Ballroom dancers, suicide cases, charlatans: Blackpool has them all. No place has so much possibility or holds so much of the British soul on one bright, windswept drag. I first came here for Conservative party conference, where the cognitive dissonance of pre-Coalition Tories in funeral suits and the reality of the country they sought to govern – love, loss and candyfloss – felt wild. Did these people even know each other? It turns out they didn’t. Then I came to watch Russell Brand pretend to be Jesus Christ at the Winter Gardens for people alienated enough to think Russell Brand is a viable alternative to anything. They all meditated together. Blackpool is a city of lunatics, and I love it, especially its name: it’s daring you to jump into the peat-stained stream that runs off Marton Mere. The black pool.
The industrial revolution made a party town and it’s this. But to call Blackpool the British Florida, or the British Las Vegas, denies how interesting it is. It was raised in instalments in the 19th century for the factory workers of the north. The railway came in 1846, the North Pier in 1863 (two more followed), the illuminations in 1879 and the Tower in 1894. It’s common to say that everyone has fled for Spain – I hate Spain – and Blackpool is a town of tumbleweed, pornography and mobility scooters but it’s not all true. It still attracts 20 million visitors a year, which sounds incredible until you remember how much British people love rollercoasters, for the same reason we drink the way that we do. The Pleasure Beach has ten rollercoasters. I met a boy who has ridden the Big One 828 times and when I asked him why he had ridden the Big One 828 times he didn’t know but I do. It’s another perfect drug.
We stay at the Imperial Hotel, a red-brick palace on the north shore, which is the posh part of Blackpool: as at Ascot, the classes line up like a Ponzi scheme or map. It’s huge and solid: the sort of building designed to make you feel safe. All it lacks is arrow holes, and a moat. If the Imperial is a testament to nostalgia – photographs of the famous and dead who came here line the walls – it is surprisingly comfortable for a hotel where rooms can be had for £60 a night including breakfast. This is my favourite kind of hotel: Ozymandias’s hotel. At this time of year, it is filled with – how to put this? – good sons and dying mothers. They pad around the hotel in the afternoons, seeking pools of sunlight and holding hands. This is principally why I love Blackpool. It is filled with love.
To call Blackpool the British Las Vegas denies how interesting it is
If you want to watch lunacy of the best-dressed kind, you visit the ballroom at the Tower: Lancashire’s response to Paris. Inside – well, how much is too much? There is no concept of it here. The ballroom is Rococo, and it speaks too: the line above the stage reads: ‘Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.’ On the famous sprung floor are ancient people who rise from tables at the edge to dance. Some of them are very good at dancing, some of them are dying, but in a nation of romantics, they are the most romantic I have found. I don’t know where they are in their heads in their yellow chiffon, but they aren’t here, that’s for sure: and all of this can be watched from the balcony for money. For me, it’s the Coliseum in Rome. I watch, amazed, as the organist stabs his Wurlitzer. He usually gets the MBE. I don’t know why but I approve.
We drive along the promenade because we know we are in a dreamscape and we also want to know exactly where it ends. So, we pass the illuminations that shout Blackpool’s existence to the universe: montages of Alice in Wonderland; of Sooty Land; of bulbs. Soon it bleeds out, and we are in common coastal Lancashire. The dark rises and the north never gets it due. Being here makes me want to build a nuclear power station in Kingham, just for spite.
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