YET another happy memory of Blackburn's old Rialto Cinema comes to Looking Back - this time, from ex-usherette Mrs Marjorie Lassey, of Portland Road, Langho.

During the day, writes Eric Leaver, she worked at the town's Mullard electronics factory but, for a couple of years just after the war while her husband served overseas in the RAF, she also spent her evenings showing people to their seats in the front balcony of the Blackburn super-cinema which was knocked down in 1974.

"It was so enjoyable," Mrs Lassey recalls. "Usually, there was a good picture to see and we had regular patrons. I can't imagine now how I ran up and down those stairs.

"In between houses, the usherettes used to go along the rows and put up the seats and pick up whatever people had forgotten - umbrellas and sometimes shopping bags, all of which had to be taken down to the booking office."

She adds: "Mr Jack Lawson was the manager and organist while I was there. But, funnily enough, my mother used to let out a couple of rooms to 'theatricals' as my dad worked at the Palace and Theatre Royal and she told me that the two men who installed the organ and all its equipment at the Rialto had stayed at our house.

"I was only three or four at the time, so I don't remember, but I do recall, when I was still at school, the queue outside the Rialto going right around the building and almost meeting the other end at the front entrance.

"A blind man used to walk the queue selling sweets that were on a tray hung from around his neck. You couldn't cheat him - he used to check the coins and knew each one. I was told he lived in Fisher Street."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.