Author: Andrew Taylor

FORMER Town Mayor Ron Cooper, who retired to Chichester from East Grinstead some years ago, has died.

Ron was mayor of East Grinstead from 1978-9. His funeral service will be held tomorrow at 11am at St Peter’s church West Hamlet, near Chichester.

Town Clerk Julie Holden said ‘The Town Council is aware of Mr Cooper’s death and our sympathies are with his family.’

Members of the public are welcome to attend the funeral service tomorrow if they wish, but the subsequent cremation is ‘family only’.

RICHARD DIGANCE, the renowned comedian, lyricist and artist, has presented Chequer Mead Arts Centre with a picture to include in its exhibition of WWI reflections this summer.

Richard, who will be bringing his paintings to the centre in November, was delighted to see one of his own works included in the war exhibition.

Centre Manager Pete Jenkins said ‘Richard appeared here in March, and was very taken with Chequer Mead. In talking he spoke about his paintings, and so I offered to show him the gallery.

‘He said straight away that he would love to exhibit here and he also has a great interest in WW1 so when I told him about our programme he very kindly offered to paint a picture for the exhibition.’

Richard drove all the way from his home in the Cotswolds to bring the painting to the centre and has also offered to do something unique for Chequer Mead at his forthcoming exhibition, in which he has collaborated with renowned fiddle player Tom Leary to produce unique pieces of music inspired by each piece of art.

Anyone buying a piece of art will presented with a one-off cd to accompany the painting.

Chairman of the Chequer Mead Trust and Town Mayor Nick Hodges said ‘This is a real boost for the exhibition, brought about in a discussion that Richard and Pete had while discussing the Digance exhibition – it is very generous of him.’

* The WWI exhibition can be seen at Chequer Mead’s Greenstede Gallery from 21 – 26 July.

The Richard Digance exhibition will be on display on 8/9 November.

THE town’s Annual Sleep Out took place in the High Street on Saturday night.

A short prayer service was led by Liam Cherry in the presence of Town Mayor Nick Hodges and Charlie Arratoon, the Director of Crawley Open House, and a large group of supporters.

A street collection took place during the day and the sleepers were all sponsored.

Last year the event raised £4000 and it is hoped that this year will match or even exceed that figure.

The money raised will be shared by Crawley Open House, The Easter Team and Worthing Churches Homeless Project.

      

Review by Geraldine Durrant

SOME shows can be reviewed very simply with that over-used expression of surprise and delight Wow!

And Be My Guest was certainly one of them – a non-stop, come-out-humming-the-tunes, rollercoaster Wow! of a show.

Realising that a review of only three letters might disappoint as to the specifics however I will elaborate – although my difficulty with Be Our Guest was in the sheer quantity and quality of the evening’s entertainment.

It is hard to believe that the East Grinstead Youth Theatre Group has only been going five years given the range and diversity of the shows they have produced in that time, and which formed the basis for this ‘highlights’ concert

And highlights they really were, as show after show was reprised in a parade of favourites which included extracts from Seussical, Rent, Annie, We will Rock You, Chorus Line, Fame and Peter Pan among others.

The Company leapt on to the stage for a kick-ass performance of We Will Rock You and then moved seamlessly through their repertoire without a moment to catch breath.

Louise Spiller got the show off to a great start with a powerful rendition of Somebody to Love and Jamie Kaye’s athletic entrance was followed by a thrillingly defiant We Will Rock You.

As an ensemble the performers were astonishing well-drilled in their dance routines, and their choral singing was excellent – and as show after show unfolded I found myself wondering how they could possibly have had the time to rehearse so very many extracts to such a high standard of performance.

The sweet timbre of Daniel Chenery’s voice was perfect for Alone in the Universe, his lovely duet with ten-year-old Amber Titchener. And it is a strength of the company that they have such wide-ranging talent – students as young as five showed an astonishing degree of poise alongside their tutors, and Bullfrog graduates who had come back specially to reprise earlier roles in this special anniversary production.

And while it seems invidious to pick out any individual performers in a evening of uniform excellence I will just mention one or two.

The five little dancers in the Wizard of Oz sequence – Libby Howard, Holly Rees, Jonathan Reed, Olivia Breed and Henry Nott – earned their aaahs! for both proficiency and cuteness.

While tutor Adam Hoskins hilarious Maurice Chevalier-style solo as Lumiere, the candle from Beauty and the Beast, was as charming as it was funny as he led the ensemble laying out their fantasy feast.

Harriet Lake’s performance of Tomorrow, from Annie, was simply lovely as was Yasmin Mason’s Castle on a Cloud from Les Mis – two very young, and talented performers I will enjoy looking out for again.

But the climax, and the emotional heart of the evening came with extracts from Les Miserables.

An hilarious ensemble performance of Master of the House was followed by a solo from Charlie Edelsten. Charlie was not the most adept of the dancers in a company which does everything – but he certainly found his feet with Stars as Javert – the implacable policeman who knows all about the Law and nothing at all about Justice.

But it was Georgia Fawcett whose lovely voice got the tears flowing with I Dreamed a Dream, and then to complete the emotional devastation Adam Hoskins’ Bring Him Home – which I have never heard bettered.

It was stunning stuff even if it did send me sniffing off into the dark – where the car park, always the place to overhear what people really thought of the show, was ringing with plaudits.

EAST Grinstead Town Council’s flag flying at half mast in the High Street to honour the 108 victims of the Whitehall bombing which took place 71 years ago, the largest loss of civilian life in wartime Sussex.

NO immediate decisions can be made by East Grinstead Town Council on proposals by Mid Sussex District Council to use the Imberhorne Lane nursery site for Travellers until they have been fully informed by MSDC as to their plans.

Chairman of Planning Committee Bob Mainstone said he understood that there was great interest in the proposals, and that deep emotions were involved, but town councillors would not be in a position to discuss theproposal fully until the Consultation papers have been released by the District Council, which is expected to be in August.

‘The Town Council has initial concerns about the suitability of the site, but before councillors can form a view we need to be fully briefed about the District Council’s proposal,’ he said.

‘The item has been recommended to Mid Sussex District Council with some amendments to the original report including the continued search for more sites, so all we can do on Monday is acknowledge that MSDC have started the process. Councillors will not be in a position to determine the Town Council View as we don’t yet have the details that MSDC are consulting on. And without those details, councillors cannot comment without the risk that they will form an opinion not based on the facts.’

Cllr Dick Sweatman, Deputy Mayor, agreed.

‘This proposed site came to the notice of town councillors last week completely out of the blue.

‘We had been asked by MSDC if we had any suggestions for suitable sites for Travellers in East Grinstead and replied that we did not – which was minuted in a meeting held at East Court last January.

‘And since then there has been no suggestion that an East Grinstead site had been shortlisted.’

Town Clerk Julie Holden added that members of the public are welcome at all meetings held by the Town Council at East Court, but said turning up for answers about the Imberhorne Lane site at next Monday’s meeting would be ‘premature’.

Deputy Mayor Dick Sweatman has presented a certificate to Oxana Chamberlain for doing 100 hours of voluntary work in the East Court estate’s award winning gardens.

Oxana is Russian and newly-married to her husband Paul. Back home in Yekaterinburg in Siberia, she laughed, the only thing that will grow is potatoes.

So when she arrived to make her new home in East Grinstead she was keen to improve her English and make friends by doing something for the town community.