‘If we didn’t have Halloween, we wouldn’t have the shop’
Graham Williams, manager of the iconic Dinsdales Joke and Trick shop in Hull(Image: Kaite Pugh)
Believed to be Britain’s oldest joke shop, Dinsdales, of Hepworth Arcade, in Hull’s Old Town, has been doing brisk business in the run-up to Halloween – and also welcoming in some celebrity faces. The shop, which will have been trading in Hull for 97 years in the new year, is run by Graham Williams and his cousin, Angela Dinsdale.
This week, among the customers flocking to the iconic shop for Halloween purchases was actor, comedian and writer Reece Shearsmith. The star, who hails from Hull, was appearing at Hull City Hall on Thursday (October 29) in Things I Took from the Dark, a show fusing the morbid with the fascinating in which Reece shares spellbinding stories about his vast and mysterious collection of objects.
Graham said: “He messaged me a few weeks ago to say he was going to be coming.” The shopkeeper, who is renowned as a joker himself, said he got to know Reece a while ago, along with Andy Nyman, actor, director, writer, singer and magician who is best known for his work with illusionist Derren Brown and for co-creating and starring in the horror play Ghost Stories and its film adaptation with Jeremy Dyson.
“A few weeks ago a guy was in the shop buying magic tricks for his daughter and he said, you know our kid, don’t you? It was Reece’s younger brother,” said Graham. I messaged Reece and said ‘your kid’s been in’ and he said, ‘great stuff, I’m coming to the City Hall’ and he said that he would pop in.” Reece duly arrived in the shop with screenwriter Dyson.
While he was there, Reece signed the artwork he painted of the joke shop as part of the Postcards from Hull project spearheaded by #wemadethishull for a virtual exhibition during the Covid-19 pandemic. Graham said: “I got invited to the show.
“In the first half, there were all these oddities and in the second half it was Reece and Jeremy talking and answering questions and Jeremy said, ‘Reece has been into his favourite shop, Dinsdales, and Graham is somewhere in the audience’.”
Graham said it had been “really busy” in the shop lately. “We survive on Halloween,” he said.
“We always do very well and what I do is bank it all and at certain times of the year it subsidises us. If we didn’t have Halloween, we wouldn’t have the shop.
“Halloween has been as busy as always but you can feel that people are cutting back. But we’re still here.”
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