Ted Lune

A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders.

Neagle stars as Frances Baring, a socialite widow attempting to keep her late husband's symphony orchestra going. Reluctantly she enlists the help of a young pop singer (Frankie Vaughan) who has fallen for Baring's daughter Joanna, played by a young Janette Scott.

A jobless Geordie shipyard worker escapes from his bleak existence into an imaginary life with the girl of his dreams, a salesgirl at a futuristic Pink Lane cigarette kiosk. This is a funny, bitter-sweet silent comedy, an odyssey through a Newcastle cityscape in transition from an industrial Tyneside to T Dan Smiths modernist vision of the city as a Brasilia of the North. Directed by Robert Tyrell, it is also a brilliant social document of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 1960s.