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SALFORD STAR TEN YEARS OF CELEBRITY INTERVIEWS
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Star date: 24th July 2016
FROM JOHN COOPER CLARKE TO BEN KINGSLEY AND CHRISTOPHER ECCLESTON
To celebrate ten years of the Salford Star here we present a two part article on the city through the eyes of the many local celebrities we've featured since the first print issue in 2006.
In Part 1 we feature everyone, from John Cooper Clarke and his makeover of Beasley Street, to Shaun Ryder's thoughts on arriving Little Hulton, to Nigel Pivaro on the links between Coronation Street and Salford, to Ben Kingsley pondering whether Lowry painted his GP dad's waiting room...
Full details here...
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"The relationship between Manchester and Salford is fine as long as they understand that they're not as important as us."
Christopher Eccleston, print issue 1, 2006
"I've always thought that if Salford people are with you, you're rocking, if they're against you, you're fucked..."
Peter Hook, print issue 4, 2007
"It was just one big council estate. Some people used to go up to Bolton and Farnworth but we went straight back down the road to Salford. Bolton just wasn't us – they had different accents, they seemed not to have the fashion sense...we looked upon them as backwards..."
Shaun Ryder, recalls moving to Little Hulton in print issue 5, 2007
"A programme on Radio 4 asked me to do Beasley Street but no-one particularly wants to hear that again. So I thought I'd re-write it, give it a makeover like what happens to neighbourhoods. I just tarted the place up and called it Beasley Boulevard...
Ring-a-ding ding regime change
A long way overdue
Now the dogs are gone it's pale and strange
With a whole new kinda view
It's better than paradise if you don't look too hard..
A Garden of Eden in every yard...
A phone box cleared of hookers' cards
...On Beasley Boulevard...'
John Cooper Clarke, print issue 2, 2006
"I was about to sort out a deal with Preston North End but I decided not to carry on, I wanted to sing instead...but I did play for Salford City in the cup last year. I put a penalty over the bar, I don't think it's landed yet.."
The Wanted's Max George, pre-The Wanted and pre the Class of '92 takeover of Salford City FC, talking in print issue 8, 2008
"I think it's very real, very raw and very relatable. Things like that go on everywhere, it's just that Paul (Abbott) chose a council estate to base it. I went to school in Salford with girls who behaved perhaps a little like Karen but so does everyone. I'm very proud of where I'm from and where I've been brought up. I'm still very grounded and I like that."
Rebecca Atkinson on Shameless, online 2009
"To get the most out of life you must be active, you must live and you must have the courage to taste the thrill of being young..."
Friedrich Engels, quoted in print issue 6, 2007
"The question is, could my mum see Bez as the new MP for Salford because she's 83, Salford born and bred, and what she says goes. So Bez is going to have to go and see my mam. Can you set it up?... `Bez this is Elsie, Elsie this is Bez'... [assumes an Elsie voice...] `Get yer hair washed, what's wrong with his eyes and why are you talking so quick?'"
Christopher Eccleston on Bez standing for Salford MP, online 2015
"The last time I was here I had a look around Salford and it has changed so much, but you know what I noticed? The pubs had all gone. Pubs were, like, where people got together, it is sad they are disappearing."
Graham Nash, print issue 11 2019
"He was not the first to give working class people a voice...there were people like Shelagh Delaney, Ewan McColl, Walter Greenwood – and he's up there with them. But Tony Warren was the first to do it on television in any meaningful way. His influence cannot be overstated...
I met Tony for the first time in the Granada TV green room in 1983 and, funnily enough, he already knew about me because he'd been to visit my parents' chippy, which we had at the time down the bottom of Pendlebury Road. It wasn't like he was some detached executive. As much as he was an entertainment legend and rubbed shoulders with all sorts of people like Noel Coward, he was also rooted in his own city."
Nigel Pivaro on the Tony Warren, online 2016
"If one worried about backing a loser one would not take part in politics. Anybody who has ever been involved in political struggle, particularly in working class struggle, must accept the fact, for the major part of their life, they're going to be involved in losing battles, on the losing side in battles...
