by Malcolm Pheby | May 8, 2019 | 1950s, Manchester
Belle Vue, the North West’s premier entertainment park, was going through a rough patch in 1954. The post-war boom, which saw crowds of 250,000 people at holiday weekends, was well and truly over. Attendances had declined and the zoo suffered bouts of vandalism and...
by Malcolm Pheby | Mar 20, 2019 | Football, Manchester
A little bit of history was made at Manchester City’s Hyde Road stadium when the Blues lined up to face Liverpool in March 1920. Football had just returned after the First World War – and the 35,000 crowd were expecting a very important visitor. The match officials...
by Malcolm Pheby | Mar 13, 2019 | 1960s, Manchester, Royals
The world was dazzled when Princess Margaret married photographer Antony Armstrong Jones at Westminster Abbey on May 6th 1960. It was the first royal wedding to be broadcast on TV – and more than 300 million people across the globe tuned in to watch it. At the time,...
by Malcolm Pheby | Feb 27, 2019 | Football, Manchester
The past decade has been a quiet one for inductions into the Manchester City Hall of Fame. No name has been inscribed on the hallowed roll of honour since East German forward Uwe Rosler in 2009. But the lack of admissions has not been mirrored by the National Football...
by Malcolm Pheby | Feb 20, 2019 | Manchester, TV
They were called Cheese and Egg, Heavy Breathing, Winston Platt and Eric – and they rode around Manchester in Thunderbird 3. Millions knew them better as The Dustbinmen – the unlikely heroes of the Granada TV sitcom which ran for three series from 1969 to 1970....
by Malcolm Pheby | Feb 14, 2019 | Celebrity, Manchester, Uncategorised
American tennis legend Billie Jean King smiled for the cameras, shouldered her rackets and made her way back to her Manchester hotel. There would be no play again in the 1964 Northern Lawn Tennis Tournament at Didsbury. A weekend of torrential rain meant the courts...
