Blackpool Reaches the Final Four for UK City of Culture 2029
Blackpool took a significant step towards becoming the UK's City of Culture for 2029 when the government announced on 22 October 2026 that the resort had reached the final four in the national competition. The town was shortlisted alongside Sheffield, Milton Keynes and Wrexham, having progressed from an original longlist of nine contenders. If successful, Blackpool would become the first seaside resort to receive the prestigious title, bringing £10 million in government funding towards a year-long programme of cultural celebrations, performances and community activities. The opportunity arose through the UK City of Culture competition, a government initiative established to recognise...
Puppet up! A Blackpool Festival of Puppetry and Visual Theatre
Three years after the start of the Blackpool Town Centre Forum initiative in 1997, the first of the town centre annual festivals was curated under the banner of ‘Puppet Up!’. This was Blackpool’s first festival of puppetry and visual theatre, inviting the general public to join in and celebrate in a captivating programme of events, the culmination of which was to take place during May of that year. The object of the initiative was to create an event which would capture the interest and involvement of the Blackpool community in the event itself and their own town centre, and to...
TheSaxMan: Blackpool Roots. A World of Possibilities.
Blackpool has produced entertainers whose careers have taken them far beyond the resort, and among them is saxophonist Ben Barnett, professionally known as The SaxMan. Combining live saxophone with contemporary dance music, house and electronic sounds, Barnett has built an international career performing alongside DJs at clubs, festivals, private celebrations and prestigious events. His distinctive approach has taken an instrument traditionally associated with jazz and popular music into a very different entertainment environment, where live musicians perform alongside electronic music. Barnett has strong roots in Blackpool, having attended Arnold School, the former independent school in the town. He is also...
Sam Barnett Brings a New Generation of Effects to Blackpool
Growing up around a family business already closely connected with Blackpool's entertainment industry, Sam Barnett was introduced to the world of professional sound, lighting and effects from an early age. His father John Barnett had established Stardream in 1977, but rather than simply continuing what had gone before, Sam developed his own specialist area within an industry increasingly embracing wireless technology. Samuel Marc Barnett became a director of Stardream in 2010. A significant step came in 2015 when the Blackpool company became the exclusive UK distributor for German manufacturer Astera, whose battery powered, wirelessly controlled LED lighting was becoming increasingly...
Mark Butcher and the Story of Amazing Graze
In 2012, Mark Butcher began an initiative in Blackpool that would develop into one of the town's better-known organisations supporting people affected by homelessness and poverty. Butcher had experienced difficult periods in his own life involving addiction and had subsequently become an evangelist and street preacher. Having turned his life around, he channelled those experiences into helping others, establishing what became Amazing Graze. Beginning as a Christian community initiative, Amazing Graze initially concentrated on providing hot food for people sleeping rough. It grew rapidly, with contemporary accounts suggesting that within its early years hundreds of meals were being provided each...
Captain William Swarbrick and the Rescue of Seventeen Lives
On 27 October 1862, Captain William Swarbrick, master of the Fleetwood steam tug Wyre, carried out a remarkable rescue in Morecambe Bay, saving 17 people from a sinking sailing vessel during a violent gale. His actions, alongside those of his crew and local pilots, earned him national recognition and an RNLI Silver Medal, securing his place in Fleetwood's maritime history. The vessel in distress was the barque Pudyona, associated with Glasson Dock near Lancaster. She had become stranded in Morecambe Bay during severe weather, with heavy seas and powerful squalls threatening the lives of everyone aboard. The steam tug Wyre,...
Blackpool’s Grand Battle of the Flowers
In September 1888, Blackpool’s Promenade became the setting for an unusual confrontation. Decorated carriages passed along the seafront, bands provided music, and spectators joined a celebration in which flowers became ammunition. The town’s first Grand Battle of the Flowers brought a continental carnival tradition to the Lancashire coast, although the exchanges proved considerably rougher than the elegant floral spectacle its organisers had envisaged. The initiative was associated with Blackpool’s mayor, J. Fish, who sought to reproduce the flower festivals he had seen at Monte Carlo. Such celebrations combined elaborate carriage decorations with playful exchanges of flowers between participants and onlookers....
