Viva La Difference

As I approach the end of my mini-jaunt around Europe, I have taken some time out to visit an internet cafe in the delightful town of Charleroi, where I am catching up on e-mails before the final leg of my journey (Madrid) tomorrow.

One might assume that a former mining town would have little to detain one after the pleasures of Valencia and Bergamo - but you'd be wrong. Maybe it's because of my own working-class up-bringing, but the place seems warm and welcoming like a wholesome Northern town, with the added bonus of dozens of varieties of Belgian beers to make the day go with a swing. Skipping from country to country as we are, it's easy to see the cultural differences that divide our nations, while at the same time re-inforcing our prejudices. The Italians were indeed smartly dressed and very dapper with it; the Spanish very stylish but in a relaxed sort of way and the Belgians - well, they're happy enough with whatever is available from the market.

Of course, the trip is proving to be a bit of a compromise. THJnr and myself are very different animals, and there's nothing like sharing a hotel room to discover a man's foibles. At least we both of us got to cast off our shoes and socks to have a good 'plodge' in the Med. Valencia's beaches may not be the prettiest in the world (vaguely reminiscent, in fact, of Seaton Carew), but the sand is fine and clean, and just feeling the sun on your face is enough to dispel thoughts of a grey English winter.

And so, like a couple of American tourists, our jaunt continues. It's Monday, so it must be Belgium.

Adios! Ciao! Au revoir!

A Ladies' Man

I realise that some of my readers might be tempted to doubt my feminist credentials. My recent rant about Janet Street-Porter has led some to think, somehow, that I’m a whisky-soaked misogynist of some sort.

I can’t claim I wasn’t wounded by the charge. Just because I’m styled (by my publicists, I hasten to add) as The Man Who Tells It Like It Is, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a certain affinity for the female mind. Watching Willy Russell’s wonderful Blood Brothers at the Liverpool Empire last week was a truly moving experience. I’m not the kind of man who would pretend a tear didn’t cascade its way down my cheek now and again during the performance.

I like to think – alongside the estimable Crofty – that my sensitivities extend a tad further than standing on the sideline cheering the Latics as they trounce Everton in a cup encounter. I’ll also be the first to admit to occasionally listening to Alanis Morissette, without for a moment thinking I’ve dented my credibility as one of the foremost sports correspondents of my generation.

For those who doubt my claims, I can only refer them to some of my earliest writing. I’m not a man to blow my own trumpet, but should there be anyone who thinks I’m a ‘man’s man’, here’s a clipping from one of my earliest forays into journalism, when I was asked to stand in to write a column or two for Letty Bradshaw, the Stockport Leader’s much-respected woman’s correspondent. I think it speaks for itself. If anyone thinks a mere woman could have penned such prose, then they’re clearly biased.

A Friend in Need

Just when I thought it was safe to take to the air on my mini-jaunt around Europe, a call from Thomas Hamburger Jnr comes in. Would I mind awfully, he asks, if he accompanied me on my trip? He’s had a rough time of it recently, dealing with one or two ‘issues’ he feels must be tidied up before he can re-write his fictional account of Harry McFry. I chided him with the fact that not the least of these issues is that he’s required to finish the bloody thing before he can even contemplate a re-write.

I must say, it wasn’t like this in my day. When Wally Green asked for a story for the front page, a story was precisely what he got. There wasn’t much time for intellectual agonising at the Stockport Leader. Lolling around in a flat listening to Cavalleria Rusticana and complaining about writers’ block wasn’t an option when there were bills to pay and a young family to support.

Well, I suppose I owe him one. It was Thomas who eased my way into the world of blogs in the first place, and he has continued to post whatever musings I send him (with very little editorial cuts). At the same time, I can’t help but think a very different kind of holiday is now in store for me. I’ve had to hastily re-arrange a few liaisons I had lined up en route, as it wouldn’t be seemly to have a friend in tow for some of the encounters I had planned. And I doubt very much he’ll be keen on visiting the great football stadia in Milan, Valencia, Madrid and err... Brussels, which was also part of my plan. The prospect is now real that the entire seven days could be spent in a blur of cafes, cigarettes and culture.

