THE SHEFFIELD GRINDER - Tony Capstick and the Carlton Main/Frickley Colliery Band. (Signature tune - BBC Radio Sheffield.) Tony Capstick, who died aged 59, was a Yorkshire character actor with a manic inventive streak that briefly made him a comedian of national standing. His guying of a celebrated "northern" television advertisement for Hovis bread, released as a double A-side single, Sheffield Grinder/Capstick Comes Home, reached number three in the charts in 1981. It was set to Dvorak's New World symphony, played by a local colliery band, Frickley Carlton Main. The song's lyrics, about a lad returning from his first 72-hour shift at t'pit with his dad (a 43-mile walk in the snow wearing clothes made from sacks), played a small part in destroying tenacious misconceptions about the reality of northern life. But Capstick also set about destroying himself through excessive alcohol consumption and never fulfilled a potential that once had Billy Connolly calling him the funniest man he had ever met. He continued to play TV cameos in most of the region's many soaps until earlier this year (2003). He was a policeman in Last Of The Summer Wine; had parts in Emmerdale, Coronation Street and All Creatures Great And Small, and his own eight-part sketch series Capstick's Capers in 1983, but the new wave of comedy largely passed him by. He also appeared in many other TV shows including The Cops (BBC2, 1998) Capstick was born in Mexborough, near Rotherham, a town at the heart of a <b>...</b>
Brass
Band
Yorkshire
Frickley
Colliery
1981
Sheffield
classical
DADRENO