The Boy Who Spent His Last Sixpence at Blackpool Tower
On the evening of 26 July 1935, with the lights of Blackpool glowing and visitors crowding its famous promenade, a tragedy unfolded high above the town that would leave behind more questions than answers. Arthur Frederick Taylor, a 16-year-old boy from Brixton, made his way to the top of Blackpool Tower. Before stepping out into the open air and plunging 325 feet to the roof of the ballroom below, he paused long enough to write two letters—one to his mother, another to the coroner who would later preside over the inquiry into his death.When the inquest was held, Colonel H....
A Mother’s Legacy Lives on at Mamma Gina
In 2025, a new Italian café and bistro opened at 93 Clifton Street in the heart of Lytham. Named Mamma Gina, the establishment was created by Alessia Figus as a tribute to her late mother, Gina, whose love of cooking and family hospitality provided the inspiration for the business. Bringing traditional Sardinian influences to the Fylde Coast, Mamma Gina became another addition to Lytham's growing collection of independent restaurants and cafés. The story behind Mamma Gina is a deeply personal one. Alessia's mother died in 2015, leaving behind memories of a family kitchen where food represented much more than simply...
The Remarkable Rise of the  sé Anār Restaurant
In 2023, a small Indian restaurant opened at 107 Highfield Road in Blackpool's South Shore. Within little more than a year, it had earned a place among Britain's 100 Best Local Restaurants, bringing national recognition to an independent family business. Named  sé Anār, the restaurant was established by Renuka Morris and her husband, Colin, and would go on to receive recognition from The Good Food Guide for three consecutive years, in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The restaurant represented a considerable change of direction for Renuka, who had previously spent 23 years working in education. Despite enjoying her career,...
Paul Sykes and His Troubled Connections to Blackpool
Paul Sykes was one of the most controversial figures in British heavyweight boxing during the late 1970s, a man whose considerable sporting ability was repeatedly overshadowed by violence, criminal convictions and imprisonment. Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, on 23 May 1946, he developed a reputation as a powerful and unpredictable fighter whose professional career lasted barely two years. Although principally associated with his home town, Sykes also had connections with Blackpool and the Fylde Coast, including a professional boxing appearance at Blackpool Tower Circus and his involvement in a serious assault arising from an industrial dispute in St Annes. Sykes began...
Dame Thora Hird and Her Blackpool Summer Seasons
Dame Thora Hird was one of Britain's best-loved actresses, remembered for her distinctive Lancashire accent, natural comic timing and memorable performances across theatre, film and television. Although born in Morecambe on 28 May 1911, she developed a longstanding association with Blackpool, appearing in several summer seasons at the Grand Theatre during the 1950s and 1960s. Her appearances brought her into the company of some of Britain's most recognisable entertainers, including Arthur Askey, Mollie Sugden, Freddie Frinton and Pat Phoenix, helping to establish the Grand Theatre as one of the resort's leading venues for popular comedy. Hird's theatrical career began at...
Steve Sinclair and the Dark Side of Blackpool’s Nightlife
Long before Steve Sinclair became known as “The Blackpool Rock”, his life was centred hundreds of miles from the Fylde Coast. His early years were associated with the Portsmouth and Havant area, where fighting and boxing became an important part of his youth. Sinclair developed into an amateur heavyweight boxer, building a record reported in 1982 as 20 wins from 25 contests. That year, while working as a stores keeper aboard the QE2, he found himself sharing a makeshift boxing ring with one of the most famous fighters in the world. During a voyage from New York to Britain, world...
