‘Manchester: In Residents’ ... #31 Oliver

'Lorenzo offered to walk the elephant back to Manchester, which he did in ten days...'

What’s your name?

Oliver East.

What do you do?

I’m an artist. I write and draw comic books about landscape and walking. They sell about as well as that sounds so I’ve also had a long career as a barman in south and central Manchester – Maine Road Family Stand, Free Trade Hall, Robinski’s, The Drop Inn, Velvet, Matt & Phred’s – before finishing up with seven years as a manager down The Temple. I get the odd illustration gig as well, like two Elbow album sleeves and animation, for instance. The comics are making money now though, so I’ve been bar-free for a while.

Where do you live?

Old Trafford.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I’m a party baby. Or more specifically a 'cult party baby'. My mum was living in an ashram in Withington, next to St Paul’s Primary (which I later attended) as part of a worldwide cult. Told she couldn’t have kids, she had one nonetheless. Grew up, just the two of us, in a Fallowfield flat. School in Withington then Didsbury. The Didsbury school was a strange mix of working class Burnage and middle class Didsbury. Hated it. Failed most everything and did retakes and such in Heaton Chapel.

I really wanted to study archaeology, but couldn’t get the grades. I took ‘Classical Civilisations’ for GSCE three times, getting, in order, D, D, E – so Indiana Jones was a no go. I wanted to study something though and so I fell onto an art foundation course. Two and a bit years into an art degree, I fell for art. Moved out of my Fallowfield home at 18 into a Fallowfield student house. Standard fare. Then sublet a one bedroom Northern Quarter apartment whilst courting my future wife and working in Velvet and then Matt & Phreds. It was an illegal let, which would have been okay, but a census was done at the time and there’s only so long you can ignore the door to those guys…

I moved into a Chorlton share with my girlfriend and some numpties who would only ‘let’ us in the front room at certain times of the day. Fucked them off and got our own place, – a flat in Whalley Range. Due to an accident my girlfriend had enough for a deposit for a house in Old Trafford. A year later we got married in Las Vegas in a chapel who said, ‘You just tell us, on the day, whether you want God there or not’. Our son, Hunter, was born five years ago. We were married nine years. She’s no longer my wife but we’re great mates in a ripe-for-mockery ‘North Chorlton’ co-parenting team.

What’s great about this city?

Viewing the city with ‘single’ eyes, it’s a different world out there: terrifying but ever so much fun at the same time. I walk everywhere if I can. It’s cheap therapy. I can be in town in less than an hour and Chorlton in ten minutes. You can walk across the whole town centre in less than twenty minutes, with your beer jacket on. Every parent around treasures the museums. I hope they’re not taken for granted and that everyone chips in on their way out.

One of Oli's beautiful Elbow sleeves.

What’s not so great?

I could fire off many a missive about our misfiring trams. Packed single ones at rush hour and empty doubles during the day. The public transport system as a whole is pretty embarrassing when you talk to other Europeans. ‘What, you mean you can’t use the same ticket on all the buses?’ 

The London Road Fire Station situation is shameful.

Fallowfield has been shat on, bit by shitty landlord bit, over the years. With the students now more likely to live in the centre of town, they’ll have to fill the houses somehow and a once appealing neighbourhood will just get worse.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

Central Library, before they gave it a veruca.  The stretch of Whitworth Street, from Palace Theatre to Piccadilly Station looks like a parade of gargantuan gateaux. If you lived in India House or worked at the Palace Hotel, you’d get nothing done, as you’d have your head out the window eating icing all day.

Oxford Road station is the best in town. Love the roof and their stubborn refusal to sort out a lift for years. The egg and toast rack in Fallowfield would have to be up there actually. The residential houses of Whalley Range deserve an illustrator’s attention. I’ll get round to it at some point. Still some grand houses in Fallowfield if you can see past the flyers.

