Reportage on Middlehaven, Middlesbrough for The Sun

Published June 4 2011

How 220 miles can add

60 years to your life

Worlds apart ... families hang around streets of

Middlehaven and, right, idyllic Moreton

North News & Pictures / Albanpix.com

SPRIGHTLY residents of a rural suburb could live TWICE as long as those living 220 miles away on a dockside housing estate.

New figures show that newborn girls growing up in Moreton Hall on the outskirts of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, could reach their 128th birthday. But in shocking contrast, the life expectancy for girls in the Middlehaven area of Middlesbrough is 71.7, according to figures released this week by the Office For National Statistics.
And for middle-aged men on the Northern estate, where single mum Victoria Baker and her son Adrian live, left, the story is even bleaker - they can only expect to live until they're 62.
ANTONELLA LAZZERI headed to the Suffolk town and RYAN PILOT visited Middlehaven to see how the UK's best and worst places for life expectancy compare.

Middlehaven, Middlesbrough

FAST food, drink and unemployment appear to be sapping the life out of Middlehaven.

Situated just outside Middlesbrough's busy town centre, young people roam the streets while smoking, drinking cheap alcohol and dealing drugs.

The area's main street, Borough Road, boasts five takeaways in just 200 yards.

The estate is even famous for inventing its own fast food, the Parmo - deep-fried chicken covered in bechamel sauce and cheese.

Single mum Victoria Baker, 19, is desperate to find a job so she can escape the poverty and improve the quality of life for her young son.

She recently finished a course in childcare at college and volunteers in a charity shop to gain work experience. Despite living off benefits, she tries to buy the healthiest food she can for her 13- month-old son Adrian.

Boredom leads to alcohol ... Stephen Harker and Tooley Russell

North News & Pictures

Victoria says: "There's too many fast food outlets and parents can't be bothered to cook so they just send their kids to get take-aways instead.

"It's rare that we get a take-away - they are too expensive. This place has a really bad drink and drugs problems. It needs more youth clubs.

"You even see eight-year-olds on the streets with cans of lager on an evening because their parents can't be bothered with them.

"It's shocking to think Adrian could have a short life but I'm going to make sure he doesn't."

Retired scaffolder Dave Weston, 67, is more than five years over the average life expectancy for a man his age in Middlehaven.

And he reckons he and his wife Jacqueline, 62, are among the oldest folk in the area.

Dave says: "It doesn't surprise me that people don't live long here. Most people here aren't old.

"People don't eat the food they should be eating. They turn to drugs and drink.

"We have police raiding homes for drug dealers every other week."

Grandma-of-five Jacqueline adds: "We love a Parmo ourselves but it's about everything in moderation."

However, the short life expectancy doesn't bother unemployed Sarah Gibson, 19. She says: "You've got to live life to the full. You could die the next day. I'm not bothered about living healthily, I just do what I want."

Location, location, location ... can add years to your life

Stephen Harker, 25, is also unemployed. He can't find a job and spends his days drinking in the street because he claims there's nothing else to do.

He says: "It's a dump around here. Someone needs to get it sorted otherwise it's going to be riddled with crime."

His friend Tooley Russell, 22, adds: "People live really unhealthily. They can't find jobs so they get bored and eat. They live off takeaways. You'll find a takeaway on every corner."

Diamond Road on the run-down terraced estate has an entire side of boarded-up houses.

The area has no trees or parks and residents complain there are no community facilities. There are plenty of parking spaces but these are largely empty as the jobless majority can't afford to drive.

The area's main pub is boarded-up as residents turn to the cheaper option of buying their own drink at one of the many off-licences selling cut-price booze.

This includes large bottles of cheap perry, costing less than £2, which locals swig in the street.

A regeneration project is earmarked for Middlehaven.

Hopefully, this will change things for the better in years to come.

Moreton Hall, Suffolk

THE parents of six-month-old Daisy Lee can look forward to their daughter having a long and wonderful life.

In fact, if the study is to be believed, she could live to be 128.

Mum Fiona, 32, loves life in the Bury St Edmunds suburb of Moreton Hall in Suffolk and says: "We know we live in one of the best places in Britain. It's wonderful. You couldn't find a happier place.

Relaxed and healthy lifestyle ... landlady Georgina Barnes

Albanpix.com

"We moved here because it's such a great place to bring up children - but I didn't know they were supposed to live that long."

She and husband Marcus, 38, a builder, are enjoying a drink in the Moreton Hall pub.

And landlady Georgina Barnes, 53, believes she knows why many of her locals are OAPs.

She says: "It's the beer, isn't it? Actually I think it's more that this is such a chilled-out area. It's really laid-back, stress-free. I've never lived anywhere so relaxed.

"We very rarely get any trouble here. People don't even mind having to wait for their drinks. And the crime rate is really low."

On the wall is a plaque honouring two of the pub's regulars - Percy and Mary.

Georgina says: "Percy's 92 and Mary is 89 but they come in here every day without fail. He has a couple of pints of London Pride and she has two glasses of wine. They act and look like they're in their sixties. This week they're off having a break in Bournemouth.

Living it up ... locals Rachel and Holly

Albanpix.com

"One of my other regulars is Dave. He's 97 and every night he comes here on the dot of 10.35 and has a pint of IPA. He walks here from home and back again."

The pensioners of Moreton Hall do seem a lively lot. Over at the community hall there are three message boards full of activities including a weekly tea dance, yoga and Pilates. There's also indoor bowls, slimming clubs, dance classes and race nights.

Walking around the area, it's easy to spot many of the sprightly older generation.

At 84, Eileen Hutchings looks at least 20 years younger and credits her twice-daily sessions with the local dog-walking club for keeping her fit.

Most of her companions are half her age but she manages to keep up with them.

