The Northerner, Guardian.co.uk – 5th April, 2011

Penrith fights to save its cinema. Harry Potter team and Withnail star Richard E Grant line up to buy shares. And why the M6 south of the town has just been a dodgy spot.

It can’t be bad to have Harry Potter on board, but Penrith still needs £600,000 plus to save its venerable Alhambra cinema.

Campaigners have until the end of the month to find the balance in donations or the sort of £50 share which the Potter saga’s director David Yates has bought; and which could secure admission to glitzy AGMs if the project succeeds.

Other sharebuyers include the visual effects supervisor of the Potter films, Tim Burke, and the actor Richard E Grant. They might not turn up to vote and have cups of tea once a year, but you never know. Grant still talks wistfully of tatty old Sleddale Hall in nearby Wet Sleddale which was Uncle Monty’s country cottage in the film Withnail and I.

Small town cinemas have enjoyed a revival in recent years, after their worst days in the late 20th century. Even little Ambleside has a flourishing one, as does Keswick, whose own Alhambra helped promote Keswick Film Club and premieres a season of members’ shorts. It seems a shame that bigger and bustlier Penrith may go dark; but the cinema’s owners say that their next-door bingo hall is losing too much money and it only makes sense to sell the entire building; probably to demolisher-developers.

The ‘save it’ campaign has just had a gala fund-raising evening, complete with a showing of Brief Encounter which was mostly filmed just down the West Coast main line at Carnforth train station. Tim Burke is doing his bit to spread the word via his Facebook page and says that closure would be “a tragedy for the people of Eden” – the otherwise appropriately Paradisiacal name for the Penrith area.

To help out with the fundraising, just click here.