"...I'd have given up in 1932 when we were trying to alert people to the dangers of Hitler coming to power, I'd have given up during the Abyssinian War when Mussolini's bombers were bombing Ethiopians, I'd have given it up at every single stage of the struggle ever since. One goes on fighting because not to go on fighting is to prove that you're no longer alive."
Ewan MacColl, quoted in centenary article 2015
"Delaney, with a confidence and nerve beyond her years and experience, used her observations of Salford's meaner streets and the people who inhabited them to portray characters that, for the very first time, gave the English working class a voice on the British stage. Something we take for granted now, but absolutely groundbreaking and the height of rebellion 53 years ago."
Nigel Pivaro on Shelagh Delaney, online 2011
"There is an element when you become an actor from my background that you feel like you're just fannying around, that it's not a proper job, so if you can find a way to give it some gravitas and ballast you feel better about the fact that you're not working in a factory all the time, which is what my dad did and my mum did
"You don't want to just fanny about, you want to say something about the people you came from, and I know that sounds very worthy but I'm not going to apologise for that because my generation was a bit politicised and was a bit worthy and idealistic."
Christopher Eccleston, print issue 10, 2015
"Broughton inspired everything, Broughton was in my blood. I'm very proud to come from Salford. I lived and worked there…although we didn't call it `Salford', it was kind of Broughton Park…Broughton Park sounded a bit posher."
Graham Gouldman, online 2013
"Shall we say that Coronation Street and Salford parted company as the show became less Weaste and more Weatherfield, more Showbiz and less Seedley. As a young actor working in the show I was always lobbying for more realistic plots and characters, and I would even say so to Tony [Warren] on my many visits to his house overlooking Victoria Park.
"No, No, No" he would counsel "It's not real, it's an approximation that hopefully entertains people, and it's wrong to think of it as a drama documentary..."
`Why not? Surely we should be highlighting social issues that affect Salford people and people across the nation in cities and neighbourhoods like Salford?' I reposted. But when they tried to do that around the mid 1970s, the show fell out of the ratings for the first time.
In the final analysis, of course the show's creator was right and I, the idealistic but inexperienced young Turk, was wrong. Coronation Street is not Salford! It is a fictional place called Weatherfield that took some features from working class Salford as its foundation...
Nigel Pivaro on Coronation Street and Salford, online 2016
"A Taste Of Honey is one of my favourite films and, although originally written as a play in the late 50s and then eventually filmed in the early 60s, it still reminds me of the Salford I grew up in the 70s, and perfectly records a time when the working classes were largely forgotten about and conveniently ignored - not much changed there then....even all these years later."
JB Barrington on Shelagh Delaney, online 2014
"Everyone tried to build me out of Manchester at first, and I wouldn't have it, I'd say `Listen, I'm not from Manchester, I'm from Salford, I'm proud of where I am from'..."
Jamie Moore, online 2016
"When we first heard The Pogues' rendition of Dirty Old Town, Ewan started laughing. He said that they didn't understand the lonliness of the song...What he didn't say to them was that the lad can't sing, and that the group had tried to turn it into a football song..."
Peggy Seeger on Dirty Old Town, print issue 4 2007
"My father was a GP and his neighbour ran a printing business - but on the top floor was Lowry's attic apartment. The neighbour destroyed a lot of Lowry's painting when he left - I think he was in arrears with his rent or something. But Lowry was a patient of my father's for a short while, and I wonder if the painting of the waiting room he did was, in fact, my dad's waiting room..."
Ben Kingsley, print issue 6, 2007
See Part 2: Salford's famous sons and daughters on regeneration and local politicians - click here
See also - Salford Star celebrates ten years of attitude and love - click here
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NOREEN BAILEY wrote
at 18:24:48 on 24 July 2016 |
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| SALFORD STAR
Salford star you’re here to stay
Don’t you ever dare ever go away
We depend on you to hear the truth
About babies to elderly and even our youth
Steve Kingston you are our star
People all know you from near and far
You don’t fake stories like some papers do
You are our hero so honest and true
Please always remember never ever change
You give news from all angles it’s such a big range
We look every day to see what stories are new
And we can honestly say we all know it’s true
©NOREENBAILEY
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