UNITE THE UNION FOR YOU GUIDELINESGUIDELINES ROCK AND ROLL MEMORIES KLAUS TELLS ALL. Beatle - and newly qualified blue badge - guide Rick Jones meets Klaus Voormann. In August I attended a conference given by eighty-year-old Klaus Voormann, who had lived in Green Street, Mayfair with George and Ringo of the Beatles in the 1960s. He replaced John and Paul who had just moved out to be with their partners. I do not know how many guides include Green Street but it is just across Grosvenor Square from Jimi Hendrix’s flat in Brook Street. As artist and musician, Voormann designed the Revolver album cover and played bass for rival group Manfred Mann. He had met the Fab Four in his native city of Hamburg when they were playing in the red light district of the Reeperbahn in the early 60s. I asked if the Liverpudlians had influenced fashion in Hamburg. Voormann said rather Hamburg had in- fluenced the Beatles, who came as wide-eyed young men. ‘They were so young,’ he said. ‘George was only sixteen with these great sticking-out ears and singing “I’m Henery the Eighth I am!” The Beatles had an unbelievably wide repertoire.’ Voormann was in London to promote both his book, ‘Es Begann in Hamburg (It Began in Hamburg) and the City of Hamburg’s annual Reeperbahn Festival. His fascinating book is a autobiography in words and pictures, rich with anecdotes to keep your Beatles Tours lively. THE PIANO MAN Q. Who played for the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kinks and Who without joining any of them? A. Pianist Nicky Hopkins, who is generally regarded as the finest session player Britain has ever produced. Trained as a classical pianist, Hopkins was born in Perivale in 1944 and worked with most of the famous bands of the sixties and seventies, playing keyboards on the Revolver album and the Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet and accompanying Jagger’s vocals on the single Angie before his early death in 1994 at the The Nicky Hopkins bench supporting an admirer. age of fifty. Hopkins suffered from Crohn’s disease which made touring difficult and led to him working mainly in studios. About a hundred people attended the unveiling of the bench in Perivale Park which was built to look like a piano as a memorial to Hopkins. This was paid for through a crowd funding campaign led by John Wood, an admirer of Hopkins. Roger Also in this issue: Daltrey, Mick Jagger and Kenney Jones of the Small faces were amongst the contributors. EL CHAIR’S LETTER – PAGE 2 WATERLOO SUNSET THE SILVER VAULTS – PAGE 3 Plans to open an ABBA-themed restaurant near Waterloo (the title of their first Eurovision winning hit COSTUME AND STYLE IN TUDOR ENGLAND – in 1974) have been shelved after Coin St residents objected. PAGES 4 AND 5 They were not happy at the thought of fans of the group singing Dancing Queen in the street after ARCHITECTURAL AWARDS – PAGE 7 closing time. The plan is now to open the restaurant in the O2 centre in the late spring of 2019. GUIDING ON THE DLR – PAGE 8 ASSOCIATION OF PROFESSIONAL TOURIST GUIDES www.guidelondon.org.uk September 2018 Union news BRANCH COUNCIL Nick Hancock (Chair) Ruth Polling (Secretary) LETTER FROM Alfie Talman (Treasurer) Steve Szymanski (Vice Chair) Angela Morgan (Marketing) THE CHAIR The Chair on his bike Danny Parlour (Site Liaison) Google “ I need a London Guide”: it is what you would do if you were looking. Of the million Ruth Rossington (Website) + results our APTG website comes up third. And fourth - just in case you needed another hint. Alex Hetherington (CPD) This is great news for English speaking guides. There are thousands of site visitors every month, and a hefty number of those enquiries turn into jobs - paying jobs going straight into the Sue Hadley (CPD) pocket of the APTG guide. Dominic Burris-North (Events) This is all good news - but not if you are French or German. Search in those languages and we Liz Rubenstein (Fees) do not even hit the first page of results. And since half of all APTG members guide in languages Anne Marie Walker (Membership) other than English this does not help them and is not good news at all. Edwin Lerner (Guidelines) So we have committed to making the next generation of our web site far more French and German friendly. Spanish too – in fact any language which is popular and generates work. Sadly the intrepid Faroese traveller will still struggle but we will follow the money . We want Alex to raise the profile of our portal for those seeking non-English guides. We want to offer more to APTG guides speaking other languages but this will take time, effort