Latest news with #Tubs
Scottish Sun
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Traditional English seaside town reveals huge £1.8million pier transformation
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THE historic Great Yarmouth Pier is in the midst of a makeover. Its pier along the Golden Mile seafront has been open since 1901, and thanks to new funding, it has undergone a major transformation with more to come. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 Britannia Pier in Great Yarmouth has undergone a transformation Credit: Facebook/National Piers Society 4 It's ditched the bright orange lettering and big entertainment signs Credit: Alamy Britannia Pier was always recognisable from the huge advertisements of its upcoming shows and celebrity performers, to its orange 1970s style sign lettering. After £1.8million worth of funding, it now has a new look. The building is sleek and white with grey letters and detailing, looking worlds away from the facade it has had for a number of years. The original wooden Britannia Pier was built in Great Yarmouth in 1858, but was demolished in 1899. In 1901, a new steel and timber frame was constructed but was destroyed after a series of fires and rebuilt. Then in 2022, the pier was bought by Triangle Amusements who applied for planning permission to upgrade the site. Since then, there has been a new amusement arcade and a new front. And a second phase of work is expected to start in October 2025, which will focus on the food stalls and cabin. Despite the ongoing works, the pier is open during the summer and ready for business too. Comedy acts including Jimmy Carr, top tribute acts including Abba, Whitney Houston, Queen and Elvis will be hitting the pier. English seaside town to transform abandoned beach shelters into new attraction 4 Phase two of the upgrade is set to go ahead in October Credit: Alamy There's also a Summy Kids Party event (tickets £3) taking place every Wednesday from 6.30-9.30pm before the free fireworks display. Great Yarmouth has everything you need for a classic British beach break. Last year, Sun readers put together their favourite spots that you just cannot miss like the Joyland amusement park. There you'll find the Super Snails ride, Tubs, Jet Cars, Spook Express and Neptune's Kingdom as well as slush drinks and ice-creams. Another reader suggested the Breydon Water nature reserve. When it comes to beaches, one of the favourites is the nearby Goreleston-on-Sea that they said is "considerably more quiet." They went on to add that it's a "lovely sandy beach and has a nice restaurant called The Fig which is a pizzeria/Greek restaurant overlooking the beach." Plus, the English town home to the world's largest fish and chip shop. And the cheap UK seaside towns that Sun Travel loves – where a day out for the whole family costs from just £25.
The Irish Sun
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Traditional English seaside town reveals huge £1.8million pier transformation
THE historic Great Yarmouth Pier is in the midst of a makeover. Its pier along the Golden Mile seafront has been open since 1901, and thanks to new funding, it has undergone a major transformation with more to come. Advertisement 4 Britannia Pier in Great Yarmouth has undergone a transformation Credit: Facebook/National Piers Society 4 It's ditched the bright orange lettering and big entertainment signs Credit: Alamy Britannia Pier was always recognisable from the huge advertisements of its upcoming shows and celebrity performers, to its orange 1970s style sign lettering. After £1.8million worth of funding, it now has a new look. The building is sleek and white with grey letters and detailing, looking worlds away from the facade it has had for a number of years. The original wooden Britannia Pier was built in Great Yarmouth in 1858, but was demolished in 1899. Advertisement Read More on Beach Piers In 1901, a new steel and timber frame was constructed but was destroyed after a series of fires and rebuilt. Then in 2022, the pier was bought by Triangle Amusements who applied for planning permission to upgrade the site. Since then, there has been a new amusement arcade and a new front. And a second phase of work is expected to start in October 2025, which will focus on the food stalls and cabin. Advertisement Most read in Beach holidays Despite the ongoing works, the pier is open during the summer and ready for business too. Comedy acts including Jimmy Carr, top tribute acts including Abba, English seaside town to transform abandoned beach shelters into new attraction 4 Phase two of the upgrade is set to go ahead in October Credit: Alamy There's also a Summy Kids Party event (tickets £3) taking place every Wednesday from 6.30-9.30pm before the free fireworks display. Advertisement Last year, Sun readers put together their favourite spots that you just cannot miss like the Joyland amusement park. There you'll find the Super Snails ride, Tubs, Jet Cars , Spook Express and Neptune's Kingdom as well as slush drinks and ice-creams. Another reader suggested the Breydon Water nature reserve. Advertisement When it comes to beaches, one of the favourites is the nearby Goreleston-on-Sea that they said is "considerably more quiet." They went on to add that it's a "lovely sandy beach and has a nice restaurant called The Fig which is a pizzeria/Greek restaurant overlooking the beach." Plus, the And the cheap UK seaside towns that Sun Travel loves – where a day out for the whole family costs from just £25. Advertisement 4 Britannia Pier looks completely different after an upgrade Credit: Alamy