I enjoy running. One favourite route is around Trafford Park, with the warehouses and industrial bakeries, glimpses of The Lowry and a bridge over the quay.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

Lorenzo Lawrence. He worked at Belle Vue zoo in the late nineteenth century. The owner of the zoo travelled to Edinburgh, with Lorenzo, to buy a load of animals. The plan was to get them back by train to Piccadilly but the elephant they bought kicked off and smashed his carriage. Lorenzo offered to walk it back to Manchester, which he did in ten days. But the elephant was already trained and had been used to carriages for years. Once Lorenzo had got it on the train that would have been that particular gig over for him. So, a skilled trainer, he somehow gave the elephant a signal to panic. Thus blagging himself an extra ten days work. I’m working on a comic book about the whole thing now.

I worked in Velvet for a couple of years and there was a character, Tony Dean, who used to write poetry for his favourite bar staff. I’ve still got a load now. He wrote a short story about a beauty spot on my cheek. He made me a spoken word cassette (both sides) of him reading sonnets called ‘In Celebration of Oliver’. He was fun.

Bumping into Guy Garvey is the highlight of any day and honourable mentions for Steve Manford, Carol Batton, Emma Jane Unsworth, Hannah Thomas and me Mam.

One of Oli's public wall pieces.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

My homing instincts always take me down to The Temple (of Convenience). It’s a hole, it stinks, the staff are surly, it’s a nightmare on Saturday nights, but I love it. Having worked there for seven years, off and on, I’ll always find someone down there with whom to over-share. That, and its older sister, Big Hands, are the only two real rock and roll bars in Manchester. Being newly single means I’ve had to broaden my horizons beyond these two, for it not to get too incestuous with the bar staff.

Fletcher Moss Park for nostalgia reasons (mainly sticky fumbles) and the Mersey that runs round to Chorlton and Stretford, via Northenden, which is good for running. Longford Park as I used to take the boy there every day, reading a book while I pushed him around.  He would make his first steps in the avarium there.

As for restaurants I have some pretty ingrained phobias about eating, so anywhere where I can order, it comes quickly, and I can pay and leave while still chewing, works for me. This ‘n’ That, where I go with the boy before Bolton Wanderers home games is great. The Mexican stand in the Arndale food market does a massive burrito, a bottle of decent beer and a shot of tequila, for a tenner. Top way to start off a hung-over Saturday.

Rage Against The Machine at The Ritz is always up there as one of my favourite gigs. Used to go to Dance Yer Docs off there as well. It’s a great venue with buckets of sweaty nostalgia.

Whenever tourists would come down The Temple I’d always tell them about The Briton’s Protection. As good as pubs get in Manchester. Ask me again when I’ve been single for a year and I’ll know more places.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Humility.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Panic. I’m totally unqualified for such a position. But until I was found out I’d get shot of that Simpson character. The architect who keeps getting every gig going in Manchester? Yeah, I’d do away with him. I’d make The Temple and Big Hands rent-free forever more. I’d sort out the road above The Temple so it didn’t leak all the time.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Steve Manford. Filmmaker who works at Afflecks.

All of Oliver’s books can be bought from Forbidden Planet International on Oldham Street but, if you can live with the shame afterwards, they’re also available on Amazon. He also has a website, a Tumblr where he posts process pictures and inspiration, and he also does a bad job of hiding his anger issues over on Twitter.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #28 Bren

'It was an enchanted place and although no longer as it was, the vintage fittings and humidor cigar counter long gone, replaced by rows of Pot Noodles, I still visit in my mind’s eye.'

What’s your name?

Bren O’Callaghan

What do you do?

There is something delightfully, incurably wrong with my head, fuelling a compulsion to create, dream and conjure the most ridiculous and absurd of activities, events and installations. I am powerless to resist the flow of ideas. In other words, I do stuff. I make things. I ask people to help me out and very often they do. On paper, I am a producer, curator and artist-maker, currently the Visual Arts Programme Manager at Cornerhouse and HOME, Manchester’s international centre for cinema, theatre and contemporary visual art. My background is in a mixture of arts production, including ten years at the BBC. In my day job I support an international roster of emerging and mid-career artists, covering experimental film and video, installation, live performance and public participation.

