First published in The Sunday Express, 2nd January 2005

“What do you think of it so far?” I ask Gary as we stand outside a small terraced house in Buxton Street, Morecambe.

It’s a line he must have heard hundreds of times because Gary is Eric Morecambe’s son. He’s joined me for the Eric’s Morecambe guided walk. Peter, the guide, is telling us that it was in this house on 14th May 1926 that Eric Morecambe was born “quite young” as John Eric Bartholomew.

The walk begins at Eric’s statue on the sea-front. The clouds lift as we arrive and an overcast day turns into a beautiful December afternoon. From here you can really appreciate the beauty what Morecambe has got. You can see clear across the bay to the Lake District.

The approach to the statue is like a Morecambe and Wise sketch. Eric and Ernie’s quotations have been etched on the circular piazza just as they are etched in our memories – You said that without moving your lips; You can’t see the join; He’ll never sell any ice-cream going at that speed. Lyrics from “Bring me Sunshine” are carved into the steps what lead to the statue and by the time I get to Eric, I’m already smiling. Captured with his cheeky grin and famous dance pose, Eric’s statue is the place to have your picture taken; rain or shine, people have been known to queue for their turn.

With photos of bygone Morecambe, Peter sets the scene of the town whose name Eric adopted. Much has changed since young Eric fished here with his Dad. Eric was a keen bird-watcher and would have loved the new artwork. Flocks of birds, sculptured in stone and metal, line the seafront; overhead the feathered kind dive and squawk.

One of the first stops is the Eric Bartholomew pub. “My father would have been very amused that’s there’s a pub named after him.” says Gary, a writer. “It really would have tickled him.”

When Eric was a year old the family moved to a council house in Christie Ave, it would be the family home until 1952. His dad George worked at the market and mum Sadie had two jobs to pay for Eric’s dancing lessons. The house backed onto the Morecambe Football Club, Eric would watch matches from home and his lifelong love of the game was born.

In Morecambe Street is the club where11 year old Master Eric Bartholomew performed for a fee of sixpence and a pea and pie supper. Close by were the Plaza Chambers, venue of Miss Hunter’s Dancing School. Eric was the only boy in the class.

Peter points out the old Odeon Cinema, now a DIY store. We hear how Eric and his cousin Sonny were thrown out for firing their peashooters at bald-headed people. We walk on smiling because it’s so easy to imagine.

We stop outside Euston Road Secondary School, Peter produces Eric’s old school report, he finished 45th out of 49.

“He always said he was a real dreamer.” Gary tells us “Even then he had ideas about going into show business.”

It’s an interesting walk. Gary’s added colour to the stories and Peter has pointed out places Gary had heard about, but never seen.

“I’ve never done such an exacting walk before” Gary tells me “so it was great to see all the places. The only time I did it in detail was with my father in the 1960s. Even then we didn’t see all the places. There’s something very moving about it as well. It’s not really my past – yet it is in a sense. My father would have been pleased that I’ve come back at the age of 48 and walked the streets remembering.”

I ask if Eric often came back to Morecambe.

“Eric loved coming back,” says Gary “ he came back with my mother two weeks before he died. He bought fish and chips and walked the streets and did a tour of his own life.”

Eric died from a third heart attack on 28th May 1984 ending a 43-year partnership with Ernie Wise – and Christmas Day viewing as we knew it. He was 58 years old.

Eric Morecambe bought us sunshine though the years. Now his statue is bringing tourists to Morecambe, the number of visitors has doubled since it was unveiled in 1999.

“He would have been thrilled about having a statue there and about the increase in tourism.” Says Gary. “His links with Morecambe are colossal, he was always very proud of his background.”

The next day we head for Hest Bank, a posher part of Morecambe, near the Lancaster Canal. The family would often walk here, following the promenade from town, eating Morecambe Bay shrimps.

“Sadie would say ‘When you’re rich and famous you can buy us a house at Hest Bank’.” Recalls Gary “Dad said Oh, all right – and he did, he honoured that.”

The house what Eric bought for his parents is a handsome detached house in Peacock Lane. We stand outside, he tells me stories of how Sadie and Eric would cheat at cards and bagatelle - and the tricks what Eric would play.

I can see my Gary’s face how precious these memories are for him. He told me that without moving his lips.

First published in The Independent on 8th May 2004

You’ve read the story of Jesse James
Of how he lived and died
If you’re still in need of something to read
Here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

From The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie Parker 1934

We were acting upon reliable information, following route 154 out of town, searching for the site of the deadly ambush. We found the marker eight miles from Gibsland on the brow of a hill on a lonesome Louisiana road. It was late on a sultry, Saturday afternoon. The trees cast long shadows. All was still.