Still, what price friendship? It’s a brave man who accuses Bill Blunt of turning his back on a friend in his hour of need. And, who knows, maybe a few days spent ‘people watching’ won’t be such a bad thing? I’ll keep you posted.

Oh, Mrs Porter, What Shall We Do?

So. Janet Street-Porter, the highly-paid doyen of Fleet Street, rails against the humble blog? Donchajustknowit? The much-made-over hackette seems to think blogs are nothing more than self-indulgent mediocrity (Just blog off. And take your self-promotion and cat-flap with you, Independent on Sunday, 6 January 2008).

Perhaps she thinks Joe and Josephine Blogger would be better off punting up £1.80 of their precious cash to read her whining, self-obsessed ramblings in the IoS every week? Keen to see what she was up to these days, I did just that. Her musings about Marks & Spencer, Big Brother and a plug for her latest publication Life’s Too F***ing Short (for which we are invited to punt a further £12.99) are hardly the most scintillating of reads.

She confesses to being ‘a bit nervous’ that M&S might branch out into online food delivery – worse still, that they are considering expanding their range of food to include more basic ingredients with which meals can be cooked. Well, I think JS-P needs to toughen up a bit. It takes more than a shift in retailing strategy by a high street chain to make Bill Blunt even the least bit nervy.

Janet is clearly no stranger to irony. After slagging off the lowly blogger for self-promotion, should we be surprised that her angle on Big Brother is that ‘I was allowed to hijack the programme last Friday’, or that a quarter of her column is devoted to advertorial for her own (just-published) book?

At least no one can accuse her of being a hypocrite. ‘Start each day … by telling yourself you are great. No one else is going to, believe me,’ she says. How true, Janet. Now – where’s that cat-flap? Mee-owww!

You Need Hands

When Mrs Blunt scarpered with the fishmonger, she little realised what a favour she was doing me. Accustomed, over many years, to having the odd loaf of bread baked in a bread machine, I was quite bereft when she waltzed off with it as part of the carefully-worded divorce settlement prepared by her solicitors. There’s nothing quite like waking up to the smell of freshly-baked bread, and I must confess I was more than a bit miffed to lose the facility.

My circumstances did not immediately permit me to buy a replacement (bread maker, that is – not wife) but, after an evening of head-scratching, it came to me that I didn’t actually need one to meet my desire for the aroma of cooked dough. Everything I needed was right there in my hands – quite literally, in fact.

If she did but know it, the late Mrs B did me a great service. A consultation with my sister-in-law )not on Mrs B’s side, I hasten to add) was all I needed. She pointed me in the direction of Andrew (God Bless Him) Whitley’s seminal work Bread Matters. It’s not often that Bill Blunt endorses a product, but when he does, his readers can be assured that they should rush out and buy it.

Mr Whitley has produced the definitive reference book about bread. In 370 closly-printed pages, he expounds all there really is to know about bread, and how to make it. Forget your chemicals, your additives and your preservatives. A loaf of bread is flour, water, yeast and salt. That’s all. Since ASDA will furnish you with free yeast (just ask at the bakery), and since Dove Farm produce a very acceptable organic wholemeal flour for just 60p per 1.5kg, in no time you can be producing your own, healthy bread for less than 40p a pop (that’s 80c to our transatlantic cousins).

The only fly in the ointment is friends and acquaintances. For some reason, they seem to think that people who make their own bread use the process to ‘take out their frustrations’. They have this vision of me battering the hell out of the dough. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A good loaf is made with love, time and attention – just like a good relationship. You can’t force these things by shoving them in machines or by pummelling them to death. Bread is the staff of life. Make it with care and devotion, give the yeast plenty of time to do its stuff, and the taste will repay you in dividends.