         It’s been a bumpy but incredible eighteen months following the relocation of a close friend to the lure of sunny Oz, coupled with an abrupt finish to a relationship. There’s a term I use, ‘raft building’, to describe the process of lashing myself to an all-consuming project to carry me through rough waters, when swimming isn’t enough to keep from floundering. Fortunately, it was at this exact moment I was asked to produce my first feature-length movie. Jamie Shovlin’s Rough Cut is a hybrid of fiction and documentary capturing the process of recreating/reimagining a 1970s horror movie that never actually existed. I even appear in it myself, as a polo-necked villain, and as a pair of hands inside a fog-wreathed cabin in the woods…

The project was reviewed in the leading cinema press – from Sight and Sound to a full-page feature in the Guardian Guide to Empire and Total Film – and selected for the Rotterdam International Film Festival, and continues to screen on the international festival circuit, most recently in New York. I’m exceptionally proud of what we achieved, and the memories of tramping about the Lake District, doubling for Argento’s Italy and slasher-camp America, will stay with me always: plagued by clouds of razor-fanged midges, clambering through quarries and caves, blowing up scale models on the moors and slathering a giant, monster worm with buckets of sexual lubricant for slime.

         I also squeezed in some projects of my own, including That Dame Upstairs, a noir-styled monochrome life drawing class and performance with The Sisters Gorgeous, and Nicho Nativity, a Mexican-themed Christmas grotto in the basement of Oklahoma, the latter thanks to a grant from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation. I kicked the year in the nuts with a sell-out 300 seat screening of my recurring Scratch and Sniff Cinema series, this time for The Wicker Man, with odours ranging from village orgy (crushed rosemary) to burning virgin (roasting meat). I did say I was compulsive…

         All rafts sink by the nature of their transitory purpose, so there always needs to be another one waiting. Before I reach The Other Side, I’m aiming for a personal best score. We only get one attempt at this game. There are no start-agains.

Where do you live?

In leafy Old Trafford, the nearly-Chorlton but most definitely not-Hulme neighbourhood where you get more square foot per butt. It’s close to the city and I prefer old Victorian housing stock to charmless, city-centre shoeboxes, plus I’m around the corner from the Hong Kong Chippy. They make the best chips and gravy in South Manchester with a free side of highly personalised criticism delivered in Cantonese.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I’m from here, raised in Rusholme and Salford, though no one seems to believe me. I lack the requisite accent (even though my vowels are distinctly Northern) and right from the playground I was accused of being ‘posh’. What this actually meant was that I loved to read, and because I was partly raised by my surrogate television family (Floella Benjamin, Derek Griffiths, Johnny Ball, Fingerbobs, Bagpuss) I unconsciously imitated them, particularly when called upon to read aloud, or at bedtime, hence ‘posh’.

         Somewhat incredibly, I’ve been attending Cornerhouse for over twenty years. This attendance was initially prompted by an older woman – we’ll call her Sylvia – who drove a Porsche and had a husband stashed in the attic. Sylvia befriended me at the video rental shop and would drive my friend Moira and I to watch French people shout at each other and have miserable sex (which describes about 80% of independent cinema, then and now). I last saw Sylvia when, as an asexual young adult, I was turned out of her house when her husband accused us of having an affair. ‘You’d better go,’ she urged, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow’. To my relief she never did call.

         Around this time I took a self-funded gap year to work as a teacher in Varna, on the coast of the Black Sea, which wasn’t as edifying as I’d hoped, underscored as it was by a diet of stale bread and Nutella. On returning to England I moved to Newcastle to study literature, working at Northern Stage as an usher and spending summers with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Office. From there I went to Belfast, a lonely period in which everyone seemed to return to their hometowns at the weekend, leaving me to wander around Belfast Zoo where more frequently than not I would be pursued by a rogue Pelican that took a dislike to me and would wait, hissing, around the corner of public footpaths.

