For nearly ten years, Geoff was one of the most famous faces on British television and going out with him socially was often the friendliest of obstacle courses wading through autograph-hunting fans, encouraged by his jovial persona, who came over to talk wherever we went – mostly bars, restaurants and clubs all over the North West of England. “Hey Eddie!” would often cut through quite serious conversations when the two of us were just out for a quiet pint or two. He was, of course, as we the audience often like to forget, just a human being, a very sweet one, who enjoyed his celebrity (and his success) but who also led a normal human existence just like the fans who identified with the jokes and sadnesses of his down-to-earth on-screen character.

I was thinking about my old Granada Television days last year when I went back to Manchester on a rainy weekend visiting some of my old haunts. Geoff was a vivid presence in my early years there.

I had not been to Manchester for a long time and it was even longer since I met up with Geoff who, not wanting to be a one role actor, left the series at the height of his fame and, apart from a single return guest appearance, always turned down offers to rejoin the cast.

This was the house in Stretford where I lived in the first years of my time at Granada. I rented the two top floors and a trombonist with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra lived downstairs often filling my flat, enjoyably, with the glorious sonorities he could produce from that wonderful instrument. I never minded other people’s music as I had an old piano up there in my flat to accompany my enthusiastic operatic, if not always mellifluous singing. Geoff enjoyed singing too and once we even dared to do the tenor/baritone duet from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers in the living room that over-looked an exotic view of the  Stretford tip and the M25 motorway. Well, we enjoyed ourselves and the trombonist never complained.

We shared an enthusiasm for music and, in those Manchester days away from home, he was happy to join me going to rock concerts where we often found ourselves on stage behind the band proudly wearing our back-stage passes. We saw many legendary bands together that way. No cool back-stage crowd was too cool though to shout out “Hey Eddie!”

More often than not and maybe more often than was good for us, we would often prefer to sit up there on that top floor with a bottle of whiskey, a packet of cigarettes, a choice selection of music and some great conversations that lasted well into the night. The World was firmly sorted by the time it came for sleep.

Geoff left for other successful TV roles and, as often happens in the mobile world of television, we gradually lost touch and our lives moved on in different directions. I shall however always remember him fondly for those badly-behaved bachelor pad days. He was much too full of life for it to have come to an end so prematurely. It was a crap deal, Geoff.

Here he is in what will probably always be his greatest role, the unforgettable Eddie Yates:

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I went back to Manchester over the weekend to the city where I lived for longer than I want to admit and where I had not only a very interesting  and inspiring time working for the legendary and ground-breaking TV company Granada Television but where I also had a lot of fun too.

It could have been a rather melancholy and sentimental visit as, next year, Granada is leaving the iconic building where it had been since its creation in the 1950s.  It will join the newly created outpost for some of the BBC’s traditionally London-based departments in what is already known as Media City on the site vacated by the great industrial buildings that used to line the Manchester Ship Canal.

It was difficult to feel sadly sentimental though when Manchester itself was bursting with new life whilst, as far as I could see in a brief visit, the old spirit of the city that I knew was still very much in evidence.

The massive buildings works going on over there in Media City is nothing if not impressive in its ambition – let’s hope that a similar heroic spirit livens up the, dare I say it, rather dull  and unadventurous television programming that has been the recent output of those mighty monsters now settling into their new home.

Let’s hope that television scoops up some of the excitement of my old home town where the city centre  has survived several depressions, an IRA bomb and much Southern cynicism to become as lively and as
varied a place that anyone out for a good time could imagine.

The three nights of this long weekend were enlivened by the new generation of pubs and clubs which were always a Manchester speciality. Manchester folk have always had a healthy respect for fun as well as music (from The Hollies, The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, The Inspiral Carpets and Oasis to the present) and both were in evidence as I wondered around town.

It was great to see, long after my debut in such things, hordes of people putting on the style and getting out there dressed and ready for whatever took their fancy.

Great too that all those Chinese restaurants around Princess Street are still thriving and that I could still weave my intoxicated way in time-honoured Granada tradition to the Kwok Man restaurant – the scene of many a very late night sojourn.

The, for me, new and brightly gay Canal Street development fits naturally into Manchester’s lively society too and it was wonderful to see the place so full of unrepressed energy.

Old traditions too have maintained their style in Rusholme, Manchester’s Curry Mile – still one of the best places to eat Indian cuisine anywhere in the World outside of the Indian sub-continent.

So thanks Manchester – not just for some immortal memories but for your brightly forward-looking face. Good luck to you and all who sail in you. I won’t leave it so long next time.