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Saying you're in a jangle-pop band is a red flag': the Tubs talk speed, squalor and their glorious second album
'Most of the songs were written in the midst of a breakdown,' says Owen Williams, lead singer with indie rock group the Tubs. 'My long-term relationship had ended, so I was drunk constantly and being kind of obsessive about the people I was dating.' Williams doesn't really need to tell me that he was in a difficult place while writing his band's second album, Cotton Crown – the evidence is in the lyrics. Tubs songs might jangle deceptively with intricate riffs and Teenage Fanclub-style harmonies, but the words are loaded with self-laceration. Manipulative, irritating, sycophantic, unreliable: these are just some of the ways Williams portrays himself on record. The 32-year-old seems none of those things when I meet him at a Wetherspoon's in the band's native south-east London where, over a succession of pints, he cheerfully explains how the Tubs has always been a vehicle to 'do a hatchet job' on himself. 'Sometimes I actually end up painting myself as a lot more unlikable than I am,' he admits. 'But I've always liked lyrics that can be brutal.' Williams's life was in the doldrums when the band recorded their 2023 debut Dead Meat. His previous group, noise-rock outfit Joanna Gruesome, had split in 2017 and new projects – including an attempt to publish a novel – had all fizzled out. Williams says he had 'zero expectations' that anyone outside his circle would care about the Tubs, whom he formed with fellow Joanna Gruesome members Max Warren and George Nicholls, and who are these days completed by drummer Taylor Stewart, along with occasional guest vocals from Lan McArdle, also formerly of Joanna Gruesome. 'We just turned up and bashed that first album out,' says Williams. 'We didn't actually put much effort into it.' Whether that's true or not (and with its unusual hooks and harmonies, Dead Meat certainly didn't sound bashed out), Williams is adamant that they've tried a lot harder on its follow-up. Cotton Crown is full of songs about Williams's relationship woes, told with bleak humour. ('Took a bit of what I think was speed,' is certainly one way of beginning a love song.) But what really sets it apart from its predecessor is the inclusion of final track Strange, which deals with the death of Charlotte Greig, Williams's mother, by suicide in 2014. Williams says he had been trying unsatisfactorily to write about his mother for years until he stumbled on a way in: writing not about her death directly so much as the social awkwardness and bizarre situations that he faced in the immediate aftermath. 'Sometimes when everyone's high / They ask me what it's like / If I'm all right,' he sings. 'I say it makes me more interesting / Then they laugh / And then it's all fine.' Most jolting of all is the way he recalls finding out the method she used to kill herself by reading an article in WalesOnline. Williams has a keen, almost novelistic eye for the minutiae of day-to-day interactions – sending up both himself and the well-meaning folk who tried to console him. 'At the wake someone took my hand / Said that I should write a song about this,' sings Williams at the song's end. 'Well, whoever the hell you were / I'm sorry, I guess this is it.' 'I don't think you can really touch on what it's actually like [to lose your mother],' he says. 'It's too big. But in a perverse sort of way, writing about it from this angle has given it some kind of emotional heft.' Williams's mother was a writer and musician, too. Her beautiful debut album, 1998's Night Visiting Songs, was a mix of original tracks and reimagined folk standards that was the focus of a Guardian profile in 2023. Williams grew up in a home full of various touring folk musicians, and his love of the genre clearly influenced his vocal style, which is often compared to that of a young Richard Thompson. The sleeve for Cotton Crown also features his mother – she's photographed in a graveyard, breastfeeding Williams as a baby. The picture was originally used in a vinyl release of hers which Williams has carried around with him from home to home. 