         I’ve been back in Manchester for a long time now, and I think if I were to relocate again, I’d make it a big one – across the sea and far away. But Manchester will always be the soil that clings to my roots.

What’s great about this city?

It is a city in its truest sense, indifferent to human suffering or achievement, built on opportunism, greed, poverty and wealth, the unremarked-upon lives of the many, and marble-hewn egos of a few. It is an ill-planned, clumsy, mismatched patchwork of pre-war Victoriana and post-war concrete, dotted with boom-and-bust glass-walled hives of hipster drones. There are enough ‘quarters’ to create more than one whole, no skyline to speak of, and we are baptised nightly in bodily fluids as the populous knock back their over-priced cocktails and finish with a bollock burger on the way home. Despite, or because of this, Manchester is at the very least authentic; an ugly truth, a beautiful lie, and so forgivably flawed. It is a city of human scale that refuses to stop playing and come in for tea.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

There’s an unassuming shop front in the warrens of Rusholme that will always be a symbolic beacon for me. It’s my parent’s old newsagents, which I lived above as a child. The last time I paid a pilgrimage there it was dilapidated and near ruinous… the windows plastered with discounted phone card adverts. But the refuse sacks that litter the adjacent streets appear, to me, like a black-capped fairy circle, hinting at the residue of magic within. It was the late 1970s when we lived there, before the rash of supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres, when corner shops were also the local toy store, and the stock changed according to season; rows of eggs at Easter, monster masks at Halloween, and ‘Standard Firework’ selection boxes in the run up to Bonfire Night. At Christmas I would sit on towers of Quality Street tins, reading about the application of natural yogurt as a cure-all in the problem pages of Just Seventeen. It was an enchanted place and although no longer as it was, the vintage fittings and humidor cigar counter long gone, replaced by rows of Pot Noodles, I still visit in my mind’s eye.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

My twin sister, Katie. She would never turn her back on me, nor I her, no matter our documented attempts to kill one another (the first when we were two years old, and I maintain that she pushed me down the stairs first). We have a shared memory as infants of a lampshade swinging between our beds, seemingly by an invisible force. Read into that what you will, but cross us together at your peril, and beware sewing needles that mysteriously appear in wet facecloths. Come the apocalypse we will stand back to back, wielding kitchen knives, making a detour into All Saints for slimming survivalist fashion, all the while arguing furiously about who is having the harder time of it.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

There’s a small swimming pool where I swim most lunchtimes that I’m not prepared to promote the existence of, for fear it will be invaded by people with better bodies. But I’ll happily give the thumbs-up to Fred Aldous, The Briton’s Protection, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, TwentyTwentyTwo and the Ray Harryhausen-like mural and statue of a terrifying, anorexic Christ in St Augustine’s Catholic Church, built of WWII bomb debris… and really, who can live without Stitches off Deansgate for swift clothing alterations?

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Ask not what your city can do for you, but what you can do for your city. There’s far too much white noise nostalgia for times past, coupled with a lot of ‘what-if’ but very little direct action. I love what the Manchester Modernist Society and Loiterers Resistance Movement are doing, aiding interpretation and facilitating engagement, not placing the past underneath a bell jar. They should be championed as civic superheroes, instead of marginalised as black sheep. There’s also a growing, infuriating trend towards ghettoisation amongst audiences for live events of any kind, sticking to one venue or scene instead of getting out there. I’ve had people complain to me that they didn’t know such-and-such a thing was happening because they were not directly invited via Facebook. People need to seek out and support a wider cultural ecology with exposure to new ideas and unfamiliar disciplines. It is each and every person’s responsibility to make your city a better place.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Give that guy who works at Cornerhouse the keys to the little shuttered-up shop under a railway arch facing Monroes, beneath Piccadilly Station, and allow him to use it rent free as a sit-and-drift reading room, along the lines of the Prelinger Archive in San Francisco. There would be books, photo albums, VHS tapes, music mix cassettes, redundant media players, records, part-completed Panini sticker albums and shoeboxes filled with the ephemera of others, curated and rotated with the sole intention of encouraging the mind to wander. A bank of cubicles with curtains would allow privacy for those who needed a little cry for whatever reason, with a 50p sob box on trust to help pay for the electric. Outside, a neon light installation and quote from Shirley Conran’s Lace would read, Which one of you bitches is my mother?

