If I ever knew that The Ship Inn in Banff was used for the pub interiors in Local Hero, I had forgotten, until recent news of proposals to turn it into flats surfaced.
In the north-east, the film is more usually associated with the beautiful coastal village of Pennan, which stood in for Ferness, a fictional Highland town. The iconic red phone box still sits in front of the old harbour, albeit in a slightly different position than it appears in the movie.
I feel bad ruining the magic, but the box in the film was a prop, placed slightly closer to the pier. The real thing, which was installed after the film to please expectant visitors, sits closer to the quaint houses, by someone’s washing line, sheltered from the sea and tucked in behind a row of what once were likely fishing sheds. A listed box as of 1989, it was nearly disconnected this year, but a public campaign saved it.
I’m unsure if any such campaign might save The Ship. The decision on the planning application has been deferred for now. An economic impact assessment will be carried out. How do you assess the value of being connected to part of the north-east’s film history?
Where Hollywood hit hame
Forgive me for getting carried away, but I also have a lot of personal connections to The Ship. This is a pub where I did much of my formative socialising. I remember skiving the last school sports day I might have been present for, eluding the rector, deputy and year heads who guarded each gate of Banff Academy, to go for a cheeky afternoon pint. Let’s say I had just turned 18.
This is a pub to which I often went with my first girlfriend. Her parents lived just around the corner. They still do. It’s where my pals and I would reunite on Christmas Eve after travelling back through from Aberdeen and further, for at least the first few years after we all moved away. It was usually the best night out of the year.
The Ship is also where both my brother and one of my best friends served pints in various stints, mostly for beer money that would go back across the bar, or into the juker. Love Spreads by The Stone Roses will always make me think of that pub. It’s where my brother would first meet his long-term partner, a night also infamous in that I had turned up to the pub in my soaking wet stocking soles, having had enough drinks at a New Year party to have abandoned my shoes completely.
Helped by how pretty Pennan is, it always had a bit of the mythic about it, when you grew up where we did, because you knew the village had been in a film
It’s somewhere that, whenever I would go back home to Whitehills, for the dentist or a birthday, I’d make sure to nip in for a quick pint and a game of pool, often with my Mum or Dad. We’d sit at those rippled brass topped tables, at the fire, and pet Moira and Ian’s dogs – they were the owners back then.
All this while blissfully unaware that it was where Mac and Gordon had had a whisky after hours in Local Hero. Peter Riegert and Denis Lawson – Wedge Antilles from Star Wars, no less. Without suspicion that this place had been connected to that red phone box, along the coast in Pennan, where Hollywood hit hame.
Pennan retains a cinematic quality
When you grow up on the Buchan coast, you know of that film through its connection to Pennan, probably long before you had ever seen it. Looking back, I’m not sure I had ever watched Local Hero until we screened it at Belmont Filmhouse in 2014. But, nonetheless, it felt like I had.
Helped by how pretty Pennan is, it always had a bit of the mythic about it, when you grew up where we did, because you knew the village had been in a film. Crovie, nearby, is just as bonny, but doesn’t have that feeling.
When you’re in Pennan now, it retains this cinematic quality, particularly as the sun goes down, over the sea. You find yourself wondering if it always felt that way, or if that is a gift given to it by cinema.
Maybe The Ship Inn would have had that same cinematic quality when I was young, had I known it was in the film, or maybe it was just too familiar. Would it have that quality now, if I could visit it again? It might be that I never get the chance.
Far be it from me to say what the owner should do with their property, and the pandemic has changed many a habit, making many local boozers harder to run. It’s probably a bit much to ask, to have it kept for a few of my teenage memories.
But the north-east doesn’t have that many places that intersect with our cultural history quite so beautifully as this. Perhaps that is something that is worth keeping, just like a better known red phone box, just along the coast.
Colin Farquhar is head of cinema operations for Belmont Filmhouse in Aberdeen