While I was rustling up a couple of loafs and a cob last night, I got to thinking why, the world over, the classic figure of the baker always seems to be male? Whether it’s the little French boulanger or the dusty-aproned fellow who crops up in nursery rhymes now and again, there’s no doubt that, in our mind’s eye, we visualise a man.

Well, times have moved on. Thanks to campaigners like Emily Pankhurst, women, too, can get their knuckles well and truly dusted with flour. So, take a tip. This weekend, get that oven fired up and feel the thrill of the dough coming together in your hands. You’ll thank me for it.

Cheap Week Return

Whenever the low-cost air carriers publish their new schedules, or whenever they announce a sale, Bill Blunt finds it hard to resist the temptation to wander their websites with an eye to a bargain.

So, when Ryanair began advertising their current crop of low, low air fares, I set myself the challenge of finding out how far £50 would get me. That's near enough $100 to our transatlantic cousins. Anyone booking via the likes of Ryanair, Easyjet and Flybe will have learnt to their cost that it's one thing to find a cheap flight, but quite another to absorb the 'taxes and charges' lurking beneath it.

To make my challenge more realistic, therefore, my target was that the £50 had to include their published taxes and charges. Well, here's what I came up with:

Wed 23 Jan Liverpool - Valencia £10
Fri 25 Jan Valencia - Bergamot 10 Euros
Sun 27 Jan Bergamot - Brussels 10 Euros
Tues 29 Jan Brussels - Madrid 10 Euros
Thurs 31 Jan Madrid - Liverpool 10 Euros

That makes a grand total of around £40 or 80 USD - not at all bad for a journey that takes in three countries and four European cities.

Of course, I've got to find some accommodation for each evening while I'm away. Any offers or suggestions of budget-priced places would be most welcome...

A Grand Day Out

The dawning of a new year on Merseyside brings, for a seasoned hack like myself, a veritable plethora of cultural opportunities. For, it is finally here: Liverpool is European Capital of Culture.

I know there have been some people (mainly Mancunians, it has to be said) who have tried to make light of this accolade, even suggesting that, when the wheels are stolen from your car in Liverpool this year, you’ll return to find it resting on four stacks of books, rather than bricks. I’m not one of those who revel in such cheap stereotypes, and I think there is more than the whiff of envy in comments like that.

Given Liverpool’s new status, it was easy for me to make a personal resolution that 2008 should be my own year of cultural development. With Mrs Blunt off the scene, I can finally allow myself to sample some of the artistic pleasures of the world - free of that carping voice in my ear saying “I don’t know what the fuss is all about – it looks like a load of triangles and circles to me” (the best she could make, apparently, of Kandinsky).

With a multitude of arts activities lined up, where better place to start than the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate Gallery, in the Albert Docks, at the invitation of an old drinking friend of mine? Now that I’m resident in the Wirral, Liverpool is but a short ferry ride away, as any Gerry Marsden fan will tell you, so it seemed an attractive proposition.

Alas, fate – and the fact that, during the day, the morning and evening ‘commuter’ ferry service is curtailed in favour of a tourist route that adds an extra half hour to the trip – conspired against me. Add to that the potent mix of a bitingly cold (‘nithering’ is the word I am looking for) wind, and building works that interfered with the otherwise short walk from ferry terminal to the Tate and, well … my readers will understand why I was seduced by the charms of a warm and cosy bar, for a reviving shot of Bells. Circumstances may even have dictated that I had another. It all meant that I missed the Turner prize exhibition, and the company of my erstwhile drinking chum.

Consolation was is store for me, however. Forsaking the bollock-withering ferry, I made my return via the ‘fast and frequent’ (and decidedly warmer) electric train that runs under (rather than over) the Mersey. Still craving art, I headed for Birkenhead’s Williamson Gallery, best described as a provincial museum and art gallery – little knowing what delights were in store for me.

