Paul Collins (Brookside)
Paul Collins was a character in Brookside played by Jim Wiggins between 1982 and 1990. The Collins family moved into Brookside Close during the first episode, having bought Number 8. From the start, there was conflict between the middle-class Collins family and the working-class Grants. Upon arrival at Number 8, they found house had been vandalised by Damon Grant and his friends, somebody had stolen the toilet. An indignant Paul confronted Bobby Grant. Damon denied stealing the toilet. Unlike the Grant family, who had come from a run-down council estate to live on Brookside Close, the Collins family had lived in a large, comfortable house on The Wirral, but were forced to downsize to something much smaller after Paul was made redundant. In the early days of Brookside, Paul was unemployed and storylines centred on the family's struggle to cope with their new humbler surroundings and financial hardship, along with Paul's discomfort at having to sign on alongside people he once looked down on. Paul's daughter Lucy resented her father for their reduced circumstances after she was forced to swap her public school for the local comprehensive, where her posh accent and privileged background saw her become the victim of bullying.
Paul found another job, the family's financial situation improved for a while. However, in 1986 he was again made redundant; this time he decided to take early retirement rather than face the humiliation of having to sign on again. Paul was a conservative and principled man. However, he was never the most tactful or sensitive of people, antagonised his neighbours with his high-handed and snobbish attitude towards them. Paul described himself as the'boss of the Collins household', yet in reality he wife Annabelle and daughter Lucy got their way. Having once served as a captain in the British army, he struggled to come to terms with his son Gordon's sexuality as well as his daughter Lucy's promiscuity. However, Paul could be a kind and generous man. Prior to losing his job in 1982 and again in 1986, Paul had worked as a production manager for a large petrochemical firm. There was a 13-year age gap between Annabelle, with Wiggins being 60 when he took the role. Paul was optimistic that the family would be back in their former lavish circumstances soon using phrases like'this time next year we'll be back in the Wirral'.
Following Doreen Sloane's death from cancer, the entire Collins family were written out of Brookside in the summer of 1990, moving to the Lake District to help look after Annabelle's frail mother and her new husband Gerald Fallon. At the time of their departure, the Collins were one of the few original families left in the soap, the only household to have survived since the programme started. By the 1990s the dynamic of Brookside was changing and the show was moving away from the'gritty realism' that had defined its early years through families such as the Grants and the Collinses
Bobby Grant (Brookside)
Bobby Grant is a fictional character from British soap opera, Brookside played by Ricky Tomlinson. Bobby appeared in Brookside from the first episode in 1982 until the character's departure in 1988. Bobby was the first main character in the series to have a spoken line after recurring actor John Whitehall had said the first line on the show; the Grant family consisted of Bobby Grant, Sheila Grant, Barry Grant, Karen Grant and Damon Grant. The whole family appeared in the first episode and were the first to move into the new houses on Brookside Close, moving into No. 5. Prior to moving onto Brookside Close, the Grant family were from a run-down, inner-city council estate; however through Bobby and Sheila's thrift and hard work, they managed to move to the "middle-class "Brookside Close. A fourth child, was born on 8 January 1985 - the first baby to be born in the series, more than two years after its inception. Bobby Grant could be a domineering man over his family, throughout the series was shown to hit his son Damon for minor misdemeanours.
Bobby Grant's role as patriarch of the Grant family was tested in 1986 when his wife Sheila was raped. The character was a longtime friend of Matty Nolan and endured a difficult relationship with neighbour, Paul Collins. Bobby Grant was a politicised character, throughout the early years of the soap was a committed socialist and trade union activist and the storylines reflected this; the stories of trade union activity were on the Zeitgeist of the early-1980s when unemployment was high - in Liverpool - and there was considerable industrial unrest at the time. In the opening episodes, Bobby is asked to take a pay cut and from here the political beliefs of the character are set out. Despite being an ardent socialist, Bobby is a realist and a moderate; as a shop-steward he is seen to liaise with his members defending management against false accusations. Many of Bobby's co-workers are somewhat more militant than he is, but given Bobby's realistic appraisal of the world. Bobby Grant was the trade union shop steward at the factory where he worked, he was involved in the orchestrating of industrial action.
