For those of us who grew up in the north west of England, it remains incongruous that someone who was part of a chatty tea-time triumvirate on 1980s Granada TV news broadcasts with Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan is now canonised as the father of the modern Manchester. And yet it is true. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the floppy-haired chap who read out local unemployment figures, reported on house fires in Rochdale, tickled trout in freezing Peak District rivers, and led late-night discussions on flying saucers seen off Saddleworth Moor was concurrently the ringleader of a musical,…

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