She says: "I think the secret to longevity is keeping fit and socialising.

"I go to the Tuesday Club without fail, which is for us old gits. We do all sorts. It's one of the few places in Britain that still has a strong community spirit and that really means a lot."

Vicar Jonathan Ford is only too aware of Moreton Hall's fame for having the longest life expectancy in Britain. He says: "There are no funeral directors here, they wouldn't have any business.

"A lot of my congregation are in their eighties and nineties but I doubt if I do ten funerals a year."

Nine-year-old twins Christopher and Jonathan Hammond moved to Moreton Hall from a remote country village. They love it and say they've become much healthier since moving to the area.

Christopher says: "Our old home was so far from everywhere. Mum didn't like us going on our bikes but here we cycle everywhere."

Sisters Holly and Rachel Bradley go to Moreton Hall Prep School, where a monthly Fitness Friday sees all the pupils go in wearing PE kit instead of uniform.

Both girls love the outdoor life but even so they are horrified by the thought of living to 128.

Rachel, nine, says: "Oh no, that would be awful.

"I like being healthy but I don't want to live that long."

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3618271/How-220-miles-can-add-60yrs-to-your-life.html#ixzz1Poinfaqz

The Chapman Family: The Sound of the North East

For www.WoodenCauliflower.com

By Ryan Pilot

The Chapman Family intend to knock some sense into the overcrowded, watered down indie web that currently clogs up the ears of the kids today. Having played a successful set at Glastonbury, and landing a place on the current NME Radar Tour with electro-pop overnight success La Roux, the band are already penetrating the musical consciousness of the country with their scratchy, noisy post-punk poetry.

On stage, front man Kingsley's persona is enigmatic; he is at once uncomfortable and confident. He has a powerful presence and yet appears introverted, with an arm covering his eyes when it is not busy combing his guitar strings as he punches out deep, anxious vocals. It is as if he is apologetic for what he has to say, however much he believes in it, as if it will offend his audience.

“[The Chapman Family are] trying to react against the general apathy of people who don't necessarily recognise that the country's going to shit,” says Kingsley. “No one seems to care but everyone sort of seems to enjoy listening to The Hoosiers telling us everything's all right, or The View telling us to go out and have a party ... You're never going to get us singing songs about going down an indie disco and fannying on with a girl and taking her home ... there's always going to be us fighting against something.”

Kingsley started to form The Chapman Family in 2005 when he and guitarist Paul, whose attic he had been living in, started playing music together as a reaction to the derivative touring indie bands that they saw each week in their home town of Stockton.

“Everyone else was ripping off The Libertines and everyone else is singing in cockney accents, even though they're from South Bank [a Middlesbrough council estate], which is just ridiculous,” says Kingsley. “Or you'd get touring bands come in and they were just shit, every single one of them, just shit.”

Stockton is a Teesside town full of people with little ambition, where someone with bigger ideas can get easily frustrated with those around them. With Joy Division-inspired bass lines, jerky guitars and desperate vocals, the music of The Chapman Family conveys the frustration with apathy that Kingsley has.

“I think people in Teesside are really insular and think that we're up against the World,” says Kingsley. “But ... with going to other various towns and cities throughout the country [I've seen that] it's exactly the same as everywhere else.”

Kingsley spent four years away from Teesside at Sheffield Hallam University studying fine art before forming The Chapman Family and he now works at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. However, he makes it clear that this is no pretentious arty-farty band that he is in.

“I started out and I wanted to paint, I wanted to be an abstract expressionist, but soon realised that I was pretty shit at it, so tried my hand at video and performance art and stuff so there's probably an element of that that came through,” Kingsley explains.

“We're not like art-rock like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are art-rock ... I don't think the band is an art project. I think it's a rock band and it's separate,” says Kingsley. “But if you bring elements of what you've learnt from art school ... you get influenced by everything up until that point in your life when you are sitting down and writing a song.”

Perhaps then, the awkwardness in Kingsley's stage persona comes from a fear of appearing pretentious. He sings, with his north-east accent, lines such as 'you are not impressing anyone' on 'You Are Not Me' which come across as an attack on the shallow bands that are trying to be another self-indulgent, fashionable London export. Kingsley is a North-easterner through and through and would not entertain the idea of moving to London for the band's sake.

“I enjoy being from the north east of England,” Kingsley says, but admits it would be easier and quicker to do well in the capital: “The NME reviewer can go and see you on a Wednesday as opposed to like waiting three months for him to go and see you ... Yeah it'd be dead easy if you went down to London but I don't see the point because I think the music that we make, the songs that we do have to have some sort of identity and have to have some sort of northern identity. I think you've got to be honest to where you're from ... If you went to London you'd be polluted by the effects of living in London and crappy city life, whereas here you can sort of do your thing ... you're not gonna wanna try and get into some crappy little scene that celebrates itself.”

Kinsley's frustration about the apathy of people, about the “lack of revolutionary spirit” as he put it, is of course not directed exclusively at those from his home town, but nationwide. We are in a time of great change, America has a black president, we are damaging the planet dramatically, the internet is evolving , expanding communication methods and of course we are in a recession.

“In every recession or every sort of bad time something good comes out of it,” explains Kingsley. “So you had like acid house and grunge and Madchester and all that shit came out of the arse end of the Tory government. Then you had the punk rock movement or new wave or whatever out of the bleakness of the seventies. And then you got Elvis and rock n roll out of the depression. But now that we're in the shit perhaps something should happen. But I dunno, I think the general consensus with the public is that they don't care, they really couldn't care less because they'd prefer to go and watch The Feeling tell them that everything is all right.”

The Chapman Family play Evolution Festival in Newcastle on 24^th May.

www.myspace.com/thechapmanfamily