It was here on Wednesday May 23rd 1934 that Bonnie and Clyde were killed by a six-man posse hiding in those same trees. At 9.15am the federal deputation opened fire, spraying one hundred and sixty seven bullets in twelve seconds.

Seventy years on, it remains a troubled spot. The historical marker has become a target. Covered in graffiti, it’s riddled with bullet holes; the ground around crunchy with broken glass. We stopped to take some photos, it wasn’t until we drove away that I realised we had left the engine running.

But how did it come to this? Bonnie Parker was tiny, just 4’11” and at 5’6” Clyde Barrow wasn’t as big as his reputation. She was 23, he was only 24 yet they were wanted for the murder of 12 people.

To begin to understand the end, we had taken a Legend of Bonnie and Clyde tour two hundred miles away in Dallas. The tours are run by the Dallas Historical Society and led by local historian, John Neal Phillips. Often, one of the Parker or Barrow descendants will join and are welcomed like celebrities.

Phillips sets the story in the depressed 1930s. Farmers were forced off the land; desperate they came into towns and cities to make a living. Many, including Clyde’s father, Henry, came to Dallas. Life was hard but eventually Henry Barrow managed to buy a gas station. It’s still there, empty now, stray cats prowl and thistles grow. No- one knows what to do with it so it just stands there, a worn out, silent witness.

Clyde Barrow went to prison for relatively minor offences. Inside he was abused and mistreated and came out, says Phillips “Meaner than a rattlesnake.”

For two years, Bonnie and Clyde ran thieving, murdering and tormenting through ten states. Behind them was a trail of traumatised hostages, slain civilians and dead policeman.

As thieves, Bonnie and Clyde were small time, even gangster John Dillinger said they gave bank robbing a bad name. In Ponder, Texas they attempted to rob a bank that had gone bust. The bank’s still shut- but it’s worth a visit to have lunch nearby at Ranchman’s café, just as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty did while shooting the 1967 movie.

It seemed Bonnie and Clyde couldn't be caught. Even when hopelessly trapped and outnumbered, they would come out, guns blazing, and get clean away in a stolen car. They were making fools of the banks, the politicians and the law and some folk applauded them for that. Everything changed after an incident on Easter Sunday 1934.

Bonnie and Clyde, with gang member Henry Methvin, had parked in a remote area. Two Highway Patrol Men, Officers Wheeler, 26 and Murphy, 24 saw them and, thinking they had broken down, stopped to offer assistance Both officers were shot before they had time to draw their weapons. A marker now stands where they fell. It was Murphy’s first – and last - day. He was engaged to be married; his fiancé wore her wedding dress to the funeral.

Bonnie and Clyde were Public Enemy Number One.

The tour takes us to West Dallas where, in the 30s, crime would go unchecked. Clyde called it the “Back Door” and they would sneak in and out to visit their Mommas who they loved and sorely missed. Often they would meet on an old bridge, overgrown now and forgotten.

No-one can explain why interest in the couple remains high. It’s a grim tale - yet it is also a love story. For Clyde, the “chair” was waiting and he was never going to be taken alive. Bonnie knew that death would come soon yet she would rather die than live without him. She wrote a poem, The Story of Bonnie and Clyde, and you can hear her voice in the verses.

The story ends over in Louisiana and you can follow it in the Bonnie and Clyde Tourist Trail. The best place to start is at The Authentic Bonnie and Clyde Museum in Gibsland.

Olen Jackson is one of the volunteer helpers, he’s so nimble and sharp you would never believe he’s 93. Olen grew up in Gibsland and in 1934 was working in the fields when he heard the commotion. At first he thought someone was clearing tree stumps.

“I thought ‘Hot Dog! That sucker can sure set off some Dye-na-mite!’” Says Olen “ Weren’t till later when the post man came round and tole me ‘They got Bonnie and Clyde.’”

It’s a homespun, no messing kind of museum. It has an interesting collection with lots of photos and newspaper reports. There’s a sign on a 1930s tyre that reads: “Clyde Barrow gave this stolen tire to Monroe Burkett of Brounduss, Texas. Monroe would’nt (sic) use it since it had been stolen. So he put it in his shed.”

The trail includes the ambush site and the neighbouring town of Arcadia where the bodies of Bonnie and Clyde, still in the car, were taken for autopsy. Each month, Arcadia holds Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days. These three-day flea markets are popular enough to warrant an adjoining RV park.

Bonnie may have known she would die at Clyde’s side - but she would never have imagined that the gruesome event would be re-enacted as part of Gibsland’s annual Bonnie and Clyde Festival.

