Week Ending: Memories of Frank; Re-populating Manchester; Separated at birth
THERE’S been a statue, there’s a book on the way, and now a film is to celebrate the life of Frank Sidebottom, the late south Manchester-based entertainer, and his creator Chris Sievey.
Week Ending’s memory of Frank goes back to a day in the late 1990s/early 2000s when as a guest of Altrincham software firm Hopewiser, we were treated to the VIP package at non-league Altrincham FC’s Moss Lane ground.
As match sponsor Hopewiser and its guests – which amounted to me, and the MD’s two sons Matt and Jon Good and another pal – were enjoying our half time sandwiches in a fixed caravan, when the door swung open, and there was Frank.
Fully bedecked in his Altrincham kit, he was carrying a battery powered keyboard, which he lay down on a table, switched on and then launched into a hearty rendition of “The Robins (the nickname for Altrincham for the uninformed) aint Bobbins”.
Week Ending has had the good fortune over later years to enjoy corporate hospitality at the Etihad, at Old Trafford, at Anfield, but no experience can touch a private concert by Frank Sidebottom in a fixed caravan at his beloved Moss Lane.
Priceless.
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ALLIED London chief executive Mike Ingall drew interesting population parallels at an event last night.
He was speaking about the future of the former Granada site in Manchester which his company will be redeveloping in the coming years. He wants it to be a “modern village” that will help swell the relatively meagre city centre population of 19,000.
To put this into perspective he said that Manchester was the ninth most populous city in the world in 1900. It is now way down the rankings, somewhere around 700th. The Granada site, or the St John’s Quarter as it is now known, offers an opportunity to “get back what the city had at the start of the 20th century”, said Mr Ingall.
The city had its fare share of gimcrack housing and fetid slums which allowed everyone to squeeze in and helped bump up those numbers. Fifty years earlier Friedrich Engels wrote vividly about the worst parts of the city in The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
He said: “… such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants.”
These scenes have clearly been consigned to history but it will be interesting to see how planners and architects balance big numbers with quality if the city is to experience a second apartment boom.
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While writing about Ruairidh Jackson’s move from Co-op’s Noma project to the developer Argent last week, Week Ending was struck by his likeness to Ricky Gervais’ comedy sidekick Karl Pilkington.
Unfortunately for him the website Manchester Confidential also pointed this out last year, and included pictures, which means a Google image search under his name brings up one of Karl Pilkington, a Mancunian who is famous for his Idiot Abroad series.
But the similarity is so strong we thought it was worth illustrating again. He is leaving his job as director of strategy and development of NOMA, to become a senior projects director at Argent’s Manchester office, working on Airport City.
Separated at birth? Jackson, left, and Pilkington.
