I WAS impressed by the Made In Huddersfield promotion in the Kingsgate Centre.
Huge banners hang from the ceiling featuring portraits of local personalities. I wandered the mall, face upturned in expectation. Sporting heroes Derek Ibbotson and Anita Lonsbrough, entertainer Roy Castle, actors James Mason and Sir Patrick Stewart, industrialist Sir David Brown, poet Simon Armitage and politician Lord Wilson.
Flipping heck. I'd missed out again.
I should be getting used to it by now, always being passed over for honours, although after I complained several years ago, town eccentric Jake Jonathan Z Mangle-Wurzel (in his capacity as King of Wurzeland) knighted me on the steps of Sainsbury's one winter's night. Seeing as he was wielding a full sized broadsword, it seemed impolite to refuse.
The eight featured on the banners are, of course, extremely worthy of the honour. Derek Ibbotson, for instance, was the first man ever to run a four minute mile. And you thought it was Roger Bannister? No, Bannister ran the first sub-four minute mile. Our Derek got it spot on – exactly four minutes, which takes some doing.
Perhaps my face isn’t the sort that would sit easily on a banner in public anyway. Years ago, someone painted my portrait and my daughter offered to hang it over the mantelpiece – to keep kids away from the fire.
Maybe one of these days, the Examiner will use my picture on the back of a corporation bus as they did, very successfully some years ago, with the face of my sporting colleague Mel Booth. It could work on the same principle as the mantelpiece.
As I recall, whilst Mel’s face was featured, no one ran into the back of a bus. I have a face like that, too.