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Sharon of Sharon’s Flowers, next to Big Hands on Oxford Road, but you’d need to enter backwards holding up a mirrored shield. Do not look into her eyes.

Bren’s next project has been commissioned by the North West Central Film Hub, part of the British Film Institute Film Audience Network. In his first outing as director, a cinema audience will be plunged into total darkness for a filmic experience without visuals, instead wearing wireless headphones using binaural audio, a specialised method of audio capture that creates a 360º spatial soundscape, best described as a form of aural ventriloquism. The unfolding tale is that of a classic haunting...

Manchester: In Residents … #16: Anthony

'I’ve lived in sunny Salford – handy for weed – and Didsbury Village –handy for cheese, but I’m happy right here for the time being, waking up of a morning and blowing the froth off my latte as I stare out over Stretford Arndale...'

What’s your name?

Anthony Scott Crank. People ask if my surname is a stage name, but come on, would anyone with any clout choose ‘Crank’? During my wilderness years on TV I often hoped my moniker would become something like Cockney rhyming slang, as in ‘I’m going for an Anthony Crank...’ Alas, it wasn’t to be…

What do you do?

I’m an Acting Coach at The Manchester School Of Acting. It’s a brilliant school that’s spawned the majority of the famous and uber-talented Northern faces that you see in film, TV and stage, all under the mentorship of the demi-god that is Mark Hudson. I spend the majority of my week grimacing and yelling out David Mamet quotes such as ‘Invent Nothing, Deny Nothing, Accept Everything!’ and ‘If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t fucking exist!’ at four hundred hungry students. It really is the best job in the world. I’m also just about to finish my first TV script ‘BEEF’. It’s a six part, very dark comedy drama about the lives of a group forty-something, sweaty hairy blokes living in London. It’s about masculinity, testosterone, friendship, priorities, depression, sex, drugs, and growing old disgracefully. I’m pretty damn chuffed with it so far.

Prior to this I have enjoyed – and endured – a myriad of unusual career choices. As an actor I’ve shown my waxed arse on Shameless a good few times, grappled Beverley Callard to the floor outside Bolton Town Hall on Corrie, and treaded many a Mancunian board in plays such as ‘The Rainbow Connection’, ‘Fetish Knights’ and ‘The Newspaper Boy’. I’ve written for an abundance of publications, mainly the lovely Attitude magazine, plus I DJ at all manner of shindigs, including the ubiquitous and always brilliant ‘Off TheHook’.

I spent 11 years in that London spouting crap on a regular basis as a TV presenter, most infamously for T4, MTV, and BBC Holiday, where I experienced everything from having my arse cheeks read by plastic-faced Celebrity Rumpologist Jackie Stallone, went on a week-long cycling holiday with Angela Rippon, and was made to sing the original ‘Pink Panther’ theme tune to a befuddled Beyoncé Knowles. And I got paid for it. And I got to share a dressing room with Steve Jones.

 Where do you live?