In the course of his duties he was accused of abusing his position as a shop steward with regards to the allocation of overtime, in the belief that he was using his power to ensure his shift had all of the overtime. Bobby calls in the Health and Safety inspectors at Billinge Chemicals after he discovers many of the staff suffer from asbestosis. During a strike over unsafe working conditions in February 1987, Bobby loses authority of union members after he refuses to answer whether he is in the Militant tendency. After Sheila was raped in 1986 and the death of son Damon in 1987, Bobby and Sheila's marriage began to falter; the two started to attend marriage guidance and Sheila sought advice from her priest. The pair split in May 1988 with Bobby taking the decision to leave Sheila. Bobby left the soap, although Sheila remained in it until September 1990 marrying Billy Corkhill, she made several one-off appearances in the soap, the final one being in 1998
Damon and Debbie
Damon and Debbie was a three-part spin-off from the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside first broadcast in November 1987. A Mersey Television production, it was written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, directed by Bob Carlton, produced by Colin McKeown; the series is credited as the first'soap bubble'. The series followed teen sweethearts Damon Grant and Debbie McGrath as they absconded to York to escape their disapproving parents in Liverpool who objected to the relationship because of the class divide, it ended with the death of Damon, a regular character in Brookside since its launch in 1982. Damon and Debbie was developed in response to several factors, according to Brookside creator Phil Redmond. Firstly, the producers were keen to develop further "high-octane storylines" having seen the audience and media response to 1985's siege storyline, in which nurses Pat and Kate were held hostage in their home, concluding in the latter's murder. Actor Simon O'Brien, who had played Damon Grant since the show's first episode in 1982, said he not only wished to leave the show, but requested that his character be killed off.
Additionally the intention was to celebrate Brookside's fifth anniversary in November 1987, the production team and executives were keen to mark the occasion. The Grant family had featured in major storylines the rape of Sheila Grant (played by Sue Johnston, Damon was used to illustrate the problems of the Thatcher ministry's Youth Training Scheme, which saw Damon, who expected to be employed by a firm for whom he had worked for low wages, but being told that the company were going to replace him with further cheap labour at the end of his service in the scheme. Following both of these storylines, executive producer Phil Redmond suggests, Damon's departure would have to be "something a bit special"; the producers developed the idea of a'soap bubble', a term which Redmond credits to Channel 4 executive David Rose, so that the multi-stranded narrative of Brookside would continue during the standard episodes, with two characters co-existing in a separate production. Damon and Debbie is recognised as the first instance of a UK soap opera expanding its narrative world in such a way.
According to Annie Leask of The Sunday Mirror, the spin-off was a result of the characters' popularity with the viewing public. The character of Debbie McGrath was introduced into Brookside as Damon Grant's girlfriend, her being younger than Damon caused friction between the parents of both characters, alongside a class-divide, a plot-line which saw one critic refer to it as like "Romeo and Juliet in trackies". When their parents objected to them dating, the couple decided to elope from Liverpool to York, an adventure, depicted in Damon and Debbie. Filming took place over six weeks; the scenes in which Debbie attends an open day were filmed on 19 September 1987 at the University of York. The same corridor was used several times for the scenes in which Damon tries to find her, with the furniture rearranged to make it appear different each time; the computer graphic. The three-part series was broadcast late on Wednesday evenings on Channel 4 in November 1987, with an omnibus edition screened over the Christmas period of that year.
