Released by Bradford City. Didn’t know he was from Hartlepool. Well I hope the saying is correct, too many Cooks etc and we get rid of one.

Signed,
https://www.hartlepoolunited.co.uk/news ... lum-cooke/

He is a decent pro and should be an excellent addition to our midfield options.

Another centre half and a couple of strikers are a priority and maybe then just a bit of back up.

He's from Peterlee.

It is in the Poolysphere, so he’s from Hartlepool

Great signing, 5 more like him hopefully

Surprised Bradford let him go as he hardly missed a game for them last season. But Hughes is putting his own mark on that team - his new signings there are already into double figures.

Looks a really good signing based on the game here last season and what Bradford fans are saying! Hopefully some forwards next to convert the chances he creates

could be a byrne situation in reverse.

Peterlee is a different world compared to the cosmopolitan metropolis that is British West Hartlepool.

You can’t argue with profoundly unalterable, incontestable, common sense, down to earth logic like that. You are a scholar sir.

Does anyone know why we call it "British West Hartlepool", rather than West Hartlepool. Why is the word British added?

It was a term to describe the town of West Hartlepool by a comedian whose name escapes me, probably a throw away remark on stage at the Empire theatre in it’s day, but it stuck and there’s something humorous about it.

Thanks Snowy

Happy to help.

This British West Hartlepool thing got me thinking so I phoned my aunty in her 80’s and she told me where to look, apparently Jimmy Edwards used it in a 1950’s BBC radio sketch called ‘ Night Train to British West Hartlepool’.
The only authenticated use is Benny Hill in 1961 in his record ‘Transistor Radio’., bud she insists she heard it as a kid and my gran said it was common knowledge it emerged in the 1930’s on stage.
Hope that puts it to bed.

Thanks for the info.
I think i will start to use it on letters/postcards to people i know who might see the joke.

Compton Mackenzie the author of Whiskey Galore was born in West Hartlepool in Mainsforth Terrace, but when I checked out the location on my street maps from the period to see where we could put his blue plaque, the wall of the ex bus depot now studios was it. Not quite fitting somehow.

When I was a kid BBC's Fyfe Robertson opened his show with the words "well here we are in British West Hartlepool" and then promptly slated the Town.
I actually watched him do it.

I also seem to recall a letter to a newspaper with the writer saying something like "Disgusted British West Hartlepool" but i may have dreamt that one.