I am very pleased to say that the West Yorkshire Archive service have accepted the Back-Chat Collection interviews into their permanent archives thus ensuring their accessibility to the public for many generations to come.

You can hear this interview by simply clicking the West Yorkshire Archive Link where you will find all of the Back-Chat Collection interviews listed in alphabetical order along with captioned photographs.

If you would like to contact The Back-Chat Collection please do email me at carloharrison1947@gmail.com.

To listen to the interviews which are now hosted on the
West Yorkshire Archive Service click here.

Michael Parker

Born

March 1934, Yeadon.

Background

Grew up and lives in Yeadon

Date of Interview

April 2019

“Please feel free to use my interview as you feel fit, I know it’s in safe hands.”

Michael Parker

Michael Parker, ‘ah yes the coalman from down Kirk Lane’, that’s how countless numbers of people know him but there is so much more to this well-spoken gentleman.

It is true that the family business was a major part of Michael’s life but then again so was the theatre and his National Service. You wouldn’t think that the man unloading a freight train truck full of coal by hand onto the back of a lorry could also be a budding thespian treading the boards in the theatre.

This was only the second recorded interview I had done but I am very pleased to say that we managed to capture the little devil that lives inside Michael Parker.

Interviewer: Carlo Harrison

Cataloguer: Fiona Quinton

Sound Engineer David Myers


HTML5 Audio Player
You can listen to the entire recording by clicking the start arrow or, you can move the slider to one of times shown for the headings opposite, they are a guide to the many things we chatted about.
South View School
0.28
Christmas
03.44
Civic Theatre, Bradford
08.15 
National Service
11.05
Coal Merchant, Kirk Lane
13.11
Football (the street), Yeadon
26.37
Hadfields (coal)
29.03
Smokeless Zones
31.42
Shirley Birkenshaw Wedding
35.02
Yeadon Tarn (Dam)
36.47
Froggy Island – Yeadon Dam
38.29

 

Please take into consideration when listening to these interviews that the meaning of language changes over time and that interviewees have not intended to cause offence by anything said which now may be thought to be unacceptable.

Recording this social history, chatting to different people about a whole host of subjects has been a real pleasure, such an interesting and I think worthwhile project for people to listen to both now and in years to come.

Thank you for visiting this website.

Carlo Harrison