The Williamson is a treat – its permanent collection is worth a trip in itself, although heavily weighted towards C19th art and with a rather unsettling room of drab, weighty furniture that includes a huge, dark fireplace that would be better broken up and burnt – but Bill Blunt was never a fan of big fireplaces. Notwithstanding that, I discovered an exhibition by students from the Upton Hall Girls School.

Now, I’ve never pretended to know much about art, but only a brave man would accuse me of being uncultured. And I think I can recognise vivid and exciting art when I see it. These 17-18 year olds had produced an exhibition that set my soul on fire, making me hungry for more. I am sure there are those who would describe their work as derivative, but I’m not sure there are many youngsters who can work free of the influence of giants such as Hockney. There’s hope yet when our teenagers can produce work of such outstanding quality, and (for what it’s worth) my guess is it will stand head and shoulders over anything given the Turner prize. Here’s a sample.

Happy New Year!

A roundabout way of spreading the news

I've never been much of a one for round robins. They smack, to me, of a bit of a cop out. Having said that, it's a brave man who accuses Bill Blunt of not embracing popular culture, especially when it saves him having to think too much about personal letters to people.

Here, then, is my annual round robin newsletter for friends and family. Happy New Year - when it comes!

Condiments of the Season

I know some of my stalwart readers have suspected that my recent 'radio silence' might be part of some elaborate scam, and that I would emerge,in due course, in a North London police station claiming to have lost my memory. Meanwhile, the former Mrs Blunt would be living it up in Hunstanton on the proceeds of a modest insurance policy she had the foresight to take out on me just before we divorced.

Nothing could be further from the truth! I admit that the circumstantial evidence is all there - in particular, my familiarity with a certain Seaton Carew has not gone un-noticed by the odd reader or two. But that's merely a co-incidence, I can assure you.

Instead, my last few weeks have been spent working. When I hung up my quill and faced the dizzy prospect of retirement, I little thought that my financial circumstances would alter so much that I would be forced back to work. However, a divorce and the need to move home have both taken their toll on the old finances, and needs must, etc etc. It's been a shock to the system, I can tell you.

Nevertheless, the holiday season now beckons, so I thought I would take a little time out and wish my loyal reader all the very best for the holiday season. May 2008 bring you all the health and happiness you deserve.



As a postscript, I must gratefully acknowledge that I have been tagged by the estimable Crofty, and I promise that sometime over the Christmas period I will get round to inventing 7 new things people don't know about me. Or I might just re-hash a few old ones!

Ever so humble...

When, at the behest of my son Jasper, I launched myself into the world of blogs, it was with no thought to the honours that might be bestowed on me.

Modesty almost forbids me from mentioning, therefore, that Bill Blunt's Blog has recently been awarded the coveted Golden C*** of Excellence Award by none other than that scion of upper class virtue, Lord Likely.

Throughout my career, I have always striven to maintain a modicum of respectability. Not for Bill Blunt the easy headlines to be gained by peppering my articles with words like 'Sex', 'Drugs' and 'Rock & Roll'. I think I know my audience, and those I do know are not comfortable with words calculated to cause my good friend, the Reverend Ivan Stang, to blush.

Lord Likely's award more than made up for the panning I got when my blog was recently reviewed by Humor-Blogs.Com.
I can't pretend I wasn't just a tad mortified to have my blog described as "an absolutely snooze-fest". Nor that someone seemed to think that my reflections on my recent marital breakdown were meant to be amusing: "All this person talks about is his wife leaving him. Maybe he isn't whining about it, but geez, I don't want to read about people's marital problems. If I did, I'd read the Enquirer..."

It would be easy to be wounded by such views. Fortunately, years of working in local journalism have hardened me to comments like that. I learned, long ago, that when the constant barbs of criticism are thrust towards your open heart, you need only to turn aside to deflect them.

At my age, recognition is enough.

Have your cake and eat it

As someone who has become increasingly concerned about my weight, a front page of the Independent newspaper came as something of a relief, last week. Apparently, marginally overweight people live longer than any other group of people. The scientists have given their blessing, it seems, to people being just a little bit porky. It’s better to be a few pounds on the plus side than either obese, thin or ‘normal’ (whatever that means).

