Well, it's all true - apart from it coming to Blackpool, which is something I'd love to see...

Where it is, it attracts artists, song-writers, folksong writers, witches, fertility seekers, morris dancers... AND the artist expressly forbade any cheap souvenir cash-ins (for shame!) - in fact, a visit to the angel can be a bleak & dispiriting experience, unless you're a fertility seeker or naturist morris dancer, in which case the absense of any sort of focal point at all is a positive boon (saving the ice cream van in the car park.).

Blackpool - a unitary authority since April the 1st 1998; any amount of public art, including ones I mentioned above (and yes, the mirror ball is called They Shoot Horses, Don't They?) - there's even a big broken heart called Desire which ties in with Blackpool's reputation as Blackwaterside, maybe more so than Dublin, where Irish Lads are less conspicuous in respect of their ethnicity.

The idea for this came from a chat I had with an Low Fell resident who said much what I said there - that whilst he liked the sculpture he thought it would be better in Blackpool. However, Blackpool has its Angels - The Tower, for one (the familiar outline of which is currently obscured by scaffolding) which shelters lots of real wonders, from the Charlie Cairoli Museum (is that still there?) with its various Wheatstones and musical tricks to the Tower Ballroom where on rainy afternoon elderly lesbians dance around buckets on the dancefloor to the sound of the mightky Wurlitzer, and you might find my wife and I, relaxing after another stunning performance of the Tower Circus, our hands sore from clapping...

As a Geordie by birth, I've grown to hate the Angel of the North; I find it ill-propotioned, puny and mediocre, especially in this age of graceful, functional (at a pinch) wind-turbines. I'm not a fan of art, but commerce is fine and grass-roots stuff is even better. The folklore of the Angel is more interesting than the Angel itself - I find the idea of childless couples going there to copulate quite heartening, though one hears of Dogging on summer nights! Morris Dancers, Wiccans and Druids? Perish the thought, and perish other things too as the cold winds blow up the Team Valley whatever the time of year. BUT if ever it did come to Blackpool then - I think I might just change my opinion of it; in Blackpool you see, the normal rules just don't apply...