Sponsored by
Ian McMillan: The magic of my Mickey Mouse kind of town
YOU may have noticed the fairly earth-shattering (if your earth is made of a kind of fragile porcelain and, thus, easily shattered) news last week that Walt Disney World, in Florida, is looking for a twin town in the UK.
Apparently, Walt's representative on earth, one M Mouse esq, is on a quest to find the "most magical place in Britain", and once the town is selected for twinning, a representative of the aforementioned magical place will take part in a ceremony on Main Street, in Disney World. I'm sorry, I mean Walt Disney World.
Leaving aside the fact that Walt Disney World isn't a real town, and so the obvious places to twin it with would be Pleasure Island, in Cleethorpes, or a big wedding cake with pot figures on the top, I've got a natural candidate for the twin town – Barnsley, the Walt Disney World of the South Yorkshire Coalfield.
You think I'm joking, you think I'm playing the professional Barnsleyman card, but I'm not. I'm going to draft a letter to Barnsley Council straight away to get the ball rolling, unless the Ball Rolling Committee have already met this quarter.
Barnsley is presently twinned with two places: Schwabish Gmund, in Germany, and Gorlovka, in the Ukraine. Both of these towns are, I imagine, pleasant, but let's face it: Walt Disney World they ain't.
I believe also that for a while Barnsley was twinned with a town in China, called Fuxin, pronounced Foo-san, but maybe that twinning hasn't received as much publicity as the other two because of the inherent linguistic dangers – in polite society – of discussing a visit there.
The thing about Walt Disney World, once you get behind the corporate chatter about the whole of the cosmos being united behind the love of Walt, is that it's a town built on fun and enjoyment.
At least once a day the whole place comes to a halt so that costumed people with huge false heads can wander down the Main Street to the sound of cheesy music and wave at aghast passers-by.
Well, isn't that Barnsley in miniature? Middle-aged chaps like me, if we happen to find ourselves in Barnsley on a Friday night, stand open-mouthed at the sight of princesses and mermaids and cartoon creatures and heroes and villains all strolling down the road to the sound of cheesy music.
Mickey Mouse would feel quite at home here; in fact, last time I was walking through Barnsley's Entertainment District after sunset, I saw a load of Mickey Mice (and one obese Goofy who'd had a couple too many soda pops and was having difficulty keeping his head on ) in earnest discussion with a bevy of Snow Whites.
The other reason I reckon Barnsley would have a chance of being twinned with Walt's World is that the place we Barnsleyites know affectionately as Tarn, is the setting for a kind of living fairytale, a Walt Disney film just crying out to be made. Imagine it: the sylvan, pastoral scene with ruddy-faced people called things like Hodge, chewing turnips to their hearts' content, while up in the big house the Master practises his croquet.
Can't you see the cartoon film now? Can't you hear the Hollywood stars queuing up to do the voiceover? Clive Owen for the smooth-talking Master of the Big House, Sean Bean as the turnip-muncher. Then, a
peasant digging in the fields finds coal, runs to the Master's house
with a handful of it, and the Master laughs and sings and gets very
rich indeed.
Then, in the middle part of the film, we might have a sub-plot about somebody working down the mine who falls in love with the Master's daughter, voiced by Cate Blanchett with a Yorkshire accent that sometimes tumbles through Lancashire to the Scottish Borders.
Then, in a moment of what film posters call Mild Peril, the mines
close down and Hodge and his pals are put out of work. They sing a sad song about it, a sad song that's destined to become a Karaoke favourite and the kind of heartbreaker that's beaten to within an inch of its life by warblers who get chucked out of the first round of The X Factor.
And then we're back to the pastoral: the mines are gone but they're replaced by the romance of call centres and light industrial units, and the Cate Blanchett character marries the Clive Owen character and they sing a big song – the one they call the 11 o'clock number in musicals – about how they might have lost their heavy industry but their hearts are light. Or something like that.
That film would make Disney millions and millions of dollars. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Barnsley should be twinned with Walt Disney World.
Should I rent my tuxedo now, for the winner's parade? I hope I get to sit next to Cruella DeVille...
Email to a friend
Print this page- Three-inch blanket of snow heading our way today
- Alan Shearer in list of favourites for Leeds and England jobs: Latest odds
- Barnsley’s Keith Hill invokes Fawlty Towers over link with Leeds job
- McCormack feels United search can be narrowed down
- Redfearn throws down gauntlet as queue builds at Elland Road
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: -2 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
