I'm very pleased today. There's a story published in the Big Issue in the North that I've wanted to write for a few years now, a...

Last year, as we lurched into lockdown and I was task-avoiding the final flourish on writing my thesis, I got absorbed in folk horror. It so...

More Mayors are coming. In an interview with the Financial Times  (£) yesterday, housing and local government secretary Robert Jenrick put t...

Had a wonderful time hosting this final session at the Invest North 21 conference last week, Selling the North to the World organised by The...

There's a certain ugliness to Black Friday. I never want to be that person attacking businesses for making a living, but there's som...

So I took my seat on the front row of the main stand at Broadhurst Park, home of FC United of Manchester. I placed my programme, my ticket a...

This was a bit special - having a lockdown chat with my pal Will Lewis and one of my all time favourite Blackburn Rovers players, David Dunn...

I really enjoyed the Spezial exhibition in Blackburn's Cotton Exchange. Definitely enjoyed it more than the football match we atten...

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done for nigh on 20 years. I went to a Blackburn Rovers home game by train. We’ve come to the c...

I had my football identity consciousness raising tonight. I sat with my Dad in the exact same place we sat in nearly 50 years ago at Gi...

Lancaster University ducks So, I’m on another round of University open days at the moment. In so many ways it’s a fascinating sociologic...

Where we are today matters. It certainly matters to me. I first arrived around this very part of the city in 1985 as a fresh faced t...

Wow. What an inspiring and gorgeous film by my old pal Daniel Kennedy of Paper Films. So many of these place-punting pieces of propaga...

I like this short film extolling the bonds between football, fashion and identity. Gary Aspden and his pals sit just down from us in the R...

We needed a laugh this week. And by goodness we got one on Saturday night watching Matt Forde at the delightful environs of Chorley Little...

Preston's pride - BAE Systems at Preston Guild Sometimes I think I've spent so long away from the coal face of business journa...

Last week marked the launch of this tremendous book about our musical education.  Growing up in Lancaster we were incredibly blessed to ...

I love the Inn at Whitewell . I've only been twice, but I have an irrational and emotional connection to it, possibly to everything ...

The crowd around Deepdale was excitable for the derby game, boisterous rather than violent, beer had been drunk, the police were very much i...

I was pretty excited about the Community Clothing launch - all the romance of re-opening a factory, making clothes in Blackburn, Lanca...