Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 26. If All Cities Were Like Milton Keynes

Our second bonus door of East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar

“You and I in a little toy shop, buy a bag of balloons with the money we got…”

We have now come to our true final door of this year’s East of the M60 Advent Calendar. All being well, The Mighty Stalybridge Celtic should be playing Hyde United tomorrow afternoon which partly explains my 99 Red Balloons reference. As well as reminding me of The Voice’s dulcet tones on a match day, it was a red balloon that inspired Milton Keynes Development Corporation’s finest ever advert.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 25. Basildon – Our Town

Our first bonus door of East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar

Before we open the first bonus door, East of the M60 would like to wish its readers old and new a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. As you couldn’t get enough of this year’s Advent Calendar, it is only fair that we go to the place where Alison Moyet, Vince Clarke and Martin Gore came from.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 24. Stevenage is Wonderful

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at a fifty-year-old film of a Hertfordshire New Town

Before 1946, Stevenage was a small, slow-growing market town. It was on the Great North Road and a stopping point on London-bound stagecoach routes. After 1946, Stevenage became one of Britain’s first New Towns as per the Abercrombie Report.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 23. Connecting Swindon

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at The Cable Connection – Swindon’s role in multi-channel television history

The use of cable for broadcasting TV and radio stations is a far from new idea. Though Sky Glass is being presented as a new satellite dish-free idea, cable broadcasting has been with us for near a century. Fibre optic cables have been used for nearly forty years.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 22. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Shopping Centre

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at a groundbreaking leisure facility in Billingham

Billingham is a town long associated with the chemical industry. Since ICI based their operations in the late 20th Century, its population grew dramatically. The town’s peak was in the 1950s and 1960s when the Billingham and Wilton plants were in full swing. Its town centre was remodelled in the latter decade with a pedestrian precinct and the proud boast of heated pavements!

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 21. Blackpool, Go For It!

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at a late-1980s/early-1990s advert for Britain’s Favourite Seaside Resort

Long before Energy In Northampton and that song about Milton Keynes in our second Advent Calendar door, there is one town that has got self promotion off to a fine art. One that is a product of the railway age and over a century’s worth of cooperation between the public sector and private enterprise. We are talking a place that sees more visitors than the Algarve, whether they arrive for the day, a week or a fortnight.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 20. New Day: The Birth of Glenrothes

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at the Fife New Town, originally built to accommodate miners

Glenrothes is one of Scotland’s first New Towns. Its original purpose was to give mineworkers at Rothes Colliery a better place to live. In this 1959 film, we see how the town fulfilled these aims.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 19. One Day in Irvine

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at the North Ayrshire New Town as seen in a 1970s film

The largest town in North Ayrshire is noted for its maritime history. It was a one-time haunt of Robert Burns and Edgar Allan Poe spent his final year at the town’s grammar school. It is also the birthplace of Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who was a little nipper back when this film was made.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 18. I Bet We Couldn’t Eat Three!

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at Welwyn Garden City, the home of Shredded Wheat

The first of Britain’s New Towns were built on the Garden City principles espoused by Ebenezer Howard. At the start of the 20th Century, the idea of Garden Cities was to give residents spacious parks and open spaces, whilst having the facilities of a medium-sized town the size of (say) Huddersfield.

Selling Runcorn By The Pound: 17. Something Cheap and Cheerful

East of the M60’s 2021 Advent Calendar looks at an advert for Fairhill Shopping Centre

Local adverts with the production values of a packet of Haribo Starmix is something we miss these days. At one time you used to have a static ten-second advert for a local car dealers or a newsagent’s shop. Instead of using their own voiceover artist, they would use the channel’s own continuity announcers. For example, an advertisement for Wood’s Music Shop in Huddersfield would have been voiced by Yorkshire Television’s John Crosse or Paul Lally. (Or if you’re lucky, Redvers Kyle).