Good Company

Aside

I saw a young woman being interviewed on TV and heard she came from ‘near Manchester’. After listening to her I told MTL I was sure she must come from Rossendale. It takes one to know one. She was hailed as "the fashion industry's next great supermodel" and has been called an "ambassador of British youth culture." She is currently starring in the Burberry and Giorgio Armani campaigns.

Then when I got my old school magazine – Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School, (her name is Agyness Deyn) she was mentioned – with pride – as a former student.

Times change; in the fifties I would have been happy for the school to know I was a trained nurse but the word model had many connotations and covered a wide range of people from the wonderful Barbara Goalen and Fiona Campbell Walters (who became Baroness Thyssen) at one end, and Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davis (the Profumo affair) at the other.

I read an article about our Agyness by Susannah Frankel where she said:

'Again, it's a nice romantic story, but the truth, as we know, is that the Manchester area is extremely far from being a youth-cultural desert. Somehow, in the rush to mythologise Deyn, it is more convenient to pretend that it is. It's a bit tragic that the very mention of the North inspires people to believe that a young woman could not possibly have imagined that life could ever offer more than a lifetime at the fryer, unless a fairy-godperson happened to fancy a saveloy. But there we are. No one is possibly more in thrall to the idea of provincialism than a London-based journalist.'

I just wonder if she has ever been to Rossendale. It may be only 20 miles north of Manchester but it has always been a unique place. The shop keepers in Manchster would always know when it was our Wakes week and they were invaded by the strange creatures. Us!

Two other Rossendalians are the couturier Betty Jackson –also an old girl of BRGS and the actress Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous and Little Voice). Local legend had it that the two luminaries met at a function and Jane pointed out that she was wearing one of Jackson’s creations whereupon Betty noted it was some seasons old and she was never going to get rich from Jane. We do tend to tell it like it is in Rossendale.

I think the three of them do us proud.