Herne Bay has been referred to by many names over the years, some complimentary some no doubt not so flattering, but for a short while in the 1980s it was referred to as Cocklesea.
‘Oh I do like a cockle from Cocklesea…
There’s not another cockle,
What’ll satisfy your throttle,
Like a cockle from Cocklesea.’
In written form the above poem doesn’t have the same charm that it did when played through the television sets across the country like it was back in 1984. The rhyme was sang with a sort of cockney swagger at the start of each episode of the BBC sitcom Cockles.
Written by prolific television screenwriter Douglas Livingstone, protagonist Arthur Dumpton returns to the fictional seaside town of Cocklesea and attempts to restore it to its past glory. As you’ve probably surmised by now Herne Bay doubles up as the fictional town, as in the eighties it was in a sense similar to Cocklesea, as it had massively fallen out of favour with the holidaymaker in a wake of cheap flights and Europe’s allure, as was the case with most UK seaside resorts at the time.
While researching this article a re-watch, or in this case, an initial watch of Cockles was very much in order. It’s only really the top one percent of television shows particularly comedies that stand the test of time, the likes of Only Fools and Horses, Fawlty Towers, and Blackadder that despite their age are still very watchable. Cockles, I’m sad to announce, isn’t one of those; it’s pretty dated and far from hilarious, having only been granted the one series it’s easy to imagine that sentiment was felt by its initial audience some four decades ago.
It does, however, make for compelling viewing as the show was entirely shot here in Herne Bay and it’s fascinating to see how the town has changed since. In fact, if Arthur Dumpton was to see Herne Bay or Cocklesea now he might think it had returned to glory.
Cocklesea isn’t the only televised redubbing of our town though, a more recent example came in 2020 with another sitcom Kate & Koji starring the brilliant Brenda Blethyn and Jimmy Akingbola. ITV’s Kate & Koji retitled our town not Cocklesea but less elaborately Seagate.