast for anybody who doesn't know. It's where the Thames Ends and the wind swirls off the North Sea, the most inviting of all the seas, giving you a unique climate that they don't have in Ramsgate or Broadstairs of all year round swirling horrible drizzle. When I came round here to look around a little while ago, it was winter and lots of people from Margate gave me lots of suggestions of places I should go to, galleries, museums, quirky cafes.

So I went to all the places that were recommended and I enjoyed the common theme of all of them, which is they were all shut. Because the town motto in Margate is, we're shut on a Tuesday, it's a shame you're not here tomorrow. So you say, all right, then I'll come back tomorrow and they go, yeah, we're shut on Wednesdays and all.

Now I understand this, Margate is a seaside town, which is why everything is shut from Mondays to Wednesdays between October and May. But to be fair, in the summer season, it is, of course, very different, because then everything's shut from Monday to Wednesday between May and October. Where do you get things? between May and October. Where do you get things?

And now some people are trying to make Margate posh. I'm not sure you're ready to become the Monaco of Thanet. You like the old Margate. The local newsletter, for example, defends Arlington House. It says, stop anyone in the street and ask them, what do you think of Arlington House? And the reply would vary. They might say, it's ugly, it's overwhelming, it's dirty, or it's full of drug addicts.

So a whole range of opinions then. And the newsletter goes on, only one of these is true, it is dirty. But only on the outside. On the inside there's no vomit in the lifts, no discarded condoms or needles in the corridors. It's not a high bar they set is it? And you've modernised the view in Margate as well in another way with a long line of wind farms and when they were built assurances were given that they would fit in with the

local environment and they do because they're turned off from Monday to Wednesday. But you don't need trevy fountains and colosseums to be attractive, Margot. You attract people with your cheery common charm. Because you've got one of the most famous fairgrounds in Britain, Dreamland, which is currently boasting the iconic roller coaster is 100 years old. Now, I'll be honest, it's cute when a house has a plaque saying this is 100 years old. Now I'll be honest, it's cute when a house has a plaque saying this is a hundred years old, but I'm not sure you want a listed roller coaster to be. When you're upside down travelling at 80 miles an hour round a corner, do you think, isn't

it marvellous to think this was built just after the First World War? LAUGHTER But there's more to Margate than its idyllic beaches and its jelly-deal cuisine. Now, I don't usually mention headlines in local papers, but there's this one from Kent Online that I think is worthy of note. Margate bus driver out of boredom has sex with family pets. LAUGHTER Out of boredom! If I was a detective, I guess that happened between Monday and Wednesday.

LAUGHTER But now you've become the focal point for a range of artists and writers and filmmakers. Tracy Emin grew up here and she's back here now and she's written a heartwarming memoir about her days in Margate. For example, this is from her book, I was a girl dancing provocatively in Margate in 1977 when the town's leading drug dealer grabbed me by the wrist we checked into the Nail and Rock Hotel. He fell asleep half naked on the bed so I called my mum to say I was on my way home went through his pockets took 16 pounds and 20 Benson and Edges and I like to think that story sums up the

spirit of Margate. up the spirit of Margate. Of innocent fun and art and entrepreneurs. And there are so many well-known authors who have been here, been inspired by Margate. John Betjeman wrote a poem called Margate 1940 about why we were fighting the war and he wrote what a pleasure to see the ground floor with tables for two laid as tables for four and bottles of sauces kia ora and squash awaiting their owners who'd gone up to wash and I bet that inspired the Spitfire pilots. There's another verse which is less known I think it flows better that goes shrieking around dreamland in terror and laughter, Tizer and chips on the beach moments after, Knicking some fags off a bloke while he snored,

Molesting the guinea pig when he got bored. I prefer that one. One of the most famous poems in English, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland mentions Margate. So there's a mural of him at the railway station that says T.S. Eliot, toilet, because his name is an anagram of toilet. What a childish town. What a childish town. The bus shelter where he wrote the verse, in the wasteland, about Margate is one of

the twenty attractions to visit on the Visit Thanet Tourist website. It goes, on Margate Sands I can connect nothing with nothing. The broken fingernails of dirty hands, my people, humble people who expect nothing." That's what you made him feel. LAUGHTER And you're very proud of T.S. Eliot, and it should be celebrated that a famous poem

