Stockport 🇬🇧 Karaoke Kapital of Britain? #Stockport

There's certainly a lot of karaoke nights in Stockport and even a Stockport Fun Karaoke League. But is there more to this story? Was it actually Stockport and not the Japanese who first introduced the combination of live singing and recorded music? Geoff Lloyd is on the trail of the "elusive and enigmatic" Stockport shopkeeper Roy Brooke, who's claimed for decades that he was the first in the world to operate a "singalong machine" (at the White Horse pub in Disley in 1975, since you ask). The truth will out. DAVID MCGILLIVRAY

The best stories have a certain WTF factor.. a weird little fact that draws you in…something you can’t ignore because it’s so contrary to what you previously thought.

So it was for Geoff Lloyd when he heard that the story that Karaoke was invented in Stockport, by a charismatic shopkeeper called Roy Brooke who claimed the Japanese adopted his discovery and marketed it around the world.

Geoff’s a massive Karaoke fan and remembers his halcyon days in the 90s, judging karaoke competitions in the town with his friend Caroline Aherne, so he sets off on a quest to get to the bottom of this tale; a quest that sees him chat to Stockport hitmakers Blossoms, comedy writing legend Craig Cash and a Japanese academic said to have backed up Roy's crazy claim.

On the way he discovers a town so in love with Karaoke that it's home to the country's only dedicated league, a secretive world jampacked with big voices and human drama. 12 pub teams meet every Monday for chance to be champions of the New Stockport Fun Karaoke League. But have some of the teams starting taking it too seriously and forgotten about the fun?

Will Geoff track down Roy Brooke and hear his side of the story and find out why Karaoke has taken root so strongly in Stockport?

Presenter: Geoff Lloyd
Producer: Catherine Murray
Additional recording by George Herd
Production Co-ordination: Mica Nepomuceno
Studio mix: Nat Stokes
Executive Producer: Richard McIlroy

Featuring Blossoms, Craig Cash, Professor Hiroshi Ogawa, and Matt Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japanese Culture Conquered the World.

Special thanks to the Blossoms Bees and The Barnhouse teams and all the members of the New Stockport Karaoke Fun League www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00261v9

Some rights reserved

Taken in: UK / England / Disley / Disley (show map)

Taken on: December 17, 2024

Tags:

disley

white-horse

karaoke

caroline-aherne

blossoms

roy-brooke

karaoke-kapital « less

Sets appears in: • Tuned • Drunk more » • Manchestered « less

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