Following the broadcast of Damon and Debbie, the storyline returned to Brookside. Police are seen arriving to break the news to Sheila Grant in episode 529, broadcast on 23 November 1987. Debbie returned to Brookside, Damon's funeral was featured in the episode of Brookside broadcast on 1 December. Crosby actor Jonathan Comer, the extra who played the part of Damon's killer, began to receive threatening phone calls and hate mail shortly after the episode was broadcast; the music played over the opening and closing credits was written by Steve Wright, who had written the Brookside theme. Dani Ali performed "Talk to Me", a song written for the show's closing credits, on episodes one and three, with a recording by English singer-songwriter Annabel Lamb accompanying the credits of episode two. Both versions of the song were releases on the Ariola label through BMG. There is no record of the single gaining a chart position; the title was the closing spoken line of dialogue in all three episodes. Damon Grant – Simon O'Brien Debbie McGrath – Gillian Kearney Lettuce – Siobhan Maher Mr McGrath – Nick Maloney Nick – John Basham Barbara/Bridget McGrath – Annie Tyson Lonnie – Neil Caple Tone – Geof Atwell Zoe – Jaye Griffiths Jenny – Michelle Holmes Kirk – Ian Ormsby-Knox Patrick – Lyndam Gregory Apala – Seeta Indrani Sadhir – James Neale-Kennerley Damon and Debbie on IMDb
Morecambe
Morecambe is a coastal town on Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, which had a population of 34,768 at the 2011 Census. The first use of the name was by John Whitaker in his History of Manchester, when he refers to the æstury of Moricambe, it next appears four years in Antiquities of Furness, where the bay is described as "the Bay of Morecambe". That name is derived from the Roman name shown on maps prepared for them by Claudius Ptolemœus from his original Greek maps. At this distance in time it is impossible to say if the name was derived from an earlier language or from Greek; the Latin version describes the fourth inlet north from Wales on the west coast of England as Moriancabris Æsturis. Translated, this gives a more accurate description than the present name of Morecambe Bay as the Latin refers to multiple estuaries on a curved sea, not a bay, as the word sinus or gulf would have been used; the name appeared in March 1862 on a steam locomotive built for the South Durham and Lancashire Union Railway, which could indicate it was in unofficial use for the area.
It was not until 1889 that the necessary legislation was passed to name the area Morecambe, comprising the hamlets of Poulton and Torrisholme. In 1894, the Urban District Council was formed, thus freeing Morecambe from its governance by the Borough of Lancaster until 1974 when Lancaster again took charge. Before the creation of Morecambe, Poulton acquired two suffixes, "le Sands" and "on Sands"; the reason for these additions stems from the dearth of names of townships in earlier times with the same name recurring over again. In the days before free movement of people, this was not so important; as travel became easier through first the turnpikes and the railways, it became necessary to differentiate between the various towns with the same name, hence the additions. On 3 August 1928, the name changed again when the Corporation of Morecambe amalgamated with Heysham Urban District Council to form the Municipal Borough of Morecambe and Heysham. In 1846, the Morecambe Harbour and Railway Company was formed to build a harbour on Morecambe Bay, close to the fishing village of Poulton-le-Sands and a connecting railway.
By 1850, the railway linked to Skipton and Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a settlement began to grow around the harbour and railway to service the port and as a seaside resort. The settlement expanded to absorb the villages of Bare and Torrisholme; the settlement started to be referred to as "Morecambe" after the harbour and railway. In 1889, the new name was adopted. Morecambe was a thriving seaside resort in the mid-20th century. While the resort of Blackpool attracted holiday-makers predominantly from the Lancashire mill towns, Morecambe had more visitors from Yorkshire and Scotland. Mill workers from Bradford and further afield in West Yorkshire would holiday at Morecambe, with some retiring there; this gave Morecambe the nickname "Bradford on Sea". Between 1956 and 1989, it was the home of the Miss Great Britain beauty contest. Morecambe suffered a decades-long decline after a series of incidents that damaged tourism and the local economy. Two piers were lost: West End Pier was washed away in a storm in November 1977, the remnants were demolished in 1978.
In 1994, The World of Crinkley Bottom attraction in Happy Mount Park closed only thirteen weeks after opening. The ensuing Blobbygate scandal led to a legal battle between Lancaster City Council and TV star Noel Edmonds; the closures of Bubbles, Morecambe's swimming pool, the Frontierland fairground soon followed. Concern over the decline of Morecambe's West End led to investment in the area; the Times and the Daily Telegraph ran features on Morecambe's revival around Easter 2006. After falling into abeyance in the mid-1980s, the Miss Morecambe beauty contest was revived in 2006 by Margee Ltd, a local fashion store founded in 1933 – the same year that the second Midland Hotel opened. Morecambe was selected by the RNLI as the location for its first active life-saving hovercraft. H-002 "The Hurley Flyer", which became operational on 23 December 2002, was housed in a temporary garage next to the Yacht Club until a permanent building could be designed and built. Work on the latter began in 2008, it opened on 12 June 2010.
