Last Night that never ended
Oct 15 2009 by David Whetstone, The Journal
Ahead of the 20th North East Last Night of the Proms concert on Saturday, David Whetstone looks at the history of the big event.
THE George Walker North East Last Night of the Proms is not really the LAST night, it is THE night – worthy of red letter treatment on many a calendar.
It was only ever intended to be ONE night, a glorious thank you by the late George Walker to the Newcastle medics who had treated him for blood cancer non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
I remember my former colleague, Avril Deane, bustling back into the newsroom after interviewing “this wonderful couple” – George and Rosalynde Walker, from Westerhope – who had organised a concert based on the Royal Albert Hall spectacular after attending it when their friend, Benjamin Luxon, was the star turn.
That first concert in aid of cancer care and research was a huge success. Cornish baritone Ben Luxon, at the height of his powers in 1990, went down a storm and £10,000 was raised. The audience would not allow there to be no repeat – and 20 years later, here we are.
Well, some of us. George, the driving force behind the Proms and much else, died in November 2001 – though, having once been given just weeks to live, an extra 13 years of busy life was something he would have considered worth celebrating.
Ben Luxon finally called it a day after being cruelly afflicted by a hearing problem. But he gave more than his due to Proms audiences at Newcastle City Hall.
If you haven’t attended the annual concert, where serious music goes hand in hand with fun, funny hats and – oddly – inflated bananas, you will be in for a treat if you have got tickets for Saturday’s 20th.
The 20th ‘Geordie Proms’! It will seem extraordinary to many regulars – and there are some, no doubt, who have never missed a year.
You can put Rosalynde in the vanguard of that merry band. I remember she retired from the organisational front line in 2006 but came bouncing back again after the briefest spell of rest and recuperation.
Saturday’s City Hall line-up features, for the second year running, bass Graeme Danby, North East born and bred, and Ashington-born soprano Janice Cairns.
Janice missed the very first Proms concert because she had badly injured her back in a performance of Tosca and was out of action.
Suzanne Manuell, with her Cornish burr, is Ben Luxon’s legacy to the enterprise. He introduced her as his guest one Proms night in the early 1990s and she has been coming back ever since. She even hosts her own fundraiser at the Civic Centre every spring.
