By the way, I was born and bred six miles from Salford, in a smaller but just as dirty an old town. I can't claim intimate knowledge of the place any more as I've lived in Cornwall for over 36 years now, and I more or less quit the north-west after the age of 18. But my mum was born and brought up in Salford (Silk Street) and went to school at Our Lady of Grace. My grandad, with whom I boozed in his favourite Salford pubs, worked all his life at Salford Docks (as such, he was exempt from military service in WW2), and my great Uncle Jimmy, who died on the beaches in the Dardanelles in 1915, has his name up on the memorial in Salford Cathedral. That's where my grandad was christened too. I think that MacColl's song reflects a love-hate feeling about a place which wasn't exactly great but where you had to live for many years. As a little lad, I only really knew Radcliffe and couldn't compare it with anywhere else as a place to live, and I was happy (my brother feels the same), but I hate to see what's happened to it in the half-century since I left, and to reflect on what it was really like when I lived there.