Dam David

Family ties

WHQ trivia fact. David’s Attenborough’s niece Bea, used to work with us in WHQ, back when she was at Uni in Newcastle.

So did Richard Pryor’s niece Sammie, way, way back in the Trent days. But we aren’t talking about David's relatives, or relatives of the greatest ever Black comic genius on this page.

We’ll tell you about multiracial familial angles another time, as we are talking here, about the absolute King of the Animal Men.

The clip that inspired the mural

David Attenborough is someone we love a lot. We will write volumes about him here when we have time, but for now, here is a movie that sums up why we love him so much. It's the iconic clip that gave rise to our David & the Gorillas mural, from the landmark BBC series Life On Earth.

No wonder we nearly called our building ‘David Attenborough House’ & no wonder one of the first things we did when we got our fly new Club, was to paint a massive mural of him, upstairs.

As if Holland wasn't crazy enough

Once years ago, way before mobile phone cameras were everywhere, we got given a film camera for a week, from the BBC, to record whatever we liked for a series called ‘Video Nation’.

We shot a bit about how much we loved David & somehow, by some miracle, he ended up seeing it & uploaded it on his website.

We were over in Amsterdam at the time, partying really, really gently, just playing passie the parcel etc., when we got the call from back home to tell us. We thought it was a joke at first & couldn't actually believe it.

Mad with excitement, we rushed straight to the nearest internet cafe, The Bulldog & there it was – loaded up onto the homepage of his BBC site..! How cool is that..?!

Yeah Man.!! Our Monkey face..! Popping up on David Attenborough’s site, in praise of the man.

All this while we were mad busy doing a suitably accomplished kite impersonation, smack in the middle of the Dam.. Does life get any better…?

We finished the clip by saying – ‘He’s our Man & we stand together.’ Which is still as true today, as it was way back then.

I will puncture your eyeball

Here is a picture of our friend Sinead, who worked with us at the Old Club, The Trent House & also here at WHQ in Curtis Mayfield House when we first opened & while an art student.

She painted the David & Gorillas Mural, as well as some of our other classic murals, elsewhere in the Club. By the end of this process she was sick of her life & wanted to kill & stab us in the eye with a rusty knitting needle, so we would suffer.

This was due to our endless requests for ‘slight tweaks.’ It is never easy for anyone painting a mural with us, as we are very, very hard to please.

She is well proud of it now though. Didn’t actually puncture our eye, or see us suffer & in the end, she created a masterpiece of extreme significance.

There is a fab picture of her on the day she finished the David Attenborough mural, at the end of a thread in Complaint Corner, about some girls asking to do paintings in the Club.

Fine Art

Every weekend we see scores of people standing on the couches, cuddling up to David to kiss his face & to get their photos taken with him & the Gorillas.

Despite all the posh art you can find in places like the Laing Art Gallery, it is a bizarre but true fact, that this mural is probably the most genuinely loved artwork in this entire city…

As people truly interact & properly bond with it on a weekly basis.

We intend to eventually install a motion sensitive ‘Attenborough Cam,’ just above the mural, so we can record footage of everyone who gets their photo taken kissing it.

Then we we plan to run them together, into a short You Tube movie. Yet another job on our immense ‘To do’ list…

David, your gang & the gorillas

If you have cool photos of you & your chums taken in front of the David & the Gorillas mural, please be a pal & e mail them to us.

Once we get a load of them in, we’ll put them all up here on the site, to fill in the gap between now & until we get around to making the You Tube movie.

They don’t have to be great, as the very fact that you loved the mural & then took them – makes them great enough for us.

David Attenborough is our man & he is your man. We stand firm & we’ll always stand together.