Gibsland, about forty miles east of Shreveport, is virtually a ghost town with only the deaths of Bonnie and Clyde to keep it alive. This year, the festival begins on Friday 21st May with a $5 all-you-can-eat-gumbo-supper. There’s a meeting for historians and live country and western music.

On the Saturday, several thousand visitors descend on this iddy-biddy town. Stalls sell souvenirs, games are played, there are rides for children and actors stage a bank robbery and a roadblock. Late afternoon a procession, led by the car from the movie, (the real “Death” car can be seen in the Primm Valley Resort & Casino in Las Vegas) leaves town for the finale.

The car is owned by another Dallas Historian, Ken Holmes. With actors dressed in 1930s costumes, the ambush is re-enacted - this time with hundreds of witnesses.

“Course,” Holmes tells me “ we use blanks – but it sure doesn’t sound like it!”

And so Bonnie and Clyde die again. Back in Dallas, the tour finishes at two gravesides. Bonnie lies in the Crown Hill Cemetery where well-wishers often leave flowers. “ Bye, Bye, Bonnie” Phillips says as we turn to go, “check you soon.”

Clyde was buried in the Western Heights Cemetery with his brother Buck. His headstone has been stolen several times and was once used as a coffee table. It’s now cemented in. The short inscription “ Gone but not forgotten” has turned out to be prophetic.

Someday they’ll go down together
And they’ll bury them side by side
To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

The Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie Parker 1934

First published in The Sunday Express, 30th January 2005

The traffic light was red. A sign informed us there would be a three-minute wait for our turn down the single lane road. From the stop-line we couldn’t quite see the entrance to the tunnel but, when the light changed to green and we moved forward, we understood the reason for the wait.

The tunnel was long and narrow and you would not want to meet another car coming from the opposite direction. It was dark and I was glad I was in a car and not on foot on the shadowy pedestrian walkway. The tunnel took us downwards on a steep journey through the cliffs at Dover. It’s an apt approach to Samphire Hoe.

You won’t find Samphire Hoe mentioned in the Doomsday Book, nor, for that matter, is it marked on many maps. It’s the “newest” piece of England, created from the spoil of the Channel Tunnel.

A small platform of land has existed here since 1843. Tons of chalk were blasted out to create the Folkestone to Dover railway line that runs along the bottom of the cliffs. In the 1880s the first attempt at a Channel Tunnel was stopped after digging more than 2,000 yards. In 1974 another attempt was made, the entrance tunnel down to the Hoe dates from then.

In 1987 work started on the Channel Tunnel. A massive eight and three-quarter million cubic metres of Chalk Marl were dug out. Somewhere had to be found to put it all. Around half went to France and 4.9 million cubic metres created this brand new piece of England.

The area lies at the bottom of Shakespeare Cliff, so named because t’is here, verily, that a scene was Shakespeare’s King Lear is said to have been set. During tunnelling, the area became known as the Lower Shakespeare Cliff Construction Site and was busy with huts and cranes and serious equipment.

The site was cleared when the Tunnel opened in 1994. Planted with wildflowers and grasses, it’s much prettier now. It needed a nicer name so a competition was held and Samphire Hoe, chosen by a local woman, was the winner. The name suits it down to the ground. A hoe is a piece of land that juts out into the sea and rock samphire is a flowering plant that grows here.

Samphire Hoe opened to the public in 1997. Covering 75 acres, it’s owned by Eurotunnel and managed in partnership with White Cliffs Countryside Project. Paul Holt is the Senior Project Officer, he’s so enthusiastic about the place that he came to show me round on his day off. We began at the brand new Samphire Tower, created by artist Jony Easterby.

Samphire Hoe is an amazing place. Other plants have already found their own way here and there are now around 194 species, including rare early spider orchids. Birds and butterflies, grasshoppers and crickets, dragonflies and damselflies have also arrived.

It was early on a Sunday morning when we arrived. Red flags were flying which meant the waves were dangerously high and the sea walls, built to enclose the land, were closed. Instead we followed the footpath towards the West Shore. The path took us to the shingle Abbotscliff Beach, a real tucked away gem.

We were about to turn and make our way back to the car park when, as if on cue, a man arrived to take down the red flag and re-open the sea wall.

It was a bracing walk, waves crashed against the sea wall and gangs of sea gulls shrieked and swooped and dived. The weather blustered and fussed. The clouds dropped till they seemed to be breathing down my neck and the wind blew me along as if it wanted me gone. Ahead we could see the port of Dover and somewhere in between, hidden deep under the waves is the Channel Tunnel itself.

To our north ancient cliffs soar as they have always done, to our south the sea pounds the shore as it always will. The young land beneath my feet is still developing, we’ll have to wait and see what it will turn out to be.