described in the literary magazine The Atlantic as, "...an apocalyptic view of misery and loss by a disturbed man possessed with visions of squalor. That's you who inspired that. But it has been glamorous here, isn't it? This was once the most glorious Lido, where we are right now in the Lido. It was a majestic open-air art deco swimming pool with stands

where hundreds of people would watch. And it was the pride of the town and it attracted thousands of tourists. It was this beautiful thing and it was shut in the 1980s. I expect the government saw a hole in the ground, thought it was a mine and thought we'd better close that. Tracy Emin learnt to swim in the Lido, she says. Tracy was forward-thinking, of course, as an inspirational artist with a bed

surrounded by empty vodka bottles and condoms and fag butts when you think that now Southern Water has created its own installation. And they put it in the sea, and it's a wonderful thought-provoking piece. has created its own installation. LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE And they put it in the sea, and it's a wonderful thought-provoking piece. But the one thing that survived everything is Dreamland, and the credit for Dreamland should go

to the private railway owners of Victorian times, because they were all in competition. So in 1866, the London, Chatham and Dover railway company bought land on Marine Drive to build a station But Southeast Railways bought some land a few yards away and built their station first Now the first railway company had spent a fortune on a chunk of land that was useless But at least the railway companies learned from that mistake and never again were rail companies allowed to waste vast sums of public money on a useless project that was clearly not a work.

The mayor of Margate back then formed a partnership with Lord George Sanger who wasn't a lord, he lied about that, but he ran circuses and Lord George Sanger's wife claimed to invent the trick of putting your head in a lion's mouth and he built an archway across the front that said it was based on Margate Abbey even though Margate had never had an abbey and he filled the land with elephants and lions and tigers and it's all so Margate. When you live here do you feel like you're living in an episode of only fools and horses? And then the land was sold to a man called Lord Henry Isles who built Dreamland and he was the same man whose idea it was to build the Lido and then according to secret Margate books, down there somewhere, in

1938 Isles went bankrupt and Dreamland went into liquidation. And there was one pamphlet I read about the history of Dreamland and three consecutive chapters started with the words, sadly, Dreamland then went into decline. LAUGHTER And every bit of the Dreamland story is like this. In 1996, the site was bought by local entrepreneur Jimmy Godden,

who I'm sure you all know. And then, very, very popular Jimmy Godden, who secured grants for a three million pounds redevelopment and then sold off the rides, including the big wheel, which was sold to a park in Mexico. How do you sell a big wheel to Mexico? What sort of spiv? No, we'll have it to you in no time. We're going to tie it to the roof of me mate's transit van and then when we get to Miami we're going to roll it the rest of the way. One of the first things I was told when I came here was the

empty space just past the clock tower is called Goddenden's Gap. Godden's Gap. Because that used to be an amusement arcade owned by Jimmy Godden and he couldn't get permission to knock it down to make another entrance to Dreamland. But as luck would have it one day the arcade burnt down. And he was able to build his shop. So it's just fortunate how things work out sometimes. An act of Godden. An act of Godden someone said. In 2003 he announced that sadly Dreamland had gone into decline so he sold it and I expect he sold the water slide to the Sahara Desert and then the roller coaster stayed open

But the history of dreamland tells us in 2008. It was damaged after an arson attack Another one that was extraordinary. I read it. I Read an article by someone who lived here who wrote I promise this somebody lived here when no business ever just closes in Margate It burns down In Cliftonville Stupid the insurance I don't know how's burnt down, must be flammable water. I bet there are no estate agents in Margate because every time someone moves, you just torch the old house.

This is one of the signs that the town is becoming gentrified because now all the arson's done with eco-friendly fire liars. Someone told me there's a Viking ship here, but it burnt down. A Viking ship? This thing survived wars? Viking wars, but couldn't stay in one piece in modern Margo?

There was a Save Dreamland campaign which resulted in rides being donated by other leisure parks and Southport donated their caterpillar ride and a ghost train and what a marvelous appeal that must have been. Was it one of them that's read by Joanna Lumley? If you could spare anything even a hall of mirrors or a coconut site please please send it to Margate But it did mean that Dreamland could open again, so there was a huge national celebration, and everything was fine, until in 2015, sadly, Dreamland went into decline.

LAUGHTER So, Dan, where's Dan? Hello, Dan. So, Dan Thompson, who is a marvellous man many of you may know, who's written books about Dreamland. It always bounces back again, even when it's, I'm sure even if it's totally levelled, it'll somehow come back again. It will, it'll always come back and it has. Every time you think it's over for Dreamland, somehow it's back and it's fighting and it's changed and it's something new again. Might be an aquarium one day, you're sure?

