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OUT SOON!

Ged Duffy might be the unluckiest man in Manchester music. He could have managed New Order; he could have been the bass player in The Cult; he could have seen his band, Stockholm Monsters, take the mantle of the Happy Mondays and become the breakout scally-band on the coolest record label in the world... but of course none of this happened. Told with wit and a photographic memory for gigs and dates, Ged recalls his years as a stagehand at the Russell Club and later The Hacienda, touring with New Order and then turning down the chance to tour America with them, leaving Stockholm Monsters when they were about to hit it big, life in the colony of artists, oddballs and dropouts in Hulme and how he managed to successfully avoid fame and fortune.

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Published: 13th September 2021

 

“My name is John Andrew O’Kane, I played football for the biggest club in the world but you probably don’t remember me. I’ve shared a pitch with legends like Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane and Eric Cantona. I’ve received the hairdryer treatment from Fergie and partied with the likes of Ryan Giggs and Lee Sharpe. I’ve roomed with David Beckham and knew him inside out. We did everything together. I then watched as he went on to another level entirely when his career took off whilst my own took me in a completely different direction.”

In the same summer that his erstwhile roommate became Real Madrid’s latest galactico, John retired from football at just 29 due to his mental health and diminished appetite for the game, an age when defenders are usually reaching their peak. In truth, he had never been truly satisfied with his career in the game because his autism and naturally questioning nature led to clashes with authority, a cardinal sin in the strict world of the game back then.

Back in the real world John moved into ‘normal’ jobs as a roofer’s mate and a labourer before finally taking on a job as a teaching mentor to vulnerable kids. Almost overnight he’d gone from living the dream to dealing with nightmare problems and horrific life stories, yet John describes this as ‘The Best Job in the World’. In this searingly honest account of life inside the football bubble, John reveals the real world of football beyond the glitz and glamour and the price to be paid for anyone with a mind of their own.

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BY JOHN WHITE - FOREWORD BY NORMAN WHITESIDE

The history of any football club boils down to one thing: great matches; be it a significant win, a great performance, a notable debut, an incredible moment or a disastrous defeat, the big games and historic turning points are what supporters remember. The Making of a Football Dynasty tells the story of one hundred of Manchester United’s most significant games and traces the birth and growth of the club from its humble origins as a railway works team to the biggest football club in the world.

OUT NOW

The frenzy of an international crisis; the mammalian impulse to hoard; the foibles of local yokels, it’s all here, observed and archived by England’s artist answer to Switzerland’s army knife: Painter, muralist, underground comic artist, television animator, cartoonist, and humorist, Rob Martin. Martin’s signature style captures the flavor of his environs with wit and sensitivity. His sharp eye for character crystalizes types out of incidents; relateable, appealing, uproarious. Treat yourself and a friend to his tart humor, and find yourself chuckling through the day as you see the icons in Martin’s book playing out in the humans around you.

Sue Bielenberg
Animation Artist, The Simpsons

Out now!

WERE YOU THERE?

BY RICHARD LYSONS

Manchester's Free Trade Hall was the most important popular music venue in Great Britain. After several incarnations, the current building was constructed in the wake of the Manchester Blitz and opened in 1951 as the new home of the city's esteemed Halle Orchestra. Yet it was popular music which would secure the venue its fame as it responded to each wave of popular music from trad jazz and skiffle, through rock 'n' roll and folk to prog, punk and heavy metal. From Billie Holiday to Blondie, Duke Ellington to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd to Happy Mondays, Rolling Stones to The Beach Boys, David Bowie to The Smiths and Suede, just about everyone who mattered played there. The Free Trade Hall was also the venue for incendiary gigs by Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols which changed the course of music history.

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100 UNHIP ALBUMS
WE SHOULD LEARN TO LOVE
BY IAN MOSS

Music obssessive Ian Moss has written over 100 dense and amusing mini-essays on a selection of some of the uncoolest (but musically superb) records ever released. From famous albums which have since become uncool such as Sgt. Peppers to unhip bands such as Status Quo and Queen who were deemed uncool at some point in the past. Then there are the unfavoured folk, soul and jazz artists who were criminally overlooked and the downright obscure bands who put out superb records only to disappear without trace.

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Local author and journalist Colin Blaney has spent the past decade or so interviewing personalities from Manchester and Salford. Famous as the author of 'Grafters', the best-selling true crime hit which told the tale of his years as the leader of a gang of thieves who operated throughout Europe during the 70s and 80s, Colin could be described as a maverick himself; that is, someone untamed by the need to conform to the nine-to-five lifestyle or someone who has made an impact on the city in his or her own unique way. His interest in these kindred spirits led him to interview some famous and not so famous people who have had an impact on the cultural, sporting and political life of Manchester.

 

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From being the butt of football jokes to domestic treble winners, Manchester City fans have endured more ups and downs than most supporters over the past 30 years as they journeyed down the divisions before bouncing back in spectacular style under a new owner with unlimited wealth.
Yet throughout this long rollercoaster journey City fans stayed loyal to their club averaging over 25,000 most seasons when other large clubs have seen attendances slump well below that in bleak times.

What emerges is a support still in disbelief that after years of their team being the punchline for jokes by their neighbours and rivals they now rule the roost in English football.