Larry Rushton, From Prison Walls to a Blackpool Artist
Larry Rushton had one of the more extraordinary routes into Blackpool's artistic world. A safe-breaker, robber and prison escapee who discovered an ability to paint while behind bars, Rushton eventually became a successful self-taught artist associated with Blackpool and Lytham St Annes, producing paintings that ranged from clowns and tramps to portraits and scenes of working-class life. Click on image above to buy the book on Amazon. Rushton lived from 1919 to 1994, although details of his early life remain surprisingly difficult to establish. He became so closely associated with the Fylde Coast that he was subsequently described at auction...
Offshore Wind and the Battle Over the Fylde Cable Route
One of the largest modern infrastructure projects to affect the Fylde Coast was given government approval on 14 September 2026, following years of planning, consultation and increasingly organised local opposition. The Morgan and Morecambe Offshore Wind Farms Transmission Assets project is intended to carry electricity generated by two offshore wind developments in the Irish Sea into the National Grid. Although the turbines themselves will stand many miles offshore, the infrastructure required to connect them to the electricity network will cross a substantial part of the Fylde countryside. Cables will come ashore close to St Annes and Blackpool Airport, before travelling...
Hillhouse and the Legacy of Forever Chemicals
For generations, Hillhouse at Thornton-Cleveleys was one of the Fylde Coast's great centres of industry, providing employment for thousands and producing chemicals that were used around the world. Today, however, part of that industrial legacy is the subject of a major environmental investigation. At its centre is PFOA, a member of the PFAS family of synthetic substances often called "forever chemicals" because of their extreme persistence in the environment. PFOA was used as a processing aid in fluoropolymer manufacture at Hillhouse from the 1950s until 2012, first during the ICI era and later by AGC Chemicals Europe, which acquired the...
Peter Kay Chooses Blackpool for the Final Curtain on Record-Breaking Tour
Peter Kay is set to bring one of the biggest comedy tours in British history to an end in Blackpool, with two special performances at the Opera House on Saturday 21 November 2026. The matinee and evening shows form part of a final charity extension to his Better Late Than Never Tour, which began almost four years earlier and marked the comedian’s return to stand-up after a 12-year absence. All profits from the final run of performances in Cardiff, Hull, Brighton and Blackpool are being donated to The Lily Foundation, Maggie’s and The Be More Laura Foundation, supporting work connected...
Fleetwood’s Tragic Voyage of the Goth
The loss of the steam trawler Goth (FD52) in December 1948 remains one of the greatest tragedies in Fleetwood's maritime history. Lost in a violent North Atlantic storm off the north-west coast of Iceland, the vessel disappeared with all 21 men on board, leaving families across Fleetwood, Blackpool and Lancashire devastated. The disaster became a defining moment in the history of Fleetwood's fishing industry and a poignant reminder of the dangers faced by the town's deep-sea trawlermen. The Goth was built in 1925 by Cook, Welton & Gemmell Ltd. at Beverley for Hellyer Bros Ltd. of Hull, where she was...
Basil Newby Tells His Story in Basil! Bitches In Stitches
One of Blackpool’s most recognisable entertainment figures has put his extraordinary life into print. Basil Newby’s autobiography, Basil! Bitches In Stitches: The Extraordinary Life and Times of an Irrepressible Blackpool Icon, was published on 1 October 2026, offering his own account of a life spent at the heart of Blackpool’s entertainment and LGBTQ+ communities. Within days of publication the book was receiving prominent attention in his home town, appearing on the front page of the Blackpool Gazette on 5 October 2026. The autobiography takes Newby back to a childhood in Blackpool in which show business was already part of everyday...
Behind the Walls of Fleetwood Barracks
A tall brick wall hidden down an alley off Grasmere Avenue and Coniston Avenue preserves a little-known part of Fleetwood’s military past. Now surrounded by homes, it once enclosed part of the Hutment Barracks, where soldiers were accommodated and ammunition stored. Its weathered surface and small openings near the top offer surviving evidence of a period when military establishments occupied substantial areas of the town. Fleetwood’s development as a garrison town gathered pace following the government’s acquisition of the North Euston Hotel in 1859. The hotel entered military use and housed a School of Musketry, while a separate barracks complex...