Drums beat, and a trumpet sounds as amassing crowds ready themselves for the charge. It’s not quite a fife, but the tempo of ‘Hey Ya!’ is enough to prepare for the year’s largest single day of engagement in all things Birmingham. The flags have been raised, limp yet proud, kindling the fire of revolutionaries clad in brummie merchandise.
A large papier-mache egg will lead us to our personal Fort Ticonderoga (Council House), which will henceforth be filled with curly wurlies. Comes the war cry: “Huzzah bab!”
And why exactly are hundreds of cityfolk on their lunch breaks storming the council building like insurgents? The answer is simple. It’s the most culturally significant day of the year: International Day of Birmingham.
Now in its third year of celebration, IDoB is a very real, very serious international day – on account of its organisers having paid roughly £100 to register it as such online. Largely the brainchild of Nicola Silk, director and producer of Lycett dynasty fame, the event was only ever intended as a concluding backdrop to a television programme. Joe Lycetts’ United States of Birmingham followed the pursuit of several Birmingham’s across the Atlantic in 2024, joining them in a treaty of friendship. Nicola tells me requests to twin the Birminghams of the world together were rejected, on the grounds that twinning a town or city is a very official process that requires all sorts of documents. There were 17 such locales pinned down, each boasting their own interpretation of what maketh a Brummie.
Still, the previous Lord Mayor, Ken Wood, was more than happy to accommodate binding the regions as pals. It spanned a “Birmingham Christmas” held annually on 24 September, and the team are now taking liberties to throw in a boxing day too. Nicola willingly admits she’s “created a monster.” Some yearn for bigger and better IDoB celebrations; hence seizing the council house. Others fear the day will become crassly commercialised, a cheap money-spinner for the card companies (no one really thinks this, I made this up).
Across the event, ten rooms of the council building have been transformed (Cluedo-style) into a maze of exhibitions, workshops, performance and nonsense. In one of them, you’ll find the only man you really need to speak to to truly understand the essence of IDoB: Randell H Spackman.
Randell hails from Birmingham Pennsylvania, or he would have, had it not been lost largely to the sands of time (Birmingham, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, still exists though, boasting a population of 89 at the latest census). In Chester County, Randell now works tirelessly to preserve the memory of the historic Birmingham township through his work as president of the Chadds Ford historical society (Chadds Ford being the site of Birmingham of yore).
He specialises in living history, which proved pretty handy for Nicola. She stumbled upon him via Google Maps, in a somewhat desperate bid to find a good sequence for the episode encompassing his township.
What appeared initially to Nicola as a small farm shop in rural Pittsburgh, transpired to be something much more exciting: the jewel of the Spackman family. Their land, Thornbury farm, is the very site of the Battle of Brandywine. For those out of the know, this is the ground on which the (second) largest single day of engagement played out during the American Revolution. Inherited from his father, Randell’s guardianship is now a labour of love, maintaining the history of the grounds. He uses his archival prowess to stage regular battle reenactments, vaunting an unparalleled red war reconstruction.
Thornbury Farm has been in the family since 1940, Randell being the third generation of Spackman to tend the land and mine the history. The property has featured extensively on American broadcasts, largely due to the presence of mass burial sites. As a community supported agriculture business, members subsidise the cost of farming in return for a share of the weekly harvest. He’s keen to throw open the doors of his homestead to any who might wish to pop by.
Garbed in redcoat regimentals, General Lycett was shown how to fire a bayonet from Randell's collection. Nicola refers to him as the happiest accident of the show, given that making jam in a farmshop would have been “shit telly.”
Following the series finale, Randell became insistent that IDoB became a permanent fixture of his social calendar. He has jetted in for every 24 September since. In the absence of a figurehead this year, Randell has become the de facto Lycett-in-waiting – minus the technicolour dreamcoat.
So here he stands before the baying mob, sporting a brown leather jacket sorely lacking in military decoration. Betwixt Mr Egg and the Lord Mayor, he beams with pride at the sight of his troops, giddily taking photos of almost everything and everyone. As the doors of the council house open and queues form around the square he remains surrounded by those seeking a slice of Spackman. I must wait for my turn.
All those graced with his presence are given a small but meaningful gift, a business card for his landscaping and construction service in Pennsylvania. The photo displays him leading the charge, atop his steed, on the Thornbury battlefield. He sings with nobility and grace, there is a deep sense of sincerity in the way he talks about IDoB: “When I come back here and walk the streets again, it feels like I haven’t left.”
As he leads me into the building, crowds and security part. Several people stop him to request pictures, and to each he replies: “Hey, I know you!” I begin to fear the American revolutionaries are back to claim England as their own.
In an empty side room, he does nothing to quell my suspicions. “Every time I leave here I bring a brick, eventually I’m gonna build my own Birmingham at home,” he says. He’s imbued with the energy of a people that fought the crown and won. Amidst the paintings of generals and nobility, he tells me of the parallels between the Birminghams. By his own admission, rural Pennsylvania lacks the populus and cultural standing to compete with our great city. It also lacks canals, and he had threatened to bring his own canoe to explore the waterways. Alas, Transport Security Administration regulations stepped in before he could map a comprehensive network of our transport links.
He speaks of friendship, and “building relationships that cast beyond the oceans.” The Lord Mayor recognises him fondly, and Randell thanks him for welcoming so many into his home. Many are less enamoured with Mr Egg himself – though this may relate to that fact his disembodied form has been left propped up in a parlor chair. It takes a rather long time for Randell to lead me to the egg, he quietly remarks that he “hopes he hasn’t been scrambled.” I read this as a threat, there can only be one true leader.
If you wandered around with a bingo card full of Birmingham cliches, you would have a full house before you ascended the second staircase. Randell certainly finds this amusing, claiming he would “work for curly wurlies” given the opportunity to move here. Nicola describes this as “enough Birmingham to give you a migraine.” It does just that. Two commentators assess the gait of two women clad in Lycett masks, and in my mental tumult I spend twenty minutes discussing the event with a woman I am quite convinced is Jess Phillips, until I find the MP elsewhere, armed with a vape and a Guiness, in the banquet hall. The real Jess Phillips is posted to discuss the dinners she might take to a desert island given the chance, and tells me she intends to start a riot on the best place to get a samosa.
I spot Randell again, carrying squash in for the volunteers. It would be unfair to paint him as anything less than a benevolent commander. Multiple sources attest to his most endearing quirk, signing off all his emails with an eager “huzzah!” It’s clear what he gains from the madness, a community away from the community he dedicates his life to maintaining. Plucked from his rustic abode, here he has further opportunity to spread the good word of Brandywine, and mix with folk born to accept him. The ability to enjoy moulding multi-storey carparks from bits of “crap” in a room described as “establishment chic” is not unique to the people of Birmingham, and makes an absolutely cracking excursion for a tourist. It’s little wonder he wishes to dismantle the place to take it to his own back garden.
Back with Nicola, we stand in the conservatory amidst soft rainforest sound. Occasionally thunder bellows across the speakers and shakes the ground. The development of IDoB has made her question her own sanity. She wonders if the whole thing is “an elaborate hoax, none of it is real.” I press her on the creation of the egg mascot; she informs it becomes increasingly hard to fill a full ‘flash bab’ with papier mache heads of famous brummies. On Randell’s now-infamous huzzah bab chant? She manufactured the whole thing. The strings are never held by the puppet.
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