h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The story this weekend about the fire in the centre of Manchester brought back memories, some of them good and some of them not so good.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/14/teenage-girls-held-firefighter-death

I was living in Manchester when the 1979 Woolworths fire happened, in Piccadilly Square Gardens http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-20598600 At the time I was working in Ashton-under-Lyne, about six miles to the east of Manchester city centre, and we could see the plume of smoke from the roof of the factory. When I got off the train at Piccadilly Station on the way home from work I couldn't get anywhere near the Piccadilly Gardens bus station. Earlier that day (and every other working day) I'd got off the bus right outside the Woolworths store to walk the quarter of a mile to the station.

But then I started thinking about all the good times I had in Manchester, and even while waiting for my bus home, seeing the Two-Tone tour bus parked outside the Thistle Hotel on the other side of the square... or was it the Stiffs Live Stiff tour? Maybe both at different time. Either way, I didn't go to the show

I don't mind admitting it, fires like that scare me. I do a bit of hillwalking, which means that roundabout this time of year I'm often walking among a load of gorse as dry as tinder. When you combine that with idiots who think it's ok to empty the barbecue under the nearest bush, or s who think it's a good larf to start a fire - it's scary.

It spreads fast. Real fast.

Well, they've release the girls they'd arrested. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/17/teenage-girls-fatal-manchester-fire?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487. They're also saying it looks like the investigation will take a very long time.

TRiG.

Wow, that's a bit spooky. I've been working my way through an old 70s series called The XYY Man recently. Even if you don't remember it you might know of at least one character from the programme who had a life after XYY Man - Detective Chief Inspector George Kitchener Bulman played by Don Henderson (and even if you don't know Bulman there's a pretty good chance you know Don Henderson http://www.bluemilkspecial.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/council-08-tagge.jpg ).

It's a little strange realising that he was in Star Wars around the same time as XYY Man because they're both so much of their time but both so very different.

Any road up, although XYY Man was made by Granada it mostly took place in London, apart from the final three episodes which made up a three-part story set in Manchester. In the first two episodes there was a brief shot taken from the roof of what's now the Mercure Hotel in Piccadilly Square Gardens (it might or might not have been called Trusthouse Forte at the time) which started off tight on one building and then zoomed out. They did the same thing in the episode I watched last night. It started off on what I guess must have been the BBC's Manchester HQ at the time, although I don't remember seeing that all those times I stood waiting for my bus home, but as it zoomed out... well, see for yourself http://imgur.com/xmo90lD

That couldn't have been much more than a year before the fire.

Also very spookily, Bulman's oppo was DC Willis, played by Dennis Blanch, who also lived on in Strangers, and then, occasionally, in Bulman. This is how he looked back then http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/ActorsB/tve26201-19761121-247.jpg

He's had a pretty good career as an actor, judging by his IMDb page. The occasional part in Corrie, Emmerdale, The Bill, Heartbeat, parts in The Full Monty, The Naked Civil Servant, Dad's Army, Upstairs Downstairs. But now he's taken the corporate shilling and he's hawking McDonalds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spXhdFlk_qE

On the one hand I don't like fast food, corporations, fast food corporations or advertising, but on the other hand the money he gets from that gig should see him through his retirement. But mostly it's just weird seeing someone who you knew very well as a young person when they're much older, and without the intervening years, the way we've seen, for instance, Michael Caine age over the years. Speaking of which...

And am I alone in perceiving a sense of Harry Brown in that ad?