Wayne Hemingway tried to bolster it, didn't he? He did. The Wayne Hemingway thing was he missed the point of Margate. He didn't get the spirit of Margate in what he did and that version lasted a couple of years before they scrapped it. Before it went into sad decline. Sadly went into decline, yeah. LAUGHTER Margate's always been an egalitarian place. It's always had that mixing of rich and poor people in one place.

And he tried to make it posh and nice and clean. And it doesn't work as that. No, I've got a posh dream lens. I've got a couple of things I want to ask you about. First of all, so Dan, you used to live in Arlington House? I did. I lived in there for about eight years. Look, straight out onto Dreamland, didn't it? One side looks right over Dreamland, yeah.

I went inside there, and once you're inside, the flats are amazing. It's stunning. They're really good flats. They were built as high-end luxury seaside holiday flats, so they were built to a really high-spec. I wouldn't go that far. So do you get fed up with people being rude about it or is that part of the joy of it? It's part of the joy of it but it is a pity because it is it's a fantastic

building and it shows that there was a moment of optimism and hope and joy that Margate was gonna have a future. That's what it was built for. Because it is a really beautiful building. It just needs a bit of love and a bit of affection. It needs a jet wash. It does. Thank you very much to Dan. It's been so great. It was one of those premier escape rooms, as well,

I noticed here that have become very popular. Have any of you been to that? That sort of, yeah, where you're locked in a room and the one in Margate is one of the most challenging in Britain because it's quite easy to get out. The challenge is to get in between Monday and Wednesday. This is the only town where I've seen a sign that says, that way for axe throwing. It's a little brown sign as well, the one that usually says, beautiful forest or Roman wall. For a special day out here, rather than just go for a few pints,

why don't we chuck some axes? And someone told me, oh no, they've got a bar there as well. Well that's reassuring. I always like to think everyone around me has had a drink before they throw axes. It's not going to be easy to take Margate up market. You're going to have to go through it against the whole of history because you've always attracted a certain sort of tourist. An essay, I read this essay in the 1790s on the sort of person who came here. In the 1790s this was written, not many are rich or wise or learned, they are I'm afraid a set of unseasoned Londoners. And they came by steamer because it was cheaper than a coach.

And then another essay said, the real cockneys are to be found in the lower part of the social scale. The first thing they do when landing from the steamer is to sit by a window and eat shrimps. The first reason that people came here was the sea bathing hospital that you can see on the road coming in. Because sea bathing had only been available to the wealthy before then, but then Margate Sea Bathing was for like the unseasoned Londoners.

It made it accessible for them, for people who have shrimps. One of the people who came here was Karl Marx, and he thought the seawater would help his boils. And one of the only things that Karl Marx wrote about his stay here was, my landlady is as deaf as a post. I thought, oh, I bet he loved that. No! I said capitalism! I don't want to overthrow cannibalism, you silly old girl. Capitalism!

And then everyone came to Margate in the 1960s when it was a massive seaside town. Hattie Jake's John LeMassurier had a house here. Lots of the carry-on team used to come down here. They'd stay at the house. And I just, you've got to imagine them just wandering along the front all day with said James going, oh, I wouldn't mind going up and down on her roller coasters. A mechanical elephant was built here that could run. Do you know about the mechanical elephant?

There's the Weatherspoons pub named after it now. And it could run at 27 miles an hour, this thing. And it had a special license to run on the roads at 27 miles an hour. The only explanation I can think of for an elephant running at that speed is there was a bus right behind him and the elephant thought that bus driver looks a bit bored. There's a beautiful, lovely, old, classy side to Margate.

One of the landmarks that so many people said I had to go and see was the Walpole Hotel. And you all know that? Yeah. The hotel's website says, from the moment you enter the Walpole Bay Hotel, you step back in time to the ambience of a bygone era exquisite. So when I come down here in November,

I thought I'll save that to last as a little treat for the end of the day. Guess what happened, my leg. Not just shut, there was a piece of paper on the door that said shut until March. I started to think there wasn't a hotel there, it was just sort of all in your imagination and people went oh word do say that it do open up once every thousand years. But I have been corrected because I went in it yesterday and there was a little bit of me

that thought when I went onto the first floor I might see a small child cycling going, Red, run, red, run! And that someone might come up to me and say, You've always been the caretaker. But it is amazing in there because it's not just a hotel, it's a museum. As soon as I arrived the owner said, look at these glasses, they're made with uranium.