'It felt appropriate to use it because the fact I was having a breakdown was very linked to her. She's kind of in the background of all the songs on the record, not just Strange,' he says. It is, he admits, yet another peculiar aspect of her death that her image is now acting as a kind of promotional tool for his album. 'Now that the vinyls have started arriving at my house, it does feel a bit much. Sometimes I think: should I have done that?' Another thing Williams has refused to shy away from in his songwriting is the reality of living with poor mental health. His struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder were laid bare on earlier songs such as Round the Bend. Cotton Crown continues the excavations: on Narcissist, he sings about wanting to hook up with a potential sociopath in order to distract himself from more existential thoughts. He hopes his lyrics act as an antidote to the romanticisation of mental illness. 'Everyone has sympathy for [people with] mental illness in a kind of abstract way,' says Williams. 'But that doesn't really work in an intimate relationship or friendship. Sometimes people who are mentally ill are really fucking annoying. Anxious people are annoying! Especially if you have something like OCD and you're constantly asking for reassurance about some catastrophic fear that you've become obsessed with.' Williams paints an equally unforgiving picture of being a musician in the modern world – one in which nobody makes any money any more, and any glamour associated with indie rock has long since vanished: 'When you're dating, telling someone you're in a jangle-pop band is basically a red flag these days,' he says, laughing. It has to be said, few would be tempted to sign up for the rock'n'roll lifestyle after listening to Dead Meat's title track, in which Williams explores the previously untapped subject of simultaneously running out of beans and the steroid cream you use to treat a stubborn groin rash. What the Tubs document so well is that period in life in between young adulthood and middle-age, when the party lifestyle starts to seem less carefree, and adult issues are more prone to intrusion. In this sense it shares a similarity with Charli xcx's Brat, albeit a much scruffier Brat that grew up listening to early REM and Hüsker Dü. Williams laughs off the comparison but says that he has noticed that the songs do strike a particular chord with men in their 30s. 'Guys over the last decade have maybe felt this pressure to be living more virtuously,' he says. 'And some of them have said that our music makes them feel like they don't have to be this super-virtuous, perfect person – but they also don't have to be a misogynistic arsehole either. There's, like, a third way.' That way is a throwback to pre-social media times, before everybody felt monitored and the music business became slickly professionalised. 'I think other bands practise a lot more than we do,' says Williams. 'We might run through the set once and be like, 'Can we go to the pub now?'' As for playing live – at present Williams says they can only handle that by getting extremely drunk beforehand. 'It's maybe a bit unsustainable. The drinking in the band can be quite exhausting. We always feel like every show is a big deal, and we probably overcompensate for that.' Not all chaos is good chaos. On the eve of their sold out gig at Moth Club in London last December, their bassist Max was hit by a car and hospitalised, meaning it had to be cancelled. 'We immediately started treating it like a joke, posting pictures from his hospital bed,' says Williams. 'Then he went to ICU with blood clots on his lungs. It was quite dicey. I was thinking – if he dies, will we have to take those Instagram posts down?' Fortunately Max pulled through, although he's still in a wheelchair. The same month also saw the departure of Nicholls, whose spidery, Johnny Marr-like guitar lines elevated the songs (for all Williams's claims of minimal rehearsing, the band can undoubtedly play). Nicholls is off to focus on his career lecturing at Goldsmiths, University of London, but Williams is adamant that the Tubs are only just getting started. In fact they've already written album number three, which apparently has a northern soul-infused sound. Creativity comes easily to Williams – he writes songs and stories constantly. And despite the struggles and the squalor of being a musician in 2025, he concedes that it's a pretty good life overall. 'It's not like I need to buy clothes or whatever it is that people buy,' he says. 'All I need to get by is food and pints.' And so with that in mind, we get another round in. The Tubs tour the UK and Ireland until 5 April. Cotton Crown is out now In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@ or jo@ In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at You can contact the mental health charity Mind by calling 0300 123 3393 or visiting
