You know a town has a PR problem when it needs to catch fire to get attention. In 1984, my home town of Barry made the evening news when the Dock Offices caught fire. Even without the TV coverage, I could see the blaze from my bedroom window. I don’t recall my exact reaction to the spectacle, but one thing I definitely didn’t say was “What’s occurin’?”: because that piece of famous Barry parlance wouldn’t be invented for almost 20 years.
As the cameras captured the flames flickering around the nearby statue of industrialist David Davies, Barry’s own Jebediah Springfield, it seemed symbolic. It was Davies who, spurred on by a grudge against rival coal magnates from nearby Cardiff, turned Barry from a few scattered cottages into a thriving dock town. By 1913, it was the biggest coal-exporting port in the world. For most of the 20th century, however, it languished in near-anonymity.
