A famous phone box in south Wales with links to Stereophonics has "likely been scrapped", according to BT.
The iconic phone box, which is located in the band's native Cwmaman, Rhondda Cynon Taf, has become a favourite landmark for the band, having taken part in a photo shoot there in 1997.
The shoot took place with original line up of Kelly Jones, Richard Jones and Stuart Cable posing for veteran NME photographer Martyn Goodacre. They had just released their debut album, 'Word Gets Around'.
Now, BT who first removed the phone box in 2019, prompting protests from locals, have said that it can no longer be found after spending years in storage, as “those conversations were not followed up during the pandemic”.
Speaking previously about this, Vikki Howells, MS for Cynon Valley, has called the kiosk “an important cultural landmark” and said she was “very disappointed” at the news.
Howells also revealed that the group had fought hard to get have the box reinstated.
“I worked really hard to get it returned to Cwmaman, but I needed to find people willing to take responsibility for its upkeep once it got back there,” she said.
“Unfortunately, Covid came along not long afterwards and its impact was so great on so many lives,” she added. “As a result, most folk understandably had little time to think of anything else".
Elsewhere, a BT spokesperson said that requests to adopt the kiosk in 2019: “had not followed the usual process, the payphone having already been removed following a formal consultation”.
“Conversations about adoption were then not followed up during the pandemic", they added. “We can confirm that the payphone is no longer being stored by our contractor, and, while our records do not go back that far, it is likely to have been scrapped".
In other news, Stereophonics have just come off the back of a UK tour this month, which kicked off in Nottingham on December 4. More on this here.
Back in May, Stereophonics' lead singer Kelly Jones revealed that he once confided in fellow Welsh singer Tom Jones before undergoing career saving vocal surgery. Jones spoke to Radio X before an operation to correct a potentially career-ending one-time trauma polyp on his vocal cord.
“It was called a one-off trauma polyp on my vocal cords", Jones said in this interview. More on this story from Nova here.