Now, does that happen in a normal hotel? And then she showed them glowing with a green light that I very much doubt was safe. She said, I haven't got a Geiger counter, but I'm sure you'll be fine. Honestly, then a busload of about 50 pensioners from Medway arrived, average age about 114. And Jane gave a history lecture of the hotel showing all these old original objects, like carpet sweepers and things from 1900. And they're all going, Oh, I remember them. And they were shouting out all sorts of things.

Oh, I don't trust washing machines. And so I'm very proud. So Jane, is Jane here? Hello, was that a normal visit from pensioners from Medway? Oh yes, they come from all over to come and visit our artifacts. They were quite lively. One of them put their hand up and I thought,

oh, what question have they got? And she just wanted to go to the toilet. Yes, that's right. I have that effect on people. One of the things, this was most impressive for me, was the napkins. Do you want to explain the napkins? Oh yeah, the napkins are amazing.

One chap in 2009 drew a sketch after dinner on a napkins. Do you want to explain the napkins? Oh yeah, the napkins are amazing. One chap in 2009 drew a sketch after dinner on a napkin and he said, this is my magical memory of staying in your magic hotel, Jane. And after I slapped him for drawing on my linen, my husband Peter framed it for me, we hung it on the wall and now we've got 322 from all over the world. And they're all over the hotel, these napkins on the wall. They're brilliant. And the youngest contributor is four years old and the oldest is 102. And it's every...

Thank you. Do come and visit them. For one in 102, in a few years, they'll be entitled to come on one of them ghost trips. And tell us about room 302. You just want to get Tracy Emmons into your talk again, don't you? Well yeah, that's her room isn't it? Well she's done an awful lot for us.

We hosted her parties for her for ten years. And we were the location for her film and we did her book signing. She had a film premiere of her film in our ballroom. And she actually said in GQ magazine some of the best sex she's ever had was in room 302 and not in the bed. Is that slightly higher price than the other rooms? It is now. But I would like to

point out to everybody here that we are open Monday to Wednesday. that we are open Monday to Wednesday. Thank you so much to James. Somewhere else that I managed to get into and it was open is the Shell Museum. No, the Shell Museum. Shell Grotto. Shell Grotto? Yes. Oh, sorry. It's not a museum. Is that 2 Up Market for you?

Oh, no, I went to another place. This one's a museum. It was open in 1835. I know that. Apparently, the owner of a house on Grotto Hill dug down in his garden and found a huge wall that turned out to be an underground cathedral made out of seashells. Nobody knows why it was built or even when. Loads of people have got their own theories.

It may be thousands of years old. One popular theory is that it was the first ever premier escape room. And it's all made out of cockles and mussels and oysters and whelks. You can see the arty side of you coming out. Now I'm not aware that anywhere else in the world has a crab museum. This is a place with crab paintings, claws from old crabs, a miniature crab world in a glass crab box.

To be honest, I don't think many people, even if they found themselves in possession of all of these things, would think, we should make a crab museum out of it. Have we got the crab boys? Hello. Hello, right, so can you introduce yourselves? I'm Ned and this is Chase. I can honestly say I've never in my life encountered anybody as enthusiastic about crabs. Well, I think with the right frame of mind anybody can become enthusiastic about crabs.

You just need to visit. I'm more of a lobster guy myself. So, go on, give us a random crab fact that you might tell to kids that come to your museum. Crabs poo out of their chests. There we go. And also, just to add a little bit of extra spice, they don't have sphincters like us,

so they need to manually pull the turds out of their chests This will actually now go out as part of nature corner on rainbow Although I do hear you're asking where do they we from yes Their faces. Just on the face of their nose. Right. Okay. Well, the nation will be enlightened. And we've all done that when we've had too much to drink. What have you got in the gift shop?

What crab-related items can people buy? Well, we've got your standard museum fair, your magnets and your pencils, all very reasonably priced. We've got some canned sea breeze, which is especially popular with Londoners. And then we've got anti-gullibility potion. You need to basically fill the whole thing up with water and pour it down your trousers, and then you'll never fall for any high jinx ever again. We've basically got a special offer on them. They're four quid each, but we'll do you two for a tenner.

I forgot one important thing, which I do have to ask. If anyone comes in wearing a bus driver uniform, and they start to look bored. Do you go, we're shut, quite the brat! Do you know him? Do you know this bus driver? You can't still drive a bus. Hello, I saw you in the paper. Yeah, I know, six months, what are you going to do? He stops me getting bored. Thank you so much.