and involvement. Hetherington There are new vacant places on Branch Council for guides whose first language is not English Alex works in the team because we need your experience, insight and involvement to make this work. Speak up - we which produce APTG’s want to hear your voice. Be part of things and make a difference. And our Branch Council popular Continuing Professional lunches are legendary. Say hello - we want you to be part of the future . Development programme and has taken Last October Branch Council gathered to create our first strategy document . We showcased over as our representative on FEG this at our AGM, and published it in Guidelines. We wanted to decide what we thought was important and to devote our time and effort there. This October we are reviewing that document and planning for the future. We are pleased with lots that has happened. We now DATES FOR YOUR have 579 members - the largest number that we have ever had. More members attend our open meetings and we now invite a guest speaker to make it a worthwhile investment of your DIARY THIS WINTER time. Our CPDs are relevant and innovative but also are refreshers for the staples of our QUIZ NIGHT profession - the major sites that we keep coming back to. We have achieved more work opportunities for APTG members. Did you see Guides on the DLR? That is down to us Date: Monday 29 October. Venue: (see page 8) and we have supported colleagues chasing bad debts. We would like to hear Prince of Wales Pub, Covent Garden what you think on our progress this year and where we should focus on next year. Please ITG AGM email me on [email protected] We want to know what you think. Date: Thursday 15 November 2pm Lastly a warm welcome to the latest group of guiding trainees under the experienced care of Venue: Kensington Town Hall Ann Bunnis and Karen Sharpe as Course Directors and Administrator Fernando Garcia. There are thirty two beginning their guiding career and the focus is on the practicalities of guiding as The meeting will be preceded by walks well as knowledge. They have written a new syllabus which reflects the changing market and and followed by an evening of food, drinks demands and expectations of our clients. We wish everyone well and look forward to and quiz. welcoming them all into the APTG once they have qualified. Nick Hancock APTG AGM Time: 11:00 am Monday 10 December NEXT MEETING This will be an all-day meeting at the Diskus The next Members’ Open Meeting will be at 6:30 pm on Suite in the Unite Office… to be followed by: Tuesday 9 October at Unite Office. GUIDES’ CAROL SERVICE PRE MEETING TALK Time: 7:00 pm Monday 10 December Before the next meeting there will be a surgery advising members on the best ways of generating Venue: St Giles in the Fields Church, 60 St work from the GuideLondon website. This session will start at 5:45 and there will be a short Giles High St, WC2H BLG interval before the meeting starts. Please arrive promptly if you wish to attend. 2 Union news GUIDE LONDON REPORT There were 19,906 unique visitors in August, the first time since February 2018, that unique visitors has dropped below 20,000. 298 leads were generated with most via individual tour pages, the first time since December 2017 that website has generated less than 300 leads. This drop in leads is not surprising, as we have seen it in years past. Essentially we are transitioning from a busy season to a quieter period though, with increase in traffic from previous years, we hope to keep leads volume at a decent level. The top five tours requested via GuideMatch: 1. Tower of London Tour - 37 leads 2. Westminster Abbey Tour - 15 leads 3. Classic London Tour - 11 leads 4. London Architecture Tour - Modern & Contemporary - 7 leads 5. British Museum Tour - 5 leads 5. Windsor Castle Tour - 5 leads Essentially, the top three tours remain the same with changes in the 4th and 5th positions. There was one new blog post on the Bloomberg Building and London Mithraeum Museum and one revised Blog Post on the Notting Hill Carnival. We are off the pace set for new blog posts in 2017 and so hoping that, with season slowing down, we can begin to add some new content to support the various tours. That said, work continues on Pinterest account to build up traffic from this source, which is second only to Google for search volume. THE SILVER VAULTS. Daisy Woodman from the Silver vaults introduces us to her treasure trove in Chancery Lane Five levels below ground, behind a multi-ton steel door in Chancery Lane, lie the London Silver Vaults, the largest retail selection of silver in the world.