How our beloved Ancoats has risen from a slum to become No10 of the North
Those of us who worked at the Express in Manchester will remember happy times in that grand art deco office, the mirror-image of our beloved Fleet Street Lubyanka. I arrived there in May 1966, still not quite 20 and thought I was in heaven.
In fact I was cocooned in the only bit of Ancoats that was not a slum. Just 40 years after the end of WW2 the area was desperately poor, its old ‘Cottonopolis’ mills and foundries abandoned and derelict. Urban decay, crime and social deprivation were our nearest neighbours.
Not anymore. Ancoats is now gentrified, the yuppiest part of that great city with Michelin-starred restaurants and expensive apartments in what were once falling-down factories. It borders an area called New Islington which needs no explanation.
Now Ancoats is destined to become the No 10 of the North.
Andy Burnham’s dreamed-of second centre of power is being housed elsewhere else in Manchester until the Ancoats building is completed in 2032, by which time of course he may no longer be Prime Minister. Funny old world.
Meanwhile, will you excuse me a little nostalgia for my three years of bliss in Ancoats? John McDonald was northern editor, the loyal Sammy Prince his long-suffering deputy. Ted Hodgson and Tony Fowler, both brilliant men, shaped the paper each day and a young Paul Dacre was yet to arrive and be put under the wing of the great Jim Davies.
I would travel in by bus from the flat I shared in Didsbury with Dick Derwent and Rory Crilly (RIP) to Piccadilly and walk the few hundred yards up Lever Street to the Express. The nearest thing to Michelin grub then was the canteen and later an Indian restaurant next door, called, very predictably, The Orient Express where local yobs would sometimes congregate and flee without troubling the cash till.
The local pubs we frequented were the Land o’ Cakes and the Crown and Kettle unless you were daft enough to brave Yates’ Wine Lodge opposite. The Crown, like the Express building, is now among 15 Listed buildings in Ancoats.
My most vivid memory of the pub is having my break there one evening when a refugee from Yates’ staggered in and fell between John McDonald and Ted Hodgson, both drinking large Scotches. He had a huge knife protruding from his back. Once the ambulance had arrived Ted said to John: “As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted.
We used to be convinced, with some justification, that our version of the Express was superior to London’s. We had a vast staff with even a Northern Air correspondent and a sizeable Hickey contingent, including my chum Jim MacManus, later leading man at The Times (and ex-husband of Emma Soames).
James Scott Douglas, second lieutenant and sixth baronet, was on Hickey and doubled up as Northern motoring corr. We bonded over fast cars though the Jaguar racing cars he drove successfully in the 1950s were slightly different from the one I bought for a fiver from Bob Spence, the night news ed. It was (hopefully still is) a 3.5 litre drophead which went well but resolutely failed to stop. Worth every penny of that fiver!
The biggest stories happened on our patch; the unspeakable Aberfan tragedy in 1966 and the death of Donald Campbell in Bluebird on Coniston. The trial of Brady and Hindley at Chester Assizes had just ended when I arrived but the memory of the evidence still haunted the reporters who covered it. Norman Luck freely admitted he was one of many on the press benches who wept.
I drew the short straw to sub The Best Set, a spread every Monday and the brainchild of McDonald to catch the wave of adulation for George Best. It encompassed fashion, music, clubs, everything George said he was into. A great idea and the editor took rather too much of a proprietorial interest in it and I was his whipping boy.
I survived and I loved every minute of my three years in grim and grimy Ancoats.
*****
It would be difficult to exaggerate the abilities of cricket’s greatest all-rounder Sir Garfield Sobers. I was lucky enough to get to know him a bit and invited him in to lunch at the Express in Blackfriars.
Inevitably the subject of his six sixes in an over against the hapless Malcolm Nash came up and I pretended I hadn’t heard him tell the story before.
In fact, not long afterwards at a lunch at which Gary was the speaker I was sitting next to that other legend of cricket, Denis Compton (and there are few better lunch companions). Denis was using two metal crutches following a hip replacement.
The moment Gary started to tell the six sixes story, Denis announced (and none too sotte voce): “Not this bloody story again, I need a pee”. With that he rose, his crutches clattering loudly enough to distract the entire audience, with me in chase to open doors (the extent of my bathroom assistance).
We retired to the bar rather than return in disgrace.
*****
As a non-footie fan, I have almost been converted by England’s extraordinary win against France on Saturday. Then instantly unconverted by the appalling Final in which Argentina behaved like a bunch of thugs during and after the game. As for the half-time ‘entertainment’…
It is the first time I have taken an interest in the World Cup after England’s distant win 60 years ago. (Warning: more Manchester office nostalgia follows.)
On the morning of July 30, 1966 four of us piled into Rory Crilly’s Ford Consul to head for a weekend in the Yorkshire Dales. The other passengers were Ray Heath (RIP) and Dick Derwent and we were content that we could break the journey to watch the match in some pub along the way.
We hadn’t reckoned on the Great Yorkshire Publican.
When we enquired (having first invested in mine host’s finest) if we could watch the final the conversation went thus: “You lot from round ‘ere?”
When we replied honestly we were told to sod off which, inevitably, we did.
It reminded me of Larry Lamb’s favourite story of the young chap with a smart accent who arrived at Headingley to watch a Roses match. He couldn’t see the scoreboard so asked his neighbour:
“Excuse me, could you tell me the score?”
“Is thee Yorkshire?”
“Err, no.”
“Is thee Lancashire then?”
“No.”
“Well, what the fuck’s it’s got to with thee.”
*****
Everyone I know (and that includes rebel me) has decided to ignore hosepipe bans by those useless, shit-spreading, money-grabbing water companies but I now learn that they are sending up drones to snoop on their customers. Not just to spot lengths of piping but to see who has the tell-tale greenest grass.
Shotguns at the ready chaps, forget the grouse, we have a new target!
AND FINALLY
Silly Prince Harry said his failure to win his ridiculous case against the Mail was a “complete and utter whitewash”, implying bad things of Mr Justice Nicklin. Never a good idea to say such things of the judiciary.
Not surprisingly the Mail pointed this out. But hang on, wasn’t it the Mail which in 2016 splashed the news that three High Court judges had ruled that the Brexit decision would require the consent of parliament. The headline under the pictures of their lordships: Enemies of the People.
Short and selective memories in Derry Street.
ALAN FRAME
21 July 2026