I didn’t read the full article, in case the small print hid some kind of caveat or other. It’s quite enough to know that carrying a few pounds more than he should is not going to do Bill Blunt any harm. At the same time, another headline I saw seemed to suggest that exposure to the sun helps prolong life, too. That’s another tick in the box for Bill, then, as I reflect on all those summers spent in the ‘60’s at Juan Les Pins, before Mrs Blunt came along.

When I think about all those painfully thin, pasty-faced scientists who parade themselves on TV, telling us what we should and should not be doing to maintain our health, I can’t help stifling a smug grin. What nightmares must they now be suffering as they tuck into their fat-free cranberry and broccoli yoghurts?

As I savoured the good news (and made a mental note to book a place on that Tuscan cookery holiday I’ve always wanted to try), I couldn’t help but reflect on the wise words of the late Freddy Marple. “Women like a decent set of love handles, in my experience,” he used to say. And there were few men more experienced than Freddy. Before he settled down, his fabled address book could easily have been mistaken for the Thompson Local. Many were the times his friends, at a loose end for what to do on a Friday night, would ask to rifle through those well-thumbed pages for inspiration. It was said of any woman in Stockport that, if she hadn’t been with Freddy then she was probably only visiting for the day.

There’s hope yet, then.

Divided Loyalties

Imagine the scene. A young boy still in short trousers and knee high socks, accompanying his Uncle Jesmond to his first ever football match. The excitement of the capacity crowd, the dashing players in their classic 1950’s kit, the roar of pleasure as the pie-man started his trail around the terraces. A mug of steaming Oxo at half-time, to take away the biting wind-chill of the Boundary Park terraces. Those were, indeed, the days - and must, I am sure, have led me into my life’s career as a sports journalist.

Although I was to later to cover many other sports, it was always to football that I returned. The steady commercialisation of the game was not something that I relished. The glorious game, made dirty by the noxious whiff of money, was the living nightmare that enmeshed Association Football during the 1980's, as television got its grubby hands on the game.

As a leading sports columnist of my generation, I sat on the sidelines as Messrs Murdoch and Co sullied the sport with their wads of cash. Somehow, it took the pleasure out of physically going to the match, as you could now watch the entire proceedings from the centrally-heated comfort of your lounge. Grey school shorts and Oxo were swapped, in later years, for bermuda shorts and a few tins of fizzy lager.

Last night, however, I had a conversion on the road to Birkenhead. Having realised that Oldham were playing my new local team, Tranmere Rovers, I decided to forsake the sofa, and don my worsted overcoat. Even as late as a few moments before purchasing my ticket, I was unsure which side to support. But, like that famous psychological test of tossing a coin to make your mind up about something (so that if it falls the wrong way, you finally know), as I approached the turnstiles my mind was made up. You can take the man out of Oldham, but you can't take Oldham out of the man.

And so it was that I joined the hardy band of away supporters, cheering on the Latics as they put up a sterling fight. Despite being close tot he bottom of the League, they fought valiantly against Tranmere, who looked shoddy and uninspiring by comparison. Tension mounted as the game drew to its close, the scoreline 0-0 after 90 minutes of play. Then, magically, Oldham managed to sneak in a winner in the final minute of extra time. Pleasure unbounded for the couple of hundred Oldham fans who had been in proud voice against the desultory silence of their Tranmere counterparts.

Tranmere Rovers 0 Oldham 1

Sex & Shopping

I’ve discovered that I’m a bit of a tart, when it comes to supermarkets. I know some people return, time and again, to the same, familiar shop to buy their weekly groceries. I always left the shopping to Mrs Blunt but have, since our divorce, had to learn the art of foraging for food amongst the aisles.

