Legendary Huddersfield journalist and author DENIS KILCOMMONS is a natural storyteller who brings everyday subjects to life in his own inimitable style. Denis wrote a hugely popular column in the Huddersfield Examiner for 34 years until his retirement in 2023. Now he’s back from a break and writing for Huddersfield Hub.
The things I did for The Huddersfield Examiner.
I risked all at the International Brotherhood of Magicians Conference in Harrogate in the 1970s when a photographer and I wandered the trades fair section and mingled with men of magic and suppliers and purveyors of specialised props and illusions.
There was a chance that stepping into a magic cabinet in the Yorkshire spa town at the request of Ali Bongo, the Shriek of Araby (yes, there was such a magician) might result in me stepping out again in Llandudno at his next gig.
I also submitted to the request of the Examiner photographer to put my head in a guillotine and remember thinking what an uncomfortable way to face execution.
It never occurred to me the trick might not work as it should to leave me a lot shorter than my usual 5ft 6ins. The chap holding the crucial cord didn’t seem too bothered either way.
My photographic companion showed me an illusion of his own on our way back from Harrogate. He was driving and placed the flash equipment from his camera on the dashboard of the car.
If someone ahead was slow to move to allow him to pass, he lifted part of the apparatus, that included coiled cable, to his ear. When the driver in front saw what he did in their rear view mirror, they moved over.
“Never fails to work,’’ the photographer said. “They think this is a radio and that we’re plain clothes police.’’
He produced a further bit of magic when we returned to the office with the second picture that has me leap-frogging road signs in Peel Street outside the Town Hall with the office in the background.
This was decades before Photoshop and Artificial Intelligence. He just used a pair of scissors and two pictures.
Photographers, knowing my passion for Manchester United, even produced a doctored photograph of the Red Devils holding up the European Cup in 1999 with my face replacing that of David May.
Would you believe it, that’s the one photograph among the hundreds I have, that I can’t find.
Mike Madden with his meteorite rock
I also agreed to go in the stocks at Brockholes Village Fete for Mike Madden. It seemed only fair to help him out after all the column inches he had filled in the paper for me with his zany antics and inspired inventions.
Mike lived in Crackpot Cottage on the boundary between Brockholes and Honley. I was friends with Mike and Maria was friends with his wife, Shirley.
He invented amazing devices including a bubble wrap suit ideal for drinkers so they wouldn’t hurt themselves falling over when they left the pub and a device for taking your goldfish for a walk.
He appeared on TV with the Spice Girls, was a champion tripe eater, became a TV star in Germany and made a bid to have the Royal Yacht Britannia put on the River Holme as a tourist attraction. He also wrote to the Queen suggesting Buckingham Palace would be perfect for time share apartments.
“It would boost your coffers and I’m sure would be a world wide winner. Your subject Michael Madden. PS: If your Majesty does consider this could I book two weeks in the red section?’’
He wrote to the Space Centre at Cape Canaveral to ask for a piece of moon rock for a charity auction. They sent him an application to become an astronaut. Soon afterwards he claimed he found a meteorite rock in his garden.
Mike was always full of zany ideas and full of fun. So how could I not agree? After all, people were only throwing wet sponges from 10 yards away. Except first in the queue was his mum.
She doused two sponges, ignored the 10 yard line, marched up and rubbed them both in my face at the same time. Perhaps she was getting her own back for all the stuff I’d written about her son.
Great memories from days in a provincial Press that no longer exists.
Read more from Denis Kilcommons HERE.
