Much of Corby’s high
street is now derelictCOSMOPOLITAN · 95appeared in 1984 and with it came
promises from wealthy developers that
WonderWorld would rival Disneyland,
and bring the community 23,000 jobs
by the year 2000. But three years later,
the news emerged that the money had
dried up. “WonderWorld”
spent the next two decades
as a building site. This came
like a sucker punch to a
town that had long been
defined by the closure of
its steel works in the ’80s,
a move which hurled a
third of its residents into
unemployment. Today the
level of unemployment sits
at 4.9% – higher than the
rest of Northamptonshire and
the UK average.†
“That tells you everything, doesn’t
it?” Corby-born-and-bred comedian
Alexandra Haddow, 31, tells me.
“WonderWorld was symptomatic of
how the whole place felt; you were
promised change but it always fell
through. So eventually people just
stop hoping for it. As a child I grew
up with the mentality that
you get out as soon as you
can... you do well in school
so that you can get out.
That’s what you aim for.”
It was only when
Alexandra did get out,
moving to Leeds for
university, that she realised
just how isolated her
hometown was.
“People I met [at
university] talked about travelling
over the summer and how they’d
paid for it by working in restaurants.
That was my first indication that the“Eventually
people just
stop hoping
for change”READlife we had wasn’t what everyone
else had; we didn’t even have any
restaurants to work in.
“When you’re in it, it’s so hard to
see how bad it is, so when I left and
came to realise that other places had
something going for them, I started
thinking that there should be more
anger. It’s demoralising and hopeless.”
Alexandra takes to the stage night
after night to do stand-up comedy,
so she is no stranger to discomfort.
And yet even she can’t shake off how
her hometown makes her feel. Her
sister, who still lives in Corby, is a
paramedic and sees firsthand the
effects of a community plunged into
struggle. When Alexandra talks to her
about the deprivation she sees when
she visits Corby, her sister tells her,
“You have no idea, no idea at all.”A COMMUNITY IN NEED
While chatting to the locals, I noticed
something. Every time I mentioned
the topic of mental health or suicide,
whoever I was speaking to had some
kind of connection to it. Whether they
knew someone with mental health
problems, had lost someone to
suicide or had also tried to take their
own lives, they all had a story to tell.
For Dan, a rakish man with doe eyes
and a voice so quiet and gentleI strain
to hear him, it was someone in his
family. He fiddles with his phone as
he moves the conversation along›Daniella found
a town in crisis*ONS. †NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.GOV.UK