I won’t pretend it came naturally to me. My first attempt at buying fresh fruit came unstuck when I realised I hadn’t the faintest notion of what constituted a kilogram. Two kilos of nectarines sounds like a reasonable enough proposition, until you discover that’s about twenty of the little blighters – far more than any sane man would want to consume in a week. But mostly, I’ve taken to the grocery shop like a duck to water.

I find that I am as at ease in Morrison’s as I am in Sainsbury’s, as relaxed in Aldi as I am in Asda. I can get quite chipper at the thought of popping in to squeeze melons in my local Iceland. No one could accuse me of monogamy in my dealings with the major food retailers. I like to ‘put myself about a bit’, and have even been spotted in Netto, now and again.

Yet there’s one place that always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Perhaps it’s all that pseudo-patriotic red, white and blue … but I’ve never yet been seduced by Tesco. They just don’t do it for me. I know that the retail analysts will tell us that one pound in every eight spent in the UK finds its way into the hands of the Tesco family, but they’d be lucky if they got a tenner a year from me. They’re obviously doing something right as they steamroller their new shops across the country. A lot of folk clearly like what they do. Not Bill Blunt, though. The remorseless Tesco-fication of Britain leaves me cold. Their pioneering ‘out of town’ supermarkets almost spelled the death knell of Britain’s corner shop. What few are left will easily be seen off by the Tesco Metro’s that are springing up everywhere. Every time I hear that phrase ‘Every little helps’, I can’t help feeling just a little queasy.

Though I have forsworn setting foot in Tesco, there are still (thankfully) plenty of other retail giants offering the opportunity to saunter down the dairy aisle, coyly smiling at the rather attractive female choosing which brand of low-fat cottage cheese to buy, while I ruminate over yoghurts. Supermarkets are now the place of choice for the single, unattached male bent on picking up women, it seems. They perform the same social function as the dance hall or the coffee bar once did, in my youth. And a glance in the basket of any woman will give you an instant appraisal of the type of person she is.

My top tip, for any man who finds himself checking out ladies at the check-outs, is to look for a well-balanced basket. Plenty of fresh fruit, veg and all that stuff. A bottle of red wine, perhaps. Fight shy of the bottle of gin types: you can’t know for sure it’s not a daily habit.

Rhapsody in G

My recent return to the UK after a visit to Paris has brought with it a raft of fresh anxieties which, I can only hope, my readers will not mind me sharing. One of the young ladies I was fortunate to meet (as part of my research for an article on the much-vaunted new Eurostar service from St Pancras International) was, shall we say, quite amorous in her approach to me over cocktails. I can’t pretend I wasn’t flattered. After so many decades trapped in a loveless marriage, and now free to sample whatever delights the world can offer, it’s a tempting prospect indeed when a woman of 52 throws herself at you in a mist of perfume and silk lingerie.

It was during a post-prandial examination of our respective hotel rooms (strictly to compare notes—she being a fellow journalist covering the same St Pancras launch for a magazine for ladies of a certain age) that she made her move.

Out of due discretion, and the desire to spare you the gory details, suffice it to say that my performance was not considered entirely up to scratch. Too many years of the same, routine love-making meant that the lady in question had cause to err… question my abilities in the bedroom department.

Implausible as it may sound, I discovered that I have reached my seventh decade in life without having the foggiest notion about what or where a G spot is. For the young lady this seemed to be a matter of some concern. I lost track of how many hours we spent looking for this elusive bodily part, and I was reminded of the wise words of old Freddy Marple, a fellow-hack and former drinking partner from my days at both the Stockport Echo and the Birkenhead Beagle. Freddy it was who, after chancing upon a discarded copy of Cosmopolitan magazine on the 409 bus out of Manchester, subsequently made it his life’s work to discover, and document, his wife’s own G spot.

Each week, he’d fill in the boys in the newsroom with the latest developments, eternally hopeful that, with one further search, it would turn up. Alas, despite many years of expeditions, Freddy never did discover that spot. Before he died, he passed the torch on to a young colleague of his who, alas, had a similarly striking lack of success.