If I have to play one track that sums up Manchester music for me then it has to be This Is How It Feels by The Inspiral Carpets. It spawned many followers.

STEPHEN DEARSLEY’S SUMMER OF LOVE BY COLIN BELL

My novel, Stephen Dearsley’s Summer Of Love, was published  on 31 October 2013. It is the story of a young fogey living in Brighton in 1967 who has a lot to learn when the flowering hippie counter culture changes him and the world around him.

It is now available as a paperback or on Kindle (go to your region’s Amazon site for Kindle orders)

You can order the book from the publishers, Ward Wood Publishing:

http://wardwoodpublishing.co.uk/titles-fiction-colin-bell-stephen-dearsleys-summer-of-love.htm 

…or from Book Depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Stephen-Dearsleys-Summer-Love-Colin-Bell/9781908742070

…or from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Stephen%20Dearsley’s%20Summer%20Of%20love

The post Manchester – same old place with a bright new face. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I got used to turning corners only to find that familiar places had disappeared and there was a profusion of building sites and, I suppose, inevitably, a lot of new car parks where there were once friendly but tatty old buildings.

There were the trams too which have transformed the city centre making sense of the roads and keeping them clear of the old traffic jams of my memories. Strange how the re-introduction of old technologies can give the place a modern feel.

..but these days, they are looking smarter and many of them have been given the space to breathe – almost as if, at last, the city has recognised the beauty of ugly Victoriana.

It was good to see though that my old workplace at Granada Television was still there even if it has been crowded out by other taller buildings and now gives off the aura of having seen better days – which of course it has.

I was based here for more years than seems possible and Manchester has been the scene of a lot of fun, excitement and drama for me over the years. Walking around town, I couldn’t but remember some of the old days and I was happy that, once you look beyond the glossy new offices and hotels, it is really the same old scruffy place…..

….where shabby streets still avoid pretentious showiness and where you can still wander in search of no-nonsense fun in disreputable establishments.

The post Manchester Revisited appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I went up to Manchester last week for a concert at the impressively modern Bridgewater Hall. I haven’t been back to the city for years but I lived there for a long time and my work meant that I got involved in the place’s musical culture, from native bands like The Stone Roses and Oasis to the Hallé
Orchestra. One of the quirkier moments of my career occurred whilst I was taking a documentary film-maker’s interest in the creation of a brand new concert hall to replace the historic but inadequate Free Trade Hall. I followed the build right from the beginning, at the drawings stage and often went round in a yellow hard hat to see the work in progress. Then, surprizingly, I was asked to sit on the “naming committee” for the new building.

I forget exactly who else was there, some people from the local orchestras, the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic, representatives from the town hall and from the Royal Northern College of Music. Then there were the television guys, me and the well-known Manchester rock music impresario, television presenter and cultural icon, my old friend, the late Tony Wilson.

It was an energetic debate with a number of names hitting the ground early on before we settled for a shortlist of two – The Bridgewater Hall and The Barbirolli Hall. Tony, of course, was full of enthusiasm for Barbirolli, the great conductor, Sir John Barbirolli, who made the Hallé Orchestra world famous. I too supported the Barbirolli name having sung under his baton once as a student tenor in a performance of the Verdi Requiem, an evening that I shall never forget. We both, I suspect, revelaed our populist bias wanting to give it the name of one of the very few classical musicians that everyone would have heard of.

As you can tell, we lost the vote to wiser voices, well, I guess they were, who didn’t want the venue to be too associated with just one organisation, the Hallé . So the Bridgewater Hall it was to be, and it is a fine name and a fine thing to be named after the murkily romantic Bridgewater Canal that runs along behind it.

Whatever it is called, it is a great building with a splendid acoustic and I was proud to have been associated with it and very happy to visit it again last Thursday the first time since what was, I think, the opening concert some years ago when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim played Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.

I was there for the exciting Danish violinist Nicolaj Zneider playing one of my favourite concertos, the Elgar, with an inspired Hallé Orchestra under their inspiring new conductor Mark Elder.

I was staying, in this now almost totally modern section of Manchester’s city centre, in a hotel immediately behind the hall. it was almost a concrete jungle but, nestled there was a throw back to another century, well the century before last in fact, and, I have to admit, an old haunt from my youthful days in the city.

The Briton’s Protection was always a “real” pub even when it sat in a rather down-at-heel but now demolished section of the city. It was only right that I should go back there after the concert for a pint of Manchester’s very own Boddingtons bitter and some animated conversation with some of the members of the orchestra after a thrilling evening of music. Some things never change. We even drank a toast to Tony Wilson and Sir John Barbirolli, great men both.

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