It's brilliant. Obviously, everybody goes to the Crab Museum. The Crab Museum, obviously, the most important modern attraction in Marquee. But also, we should, I suppose, mention the Turner Gallery. in Margate but also we should I suppose mention the Turner gallery it's not as impressive but it's there. The pillar of the new modern Margate a modern proper art gallery with a cafe and a gift shop and exhibits where I stand there going don't be an idiot Mark just because because you don't understand it, it must

mean something, don't be tempted to ask the attendant, where's the art then, has someone nicked it? I am one of 95% of people that go there and go, oh, is there nothing by Turner here then? LAUGHTER Are they all in the back like Argos? LAUGHTER And when they say no, that's just the name, I sort of think, well, a bit like if you have, like,

someone goes to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and then there's just a bloke whistling in the corner. Do you all go to it? I went there and in the massive room there was a huge screen with a film of waves gently lapping onto the sands and I did think no you do get a sense of the calming movements of the sea and I was fighting very very hard against the urge to go or another way of getting a calming sense of the movements of the sea is to look out the bloody window! You have more artistic history than almost anywhere Margate. William Turner as we know gave his name to the Turner Gallery

as one of the greatest ever British painters. He went to school here. He later lived here. He painted the harbor. He painted the view of the Kent coast from the sea. He loved Margate, and he loved all of Kent. He was the essence of Margate. If anyone doubts this, there's this line from his biography.

In Margate, he was regularly seen eating shrimps. LAUGHTER He belonged here. It makes sense because this was at a time when Constable was painting his lovely tranquil fields, but Turner's paintings were grimy and industrial and about reality of life and industry and steam and ships on violent waves. And he said said the skies above Thanet are the loveliest in all of Europe and that's wonderful isn't it and it's handy because the sky's the only thing you can't shut from Monday to Wednesday.

And it's also very margay isn't it that saying the skies are the best across the whole of Europe because it is a little bit brexity that isn't it it's like we skies are the best across the whole of Europe? Because it is a little bit Brexit-y that, isn't it? It is like, we've got the best skies in Europe. Now, if a Brussels is gonna tell us what to do with our skies. And now Tracy Emin is your new Turner who was brought up here and she writes so lovingly about her Margate childhood.

For example, she left school at 15 and she lived in a, right, I'll read this story out. She lived in a DSS bed and breakfast on the Appleston Road. At 17, she got a job in a sex shop for a pound an hour. And one day, the manager came in with a photographer who said he'd take pictures of her in her underwear for six pounds. And then he wanted more explicit pictures so she refused and she left

the job and that night she wrote a letter to Margate Police Station saying she'd seen things at the shop that should be investigated. A year later the vice squad came to her house where she was living with her mum and they didn't know she'd written the letter but they said that they'd had a tip off about the shop that she'd worked in and they'd looked through the record seeing that she'd worked there and the policeman promised that they were going to nail the bloke who'd been running the shop and so Tracy Emin asked the policeman what should I do next and then this is her saying this the officer put his hand on my shoulder and said,

you seem intelligent, if I was you, I'd go down to this shop when it's dark and throw bricks through the window. LAUGHTER The Margate police advised her to brick the windows. That's how Margate works. It's magnificent. They told her to put the windows. That's how Margate works. It's magnificent. They told her to put the windows in,

not to burn the place down, because then everyone would have assumed it was an insurance job. Something else that's very, very Margate is I asked someone directions, and honestly the start of the answer was, well you go past

the old entrance on the front that burnt, you go past the old entrance on the front that burnt down, up past the old time tunnel that burnt down, and I thought they were gonna carry on past the olive tree that burnt down, then past blaze kebabs that burnt down. Who'd have thought a place called Blaze in Margate would burn down? Past the shelters along the front that burned down,

and you can't miss the place you're looking for because it's a pile of ash because it burnt down. This must be a tradition that goes back to the 1700s when sailors could chart their positions on the sea by going there'd be fire as a shore we'd be passing Margate. It does look if you come down here like Margate's coming out of its most difficult time now, don't we think a bit? Back in the sort of 70s people stopped coming here as much because they went abroad for holidays and that's when the Lido and lots of hotels shut. But about 15 years ago it started picking up again. So much that lots of people from abroad started coming

