Middlesbrough

Ayresome Park was a football stadium in the town of Middlesbrough, North East England, and was the home of Middlesbrough F.C. from its construction... in time for the 1903–04 season, until the Riverside Stadium opened in 1995. Middlesbrough had previously played at Linthorpe Road West cricket ground, but election to the Football League meant that an improved stadium was required. Ayresome Park was built at Paradise Field, adjacent to the old stadium of Middlesbrough Ironopolis, who had played in the Football League in the 1893–94 season. The highest attendance at the ground was set on 27 December 1949, when Middlesbrough played Teesside's North East rivals Newcastle United. Ayresome Park was also one of the venues for the 1966 FIFA World Cup. Three games were played at the ground, involving the Soviet Union, North Korea, Italy and Chile. North Korea famously beat Italy 1–0 at the ground, to knock out of the World Cup one of the most powerful footballing nations, and advancing the Koreans to the quarter-finals in the process.
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Wendy Richard, MBE was an English actress best known for playing Miss Brahms in Are You Being Served? and Pauline Fowler in EastEnders. She was... first educated at St George's Primary School in Mount Street, Mayfair, west London, before attending the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, and then the Italia Conti Academy stage school in London. She died on 26 February 2009 at the Harley Street clinic where she was being treated for a third bout of breast cancer. Richard, an only child, was born in Middlesbrough in 1943. Her parents, Henry William and Beatrice Reay Emerton, were publicans and ran the Corporation Hotel in the town. Emerton and Cutter married in Paddington in 1939. While Richard was a baby, her family moved to Bournemouth. Later they moved to the Isle of Wight and then to London, where they ran the Shepherds Tavern in Shepherd Market, where Elizabeth Taylor and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon were said to be customers.
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Chris Rea is an English singer-songwriter, recognisable for his distinctive, husky voice and slide guitar playing. The British Hit Singles &... Albums stated that Rea was "one of the most popular UK singer-songwriters of the late 1980s. He was already a major European star by the time he finally cracked the UK Top 10 with his 18th chart entry; "The Road to Hell ". By 2009, Rea had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide. He is well known for his 1978 hit song "Fool " that charted #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard adult contemporary chart. The song was later covered by Elkie Brooks and was a top 20 hit in the UK. Although Rea had limited success in the United States, two of his albums, The Road to Hell and Auberge, topped the UK Albums Chart. The book Guinness Rockopedia described him as a "gravel-voiced guitar stalwart". Rea was born in Middlesbrough, England, the son of ice cream producer Camillo Rea who together with his brother Gaetano owned an ice cream factory and ran twenty-one cafés.
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Christopher Quinten proved very popular for the serial in the 1980s. In 1989, Quinten told the casting office that he was going to move to the... United States to marry his then-fiancée, American talk show host Leeza Gibbons. The couple had met in 1988 in New Zealand while appearing on a Telethon, and Quinten had been hoping to stay in the series as a part-time character, but the producers rejected his offer to stay on part-time, and at the end of 1988 the decision was made to kill the character off. His final episode was aired on 15 February 1989, when Brian Tilsley was stabbed to death by a gang of teenagers outside a nightclub.
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Thelma Barlow is an English television actress and writer, most famous for her roles as Mavis Wilton in the long-running ITV soap opera Coronation... Street and as Dolly Bellfield in the sitcom Dinnerladies. Thelma Barlow was born in Middlesbrough, North Riding of Yorkshire in 1929, the younger of two daughters. Her father Tommy, a cabinet maker, died of pneumonia five weeks before her birth, so Barlow was brought up by her mother Margaret. During her childhood, the family moved to Huddersfield and Thelma Barlow left school at 15 and went to Huddersfield Technical College to study shorthand and typing. Her first job, as a secretary, she held for eight years and at the same time belonged to an amateur dramatics group. Barlow decided to take up acting professionally and joined the Joan Littlewood Theatre Group. During the 1950s, she did rep in Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham. In 1960, Barlow joined the West of England Theatre Company followed by the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company. In Bristol, she ran a boarding house for fellow actors. In 1956 she married set designer Graham Barlow, and they had two children, Clive and James.
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Thomas John Mooney is a former professional English football player who played as a striker. Mooney began his professional career at Aston Villa,... but was released in 1990 without ever playing for the first team. Mooney then joined Scarborough, where he made a name for himself, scoring 40 goals in 129 first-team appearances. After three years at Scarborough, he moved to Southend United for a reported £100,000. After just one season at Southend he arrived at Watford – initially on loan, before eventually signing for £95,000 in July 1994 as a 'makeweight' alongside midfielder Derek Payne, with Keith Dublin moving in the opposite direction. In his early days at the club, under manager Glenn Roeder, he failed to cement a successful striking partnership with Jamie Moralee and soon found himself in the reserves or on the bench. He eventually ended up playing as part of the defensive line during the Second Division championship-winning campaign of 1997–98. Mooney started the 1998–99 season in a defensive role, but slipped out of the side as Watford reverted to 4–4–2.
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Chris Kamara is a retired English footballer. He ended his playing career in 1995 but made a brief comeback in 2012 for Mid Wales Football League... side Welshpool Town. He last managed a club in 1998. He is now a presenter and football analyst on Sky Sports. Kamara was born in Middlesbrough to a father of Sierra Leonean roots in 1957. Before starting his footballing career at Portsmouth in 1975 Kamara served with the Royal Navy. Chris remains a great friend of Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson with whom he grew up on Middlesbrough's Park End council estate. He and Gibson regularly attended matches together. Kamara's football career started when he joined Portsmouth in 1975, beginning a professional footballing career that saw him move between nine clubs, scoring 71 goals in 641 league appearances. The clubs he played for included Brentford, Luton Town and Leeds United – where he won the Division Two championship title.
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