The Black Country
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"Even this compensation became more complicated when his stepmother, Joan Potter, a woman who had been the family's cleaner, came into his life. Suddenly everything he had been told counted for nothing. 'We were very second generation middle class,' he says, now, all trace of a Black country accent knocked out of him in childhood, 'and I had been brought up with all these things you did and did not do. You don't talk at mealtimes, you don't put your elbows on the table and so on.'" —Tim Adams, "The Interview - Nigel Slater - 'While other boys in his class were reading Shoot! Nigel subscribed to Cordon Bleu magazine' - A loveless childhood drove Nigel Slater, The Observer's food writer, to seek affection elsewhere - in the kitchen. In a rare interview to coincide with the publication of his revealing autobiography, extracted on page 24, he tells Tim Adams how he found escape and happiness in his passion for food, cooking and the washing-up," The Observer (UK), September 14, 2003. "And he is as proud as a Black Country lad can be that Noddy Holder, the Wolverhamptonian former lead singer of Slade, sent him a supportive email." —Robert Hardman, "The odd couple ; She's a 15-stone events manager. He's a 'boring Brummie' from telesales. Meet the unlikely pop idols," The Daily Mail, December 17, 2003. "Since becoming chief executive he has worked on transforming a series of grotty boozers into what he calls 'formats' that work with the customers. The first is called a 'Bostin' Local' (which apparently means more to the inhabitants of the Black Country than to London analysts) where the emphasis is on value. The one we visit offers a cod, chips and crumble special offer, a Wetherspoon-style touch. I'm relieved to learn they don't all come on the same plate. The Bandon Arms is part of the 'Service that Suits Me' concept which is a little swisher." —Rosie Murray-West, "It takes a strong brew to keep rivals at bay Rosie Murray-West finds a keen competitive streak in Wolves' top dog," The Daily Telegraph, January 17, 2004. "So where does all the doom come from? Being brought up in Birmingham in the Seventies might have done it, I would have thought, but he wasn't: he was raised in Hagley, in leafy, suburban Worcestershire, where his father ran a scaffolding business. He may sound like the authentic voice of Black Country prole but, he says, only to southerners." —Andrew Billen, "Life's hard for the hardest-working man in television; He is the most viewed man on TV, the BBC's secret weapon in the ratings war. But Adrian Chiles tells Andrew Billen that his private life is less successful after a marriage split and rumours of a relationship with his co-presenter," The Times (UK), March 20, 2009. "As we wander in his rustic Welsh garden, Reynolds says that ever since he was young he has had a thing about industrial archaeology. (Because I'm from the Black Country, I identify with that aesthetic.) His first encounter with science fiction came at the age of eight when he read Speed & Power magazine. 'It was for small boys, and at the back it would reproduce a classic story by Arthur C Clarke. The stories were so clevely constructed and so simple that I loved them. I still do. What Clarke did was to write stories that treated human ignorance as the adversary. There was a marvellous purity in that, and I increasingly want to emulate what he achieved.'" —Stuart Jeffries, "'I've been called the high priest of gothic miserablism': His latest book is set 6.4m years in the future, he admits to stealing other writers' ideas - and he's just secured a pounds 1m book deal. Stuart Jeffries enters the fantastic world of Alastair Reynolds," The Guardian (UK), July 13, 2009. Links Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on the Black Country
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