here. People came from Albania and Kosovo and Afghanistan. And you know some people here still complain even then. At one point Cliftonville became known as Kosovil when the Kosovans came. So Serbs and Kosovans were at war and terrified of each other so they fled and managed to get across the whole of Europe, across the sea and come here. And from what I've read and heard, Thanet Council then put the Serbs and Cossavans

back together in the same street right next to each other. That's genius, Margate, that is. Let's put you both together. That will be nice for you. You'll get on, because you're all from the same area we've had some Viking refugees a while ago and put them right next to the Saxons and they loved that because it was right next to the axe throwing center in the brexit referendum 64% of people here voted to leave the European Union

and part of this of course was in response to the growing number of East Europeans in Kent and that's worked out well I think because now the population of Kent has gone up to 24 million of which 23 million are Romanian truck drivers stuck on the M2. truck driver stuck on the M2. 10 years ago, one third of the shops here were closed. And now there's new shopping malls and Dreamland's booming. It's been doing well since the boats started coming here. Start the boats, that's what you should be saying. I think it's not controversial to suggest some things probably need to change a little

bit here. For example, Pete Doherty and Karl Barrett of the Libertines bought the Palm Court Hotel, which according to TripAdvisor was the worst hotel in the country. Fifty-seven percent of guests ranked it as horrible. But now it's called the Albion Rooms and it's really popular and it's been called gentrified and there was one article I read that said it's less a hotel and more a place you happen to sleep in while having the luckiest bender of your life. Sounds brilliant. And Pete Doherty is a wonderful blend of old and new Margate. Artistic and creative, sometimes self-destructive, and he went to the Dalby Cafe, which you must all know, where they have a special breakfast of four eggs,

four rashes of bacon, four sausages, a beef burger, hash browns, mushrooms, chips, onion rings, bubble, beans or tomatoes, and two slices of thick bread. And if you finish it in 20 minutes you get it for free and I thought the most impressive part of that menu is where it says beans or tomatoes they must think well you can't have both why are you a pig? only six people have ever managed this challenge and one of them was Pete Doherty. And you're trying to go up market now, isn't it? It's all chic and happening now. There's a hotel

called Beetroot. Do you know this place? No? Good. It boasts, we are Margate's first completely vegan hotel. No animal products were used in the building of the hotel, as opposed to normal hotels where the light switches are made out of lamb. There's Ramsay and Williams, the ice cream bar and art gallery combined. In Margate! art gallery combined. In Margate! I thought is there another Margate that's a suburb of Barcelona? Oh I think I'll have a Renoir, can you put a flake in it? There's Haeckel's it says, Haeckel's the abundant seaweed that floods the shores goes into every one of Haeckel's products. The hand-harvested skin-transforming properties are magical and good for the planet.

It's 1790, you conned a bunch of people into coming here and paying for crackpot remedies and you're still doing it. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE Would it have cured Karl Marx's boils, this magical hand-harvested potsy seaweed? But this is the new Margate. Margate has always been full of this, though. Creativity and art and then the old Margate combined.

Oscar Wilde said, Margate is a nice spot, not vulgarised by literary people. And... And the old town with the hipster shops, it does look quaint and artistic, but the charm of Margate will always be that this is a proper tourist resort, not some tossy place. If you took over the ancient Incan site of

Machu Picchu in the Andes you'd go we can put a log flume down there. This is a town of inspirational land ladies that marry Turner or can't ear marks or are hatty jakes or buy glasses made of uranium and so I will leave you Margate with the diary of John William Turner who loved it here so much that he wrote this this little piece in his diary and I thought it's very very much sums up the spirit of Margate. Upon docking at the salubrious harbour replete with fishermen amidst countless shrimps I inquired as to the possibility of lodging at the renowned Wharpall, which had opened

the previous week. I was informed regretfully it was now closed until the spring of 2024. I retired to an inn for an evening meal of four ducklings, four rabbits, four geese and an ox, with beans or tomatoes, which cost three guineas or was free if you could consume the entirety within 20 minutes. Moxdeals in town was written and performed by Moxdeal with additional material from Pete St. Grair. Hello, I'm Adam Fleming. This is going to be my sixth general election as a journalist for the BBC. Political people and campaigners love using their own language, so we thought we'd make a series for BBC Radio 4 unpicking it all. What is a manifesto? What's swing? How do opinion polls work? Who picks the candidates?

That is the subject of my podcast series, Understand the UK Election, available on BBC Sounds.