On 5 February 2004, there was a major loss of life in Morecambe Bay when Chinese immigrant shellfish harvesters were drowned. In December 2017 a local general practitioner and community health activist claimed that children in Morecambe were suffering from malnourishment and implied that cases of rickets had been observed as a consequence; the Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Group subsequently sought to correct the GP's claims and clarified the aetiology of vitamin D deficiency in the local population, explaining "rickets is a rare condition and has multiple causes". Enoch Powell made a speech in Morecambe on 11 October 1968 on the economy, setting out alternative, radical free-market policies that would be called the Morecambe Budget. Powell used the financial year 1968–69 to show how income tax could be halved from 8s 3d to 4s 3d in the pound and how capital gains tax and Selective Employment Tax could be abolished without reducing expenditure on defence or the social services; these tax cuts required a saving of £2,855 million, this would be funded by eradicating losses in the nationalised industries and denationalising the profit-making state concern
Valley Parade
Valley Parade known as the Northern Commercials Stadium through sponsorship rights, is an all-seater football stadium in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It was built in 1886, was the home of Manningham Rugby Football Club until 1903, when they changed code from rugby football to association football and became Bradford City, it has been Bradford City's home since, although it is now owned by former chairman Gordon Gibb's pension fund. It has been home to Bradford for one season, Bradford Bulls rugby league side for two seasons, as well as host to a number of England youth team fixtures. Football architect Archibald Leitch was commissioned to redevelop the ground when Bradford City were promoted to the First Division in 1908. From the stadium underwent few changes until 1985, when it was the scene of a fatal fire on 11 May 1985, when 56 supporters were killed and at least 265 were injured, it underwent a £2.6 million redevelopment and was re-opened in December 1986. The ground underwent significant changes in the 1990s, early 2000s, now has a capacity of 25,136.
The record attendance of 39,146 was set in 1911 for an FA Cup tie against Burnley, making it the oldest surviving attendance record at a Football League ground in the country. The highest attendance at Valley Parade, as it is now, was against Reading in the 2015 FA Cup Quarter-finals. Manningham Rugby Football Club, formed in 1876 played games at Cardigan Fields, in the Carlisle Road area of Bradford; when their ground was sold to facilitate the construction of Drummond School, the club required a new home. They bought one-third of the Valley Parade site in Manningham, taking a short-term lease out on the rest of the land in time to play there for the 1886–87 season; the new ground and the road it was built upon both adopted the name of the local area, Valley Parade, a name deriving from the steep hillside below Manningham. The land was a quarry, formed part of a greater site owned by Midland Railway Company; the club spent £1,400 appointing designers to oversee the excavation and levelling of the land, moved a one-year-old stand from Carlisle Road to the highest part of the new ground.
The original ground comprised the relocated stand, a 2,000-capacity stepped enclosure with the players' changing rooms beneath the stand, the playing area, a cinder athletics track and fencing to limit the total capacity to 18,000. The playing field was made of ballast, ashes and sods; the ground was opened on 27 September 1886 for a game against Wakefield Trinity, watched by a capacity crowd, but construction work meant most of Manningham's early games were away fixtures. Manningham RFC continued playing until 1903, when financial difficulties, caused by relegation at the turn of the century, prompted club officials to change codes from rugby football to association football; the first association football game to be played at Valley Parade was a promotional fixture on 6 April 1903 between a side of West Yorkshire footballers and Sheffield United's 1903 FA Cup winning side. The game attracted 8,000 fans; the new football club, Bradford City, were elected to The Football League's Division Two the following month.
Bradford City's first game at Valley Parade came on 5 September 1903 against Gainsborough Trinity, drawing a crowd of 11,000. As a result of alterations first implemented in 1897, City players changed in a shed behind one end of the ground, visiting teams used the old rugby club dressing rooms at the back of the nearby Belle Vue Hotel. However, after City's 5–1 defeat by Manchester United on 10 February 1906, United player Bob Bonthron was attacked as he left the ground; as a result, The Football Association closed the ground for 14 days, ordering City to switch its changing rooms to the nearby Artillery Barracks for the 1906–07 season. Several supporters faced criminal proceedings for the incident. After Bradford City won the Division Two championship in 1907–08, the club hurried through a reconstruction programme of the ground to prepare for the club's first season in Division One. Football architect Archibald Leitch was commissioned to design new terracing in the paddock—a standing area in front of the 5,300-seater main stand, built in 1908—and build a Spion Kop at the north side of the ground and an 8,000-capacity stand at the Midland Road end opposