2:14pm Saturday 25th April 2009
By Michael Pickard
Fans of the late author JG Ballard are proposing to rename a Watford town centre car park in his honour.
The science-fiction writer, who died on April 19, was famed for his dystopian fiction and two of his best known works – Crash and Empire of the Sun – were brought to the big screen by directors David Cronenberg and Steven Spielberg respectively.
Ballard was reputedly a fan of Church car park because of its distinctive design with swirling ramp and criss-cross facade, and he once referred to Watford as “the Mecca of multi-storey car parks”. Scenes in Crash were also filmed in car parks across the town.
Steve Bowbrick, a blogger for BBC Radio 4, is now campaigning to rename the building after the writer.
The father-of-three, from Park Road, Radlett, said: “He's such an important figure and he's grown more so over the years. There's presently little literary interest in Watford. It doesn't come up very often. I just really enjoy the fact I have parked in that car park hundreds of times and I quite like it as well.
“I have always enjoyed JG Ballard and his off-beat take on suburban life. Car parks always have such boring names and it would be a prime reminder of the fella's importance.
“As a writer, he was really interested in not the mainstream but the edges of life. Wouldn't it be a brilliant way to remember him? There's a real cult around him.
“He would have loved the joke about naming somewhere like a car park about a famous author.”
Do you think the car park should be renamed after JG Ballard? Leave a comment below.
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