ALAN WHALLEY'S WORLD

PERHAPS the most oft-popped question I encounter while ankling around my beat is: Where on earth do you dig up all your stories?

Well, from a variety of sources - and especially via the stream of welcome fan mail that hits my postbag each week.

But on one of the most recent occasions a choice piece of nostalgia came from - would you believe it - up a chimney!

John Ledger, well-known Moss Bank Labour Club committeeman, had the surprise of his life when renovations were being carried out at his home. From the sooty depths of an old chimney breast toppled a fragile, yellowing newspaper - dated June 28, 1937.

How this copy of a Liverpool evening paper managed to survive there, just out of flame-licking range, for 60 years is a mind-boggling mystery.

But what remains of its crumbling contents makes fascinating reading.

The top cinema attractions around Merseyside then included Johnny Weissmuller in 'Tarzan Escapes', Fay Wray in 'They Met in a Taxi', Charles Laughton in 'Rembrandt' and Clark Gable and Joan Crawford in 'Love on the Run.'

On the live stage, Marie Lloyd was belting out comic ditties to Liverpool audiences - not the original Marie (she'd long since passed on to that big Variety Stage in the Sky) but her daughter of the same name.

Lancashire-based news included the death of the oldest retired naval officer in Britain - 100-year-old John Taylor; and the fining (equal to half his week's wage) of £2-a-week Mawdesley farm labourer, Richard Newby, "for leaving his employment without giving notice."

The adverts also make interesting reading. For those unfortunate enough to be afflicted by such complaints as boils, septic skin, carbuncles or bad feet, the Platts Ointment Company of Golborne offered relief in the form of foot-paste and skin ointment at prices ranging from threepence (just over 1p in today's currency) and one shilling and threepence (about 6p).

And anyone looking for a new bedroom suite could pick up a figured oak four-piecer for the princely sum of 9-guineas (or for the equivalent of just over 6p a week in payments).

TALK about the rising cost of living!

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