On Ilkla' Moor wi' clapper board
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Your support makes all the difference.Yorkshire as Britain's answer to Hollywood? Yes indeed, says the county's tourist board, who have just produced a new brochure, And Action - Take 2, which maps and lists more than 100 film and television productions made in the county.
The board's head of marketing Martin Evans is trying to shift perceptions of something as immutable as millstone grit: the county of cloth caps, brass bands and best bitter, whose claim to artistic merit might once have rested in the cut of its broadloom is breaking new ground.
"Yorkshire has always sold itself - wonderful countryside and a strong regional identity," says Mr Evans. "But our research showed that one in fivevisitors were drawn as much by a desire to see the locations of television productions and films.
"The appeal isn't just UK- based. The Japanese are hooked on the Brontes, and James Herriot is big in the US. When the first series of Heartbeat went out in Australia, British tourist offices were besieged with calls."
Cameras first turned in the county at the beginning of the century. Holmfirth near Huddersfield - location for Last of the Summer Wine - was host to productions for the silent cinema. In the Sixties came films based on the work of local novelists such as John Braine's Room At The Top (Bradford) and Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar (Leeds).
But there are drawbacks. Before Heartbeat the village of Goathland (pop 200) got 150,000 visitors a year. Now it's 1.2 million. "The villagers have suffered considerable disruption and inconvenience," says Bill Breakell, tourism officer for the North Yorks national park. "A large proportion of them would now be glad to wave the Heartbeat team goodbye."
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