Old Trafford, slap bang between MUFC and the cricket ground. I’ve been back in Manchesterford four years now. I’ve lived in sunny Salford – handy for weed – and Didsbury Village –handy for cheese, but I’m happy right here for the time being, waking up of a morning and blowing the froth off my latte as I stare out over Stretford Arndale. I aspire to be a resident on Beech Road in the next couple of years though …

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I was born Scott Greenwood in Ashton-under-Lyne, but adopted out to Mr and Mrs Cranky within days of showing my face. I ended up in the arse-end of Warrington for my formative years. By the time I was sixteen the ‘Madchester’ scene had kicked off and I was determined to throw myself head-first into it, and I did. I remember stumbling across Afflecks back when it was the place to hang-out and getting a massive stiffy over 24” bell-flared loon pants from Go Vicinity, just like Tom from Inspiral Carpets used to wear. The first ever club I went to was the mighty Hacienda, on a Thursday night in 1991 – ‘Beautiful 2000’ – where I spent the majority of the evening open-gobbed at all the weird and wonderful people. I wore cream hemp dungarees and a ‘Candy Flip’ hair-do while my mate Alison got off with the singer from ‘World Of Twist’. 

I was instantly hooked. I spent every weekend getting the train up to Manc. I threw myself into the club scene with gusto, and I was lucky enough to experience some of the ground-breaking nights and clubs that put Manchester on the global scene. Most Excellent, Flesh, Space Funk and Manumission at bloody AXM bar were rocking the city, and before long I earned my pink stripes and stumbled across Manto Bar and Paradise Factory, came out the closet kicking and screaming, caused a lot of trouble, and moved to the beautiful city on a permanent basis. I stayed until 1997, then upped sticks to find fame and fortune in London for ten years. It was there, after a lot of ill-placed ventures, pissing money up the wall, and generally dribbling into the lap of June Sarpong every weekend on T4, that the shit hit the fan and I ended up going bankrupt for nearly 200k (before it was the done thing, thank you!). In 2008 I packed up my old kit bag and decided to move back to Manchester for good. I’ve never felt richer, more content and more proud to be from – and back in – Manchester ever since.

What’s great about this city?

It’s tough as old boots, and I like that a lot. It’s unpolished, inconsistent, messy and a hell of a lot of trouble. I truly believe that in the UK, Mancs as a whole are superior beings, hands down, no messing about. The creativity that oozes out of Manchester, especially from the arts/queer/music/media scenes, is original, and we stand head and shoulders above other UK cities. I love being in the company of other Mancunians, I feel like we’ve got that ‘thing’ that ‘The Sopranos’ have. Cheap rents on fancy flats is nice too, as are the free buses that run around the city.

What’s not so great?

Canal Street. I’m not one for banging on about ‘the good old days’ but it seems eternally stuck in 2001, which is so sad as it was once a pioneer in Manchester culture. It’s dated, dangerous (and not in a good way) and refuses to move forward in its ideology. Thank fuck for the Northern Quarter. Piccadilly Gardens is basically hangin’… And the constant rain. It makes me want to KILL.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

Granada TV. The old signage and that late 50’s style of architecture have always given me a fluttery tummy, it reminds me of being at school and hitting the city as a teenager for the first time. You can imagine the likes of Pat Phoenix swanning around the corridors with a Rothman in one hand, head to toe in mink, cursing like a navvy at anyone who got in her way. It’s such a shame that it will be pulled down in the next few years to make way for another fucking hotel…

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

Caroline Aherne. I pine for the day she returns back to our screens. As a writer, creator, performer, comedienne, she’s given us so much. I’d go to shit if I met her, I really would.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

On the rare occasions the sun show its face, I like to while away the hours in Castlefield Arena. Tib Street and Oldham Street – barring the pissheads outside Sachas Hotel – are frequent haunts for drinks, shopping and hanging out. If I’m feeling all la-di-da, and if I can get a table, Aumbry Restaurant in Prestwich is without a doubt the best place to eat in the city. I also love Earth Café, The Ox and Noble, Kraak, Didsbury Park, Bannatynes on Quay Street, Hula Bar and Tribeca.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Apart from decent agents for my acting students, I’d quite like a large park or green space of sorts somewhere in the city centre. Maybe they could bulldoze Canal Street to make way for it…?

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Make Rowetta the Lady Mayoress.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Jason Orange.

Anthony teaches at the Manchester School Of Acting.