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For someone who is seemingly afraid of almost everything Garry Stanley is something of a genius, for he has an innate ability to entertain people or more specifically to understand exactly what will entertain Mancunians sufficiently to make them throw a quid or two in a guitar case.
Garry is the inspiration and emotional glue who holds the most famous busking band in the UK, the Piccadilly Rats, together.

Each of the Rats has led a colourful life on society’s margins; there is former friend of the Krays Ray Boddington, whose pavement performances were so beloved of Mancunian audiences that his untimely death was commemorated on the front page of the Manchester Evening News and bass player Heath whose personal journey led him to cross three continents before finding his spiritual home on the corner of Lever Street and Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester city centre.

ON GRANADA REPORTS

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BY EAN GARDINER

Most Manchester United fans know one of the founding fables of the club... of how Harry Stafford and his Saint Bernard dog helped save the club's forerunner, Newton Heath, and pave the way for the formation of the new club. But what became of United's saviour?

In his ground-breaking biography of United's founding father, Ean Gardiner traces Harry's life from cradle to grave and discovers a world of blacklegs, brown envelopes and red herrings inhabiting a ripping yarn of bribery, bigamy, suicide, poisoned beer and a footballing elephant.

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‘BIG JIM’ HOLTON was a cult hero for Manchester United and Scotland during the heady early 1970s. Although he had the terrace anthem ‘Six Foot Two, Eyes of Blue’ bestowed on him by fans of both club and country, his eyes were the deepest brown and it is debatable whether indeed he was even 6 feet 2 inches tall!

After a meteoric United career, injury and misfortune led him to move on to Sunderland before helping Coventry stave off relegation. A career in the US alongside Pele and Beckenbauer also beckoned before he retired to successfully run several pubs in Coventry. Jim always kept himself fit, which made it all the more shocking when he died of a heart attack while out jogging in 1993. He was just 42 years old

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FRIENDS OF MINE: PUNK IN MANCHESTER 1976-78

by MARTIN RYAN
Foreword by MICK MIDDLES

"When forced to choose between truth and legend - print the legend" TONY WILSON

"A much needed corrective"
MICK MIDDLES

Many myths surround the explosion of punk in Manchester and its repercussions. Martin Ryan caught the punk bug in 1976 just like everybody else, it's just that his memory is not clouded by apocrypha.

Concentrating on the years 1976, 1977 and 1978 'Friends of Mine' is a blow by blow account of how punk really happened in Manchester. A much needed corrective.

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Manchester United have won every major honour available - yet for supporters of a certain vintage their favourite season of all was spent not battling for top honours but in the second flight of English football. Following a spectacular decline following the break-up of the 1968 European Cup winners, United were relegated in April 1974 and the following season was supposed to be a humiliation for the club. Instead, the reds responded by re-inventing themselves for a new era and attracting a whole new generation of supporters.

As Wayne Barton discovers, the modern day Manchester United was born during their sojourn in the second tier. From training pitch to boardroom and under the guidance of wise-cracking manager Tommy Docherty, the club moved on from a state of post-war stasis and shaped itself for the next quarter century. Without the pressure to maintain a place in the top flight, The Doc helped reinvigorate a club still struggling to come to terms with the modern era.

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“Each one of the punches that landed put me in a different place; a club, a pub, a brothel -
scattered memories of crazy nights out,
flashing images; the whiskey, cocaine and the countless girls... What the hell was I thinking?”

Michael Gomez was a talented featherweight with the world at his feet but his meteoric rise through the world rankings was derailed by his activities outside the ring.

If his life had been fictionalised, people would believe it far-fetched; he was charged (and later acquitted) of murder, spent 48 seconds clinically dead after being stabbed, attempted suicide and saw his long-suffering wife finally give up the ghost and leave him.

Perhaps the question should be how he is still here at all...

Acclaimed sports writer John Ludden has brought to vivid life Gomez's dramatic life and ghost written one of the most compelling stories in British sporting history.

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£10 INCLUDING UK POSTAGE HERE

WHISPER MY
LAST GOODBYE

Harpur Murray is devastated when her heroin addict brother Brady commits suicide. But why can't her mother talk about the night her son died?

Meanwhile, an internet romance with an old fl ame makes her question if she ever really loved her husband, Neil. Was he just a safe rebound following a violent relationship?

In Karen Woods' labyrinthine Mancunian thriller, Harpur's family seem to hold the secrets to her son's death but will she ever learn the truth?

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BANG UP

While Mikey Milne is locked up, his shoplifter mother Rachel is forced to fend for herself. Her life is soon in danger when menacing local gangster Davo fi nds out that Mikey ripped him off for £10,000 and gives her 48 hours to pay up.

Mikey's girlfriend Sarah is from a nicer part of town; as green as grass, she doesn't seem to realise the extent of her boyfriend's involvement with local gangsters or that her well-connected family have threatened to have him bumped off if he ever goes near her again. She's smitten with him and hopes he can change...

In Karen Woods 15th novel, prison walls can't keep the outside world at bay forever as dark family secrets come back to haunt fearless Mikey Milne.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mother of four Karen Woods uses her experiences growing up on a Manchester council estate in her writing. Having left school with no qualifications, she spent her formative years raising children and suffering domestic abuse.

Karen has been snapped up by a leading literary agent and her first novel, Broken Youth, was staged at the Lowry Theatre, Salford in June 2013. She was recently awarded the Learning for Work Individual Award for 2013.

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