Gateshead’s Missing Cinema
A new tourist book has come out, which describes an entertainment and leisure complex in Gateshead which has a cinema and a bowling alley, between the Sage (music venue) and the BALTIC (art gallery) on Gateshead Quays.
There is only one teensy problem. Said leisure complex doesn’t actually exist.
Or, at least that’s what we think. As the book is called The Hidden Places of Northumberland & Durham, presumably it just could be that this leisure complex is extremely well hidden.
Ho, ho, chortle, someone’s made a cock-up. I can only presume that they discovered that planning permission for such was granted in 1999, although it is important to remember with any regeneration of redevelopment scheme that plans do not necessarily equate to reality — otherwise Wembley stadium would have opened earlier and considerably more cheaply.
Now I think it’s sufficiently amusing that the BBC might want to cover the story and mention it, although I’m less convinced that it warranted multiple vox pops asking people if they knew where it was — of course they don’t know where it is, it doesn’t exist.
Although there is another “hidden gem” in the story itself. Step forward and take a bow, person being interviewed 52 seconds into the broadcast, who quite beautifully points out…
You haven’t got enough news for this evening, have you?Interviewee
Hello. I am 