I was forced to conclude, at that point, that the G spot might be little more than an urban myth, one step down from the story about the old lady who accidentally killed her pussy in an attempt to dry it in the microwave after a it was caught in a shower. For her part, my former wife was never one to bother too much about spots of any kind, so the subject was, for many years, put to bed.

Nevertheless, the whole, sorry subject of my trystess’ dissatisfaction was a great blow to my self-esteem. On my return home, I quizzed young Jasper on the subject of G spots.

“Pa!” he said, with a guffaw that wouldn’t have disgraced his Uncle Jesmond. “Surely you haven’t fallen for that old line?”

I pretended to be unsure what he meant. “The modern woman came up with the notion of the G spot so she could persuade her partner to spend lots of time looking for it. It’s just a cover for what you might have known in your day as foreplay. It's the oldest trick in the book!”

I can't pretend I wasn't taken aback by this news. Jasper went so far as to blame ‘my generation’ for the whole business. “If your lot had spent more time on foreplay in the first place, there’d have been none of this G spot nonsense for me and my pals to have to contend with."

I did rather feel I was getting it from both sides. The sins of the fathers, and all that. Nevertheless, if I ever see that little hussy from the Eurostar junket again, I'll have a thing or two to say to her, I must say.

I Told 'Em, Oldham!

It would be easy to pretend that I have spent the last few weeks swanning around the Mediterranean, in search of the kind of love and affection denied to me for so many years during my marriage to Mrs Blunt.

It's not in my interest to divulge too much information, since my decree nisi has been delayed by one or two financial matters that still need to be tied up before our marriage can be truly said to be 'wrent assunder'. Suffice it to say that Mr Tommy Fishfinger will not be getting his hands on any of my accumulated assets. My accountant has been busy salting whatever I have to my name in little pockets, here and there. At one point, I believe even Antigua was mentioned.

The truth, as ever, is rather more prosaic. Over the last three weeks, I've been beavering away on a project that promises to shake the very fabric of the RAC Road Map of Great Britain - nothing less than a plan to obliterate the town of Oldham from the face of the earth.

I know there will be many who will think I am callous. The town which, for so many years, has been my home and safe harbour may, by my efforts, simply cease to exist. And, I'm pleased to report - I'm being paid for the privilege.

The people behind the Oldham - Old Hat! campaign have engaged my services to assist them in coming up with a new identity for the place. Apparently, Oldham carries too many negative associations in the eyes of the British public to make it the kind of place where private capital might choose to throw its cash. Local Liberal Democrat Council Leader, Howard Sykes. is reported as saying “the name Oldham annoys districts such as Chadderton and Saddleworth.” Cllr Sykes was all in favour of re-naming Oldham after a "local river". If that's the case, this re-branding exercise may cost a few bob more, and take a little longer to complete, than Sykes had originally contemplated. Engineering work on the scale necessary to get a river to pass anywhere near to Oldham would be a costly affair, and I doubt the council taxpayers of Oldham have the appetite for more than a new logo and a few fancy street signs.

Personally, I don't know why. they need to bother. Readers of my column will know that I've been around a bit, in my time. Stockport holds no terrors for me. Lately, even the Wirral doesn't scare me. Yet, with a frightening regularity, it is to the grey pavements of Oldham that I have always found myself returning...

However, the promise of a big, fat consultancy fee is always appealing. He who pays the piper, inevitably pays the tune. I'm as happy as the next man, therefore, to throw my hat into the ring. I've already suggested Bluntsville to the powers that be. If that doesn't grab them, I wondered whether they mightn't re-style the town as Newham.

I realise, of course, that this name has already been claimed by a place in London. But, I don't think that should stop them. The good burghers of the London Borough of Newham might do well to think about a name-change, themselves. If they do, I've got a suggestion they might like to consider...



That suggestion's gratis, boys. When you get around to re-branding the towns that have been borrowed and blue - you know where to come.