IF Mr. Robert Rose, who calls himself “the bard of colour,” would have taken repeated hints, we should not now have had occasion to request him plainly, as we now do, to cease writing to us, or to any member of our establishment. We have no intention of noticing his book, and do not desire any communication with him.

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A decade ago, Julia Grant was one of the best-known business owners in Manchester’s gay village and an outspoken voice in both the LGBT and mainstream media.

After Mardi Gras 1999 raised nothing at all for good causes, she ran the successful and free-to-enter GayFest for two years. But, some people — including local councillors and Manchester City Council — weren’t happy at all.

Unexpectedly, in 2002, Julia sold Hollywood Showbar and her other businesses and left. Despite rumours and malicious gossip since then, she didn’t speak out in public.

Now, in this exclusive interview Julia Grant reveals the LGBT history that you won’t see at the current Manchester Pride exhibition at The Lowry gallery. Plus she recalls the events that drove her out of the city.

This was recorded on 10 July 2011 during the Sparkle weekend.

Note: eventually, when time allows, archive photos, video and other media will be added to this interview.

Quite a number are complete programmes that are more than 25 minutes long.

What a great resource.

Built for Edward Garcia, and designed by a Mr Weldon, it opened as a circus on 29 September 1883 and then became a theatre. From 1916 until 1924 the building operated as a cinema, known firstly as the Palladium and then the Futurist. After which it became home to the Christian Science Church and by the 1980′s was a quite stylish car showroom. Currently it’s closed, having been a bar.

The Manchester Libraries Local Image Collection has a photograph from 1956 which shows the building and another from 1960. It seems there were shops at the front at ground level.

At some point after that the upper part of the theatre frontage was taken down and replaced by the unexciting red brick wall that we see today.

The caption on this photograph, from 1973, suggests at that time the site (and probably the Albert Hall next door) faced a compulsory purchase order and was destined to be a new police headquarters. But it never happened and the police are still based just a few yards away at the old HQ in Bootle Street, which runs along the back of the building.

The rear is a bit of a mystery. The building seems quite small and has a low roof. How would a theatre fit into this building? Let alone a circus (don’t send any giraffes!). The site is approximately 30m x 22m. I suppose it was just a very small music hall?

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Here’s an archive view that gives a glimpse of the back in 1908 — two years before the Albert Hall was built. It looks rather run-down and a sign on the roof advertises shows ‘twice nightly’. This is how it looked in 1973.

This website has more information about the history of this building and many other theatres in Manchester and around the UK, past and present.

Just over one hundred years ago the Manchester College of Technology had a lovely new building on the corner of Whitworth Street and Sackville Street.
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This week I found a silent film that Stan Laurel made in 1923 called ‘The Soilers’. A camp cowboy appears regularly throughout the ten minute film. Here are two clips:

Stan grew up in and around theatres in Britain because his father was a theatre manager. Many of the characters and routines in the early days of the movies would have been inspired by variety acts in the music halls and no doubt this kind of character would have been part of that. But it’s unusual to get a glimpse on film from this period and for it play such a major part in the storyline.

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‘An ancestor of Monty Python’s famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century…

[The ancient gags] have been published into a multimedia online e-book, which features video of veteran comic Jim Bowen bringing the old jokes back to life in front of a 21st Century audience.’

BBC

One of the old jokes:

‘Someone needled a well-known wit: “I had your wife, without paying a penny”. He replied: “It’s my duty as a husband to couple with such a monstrosity. What made you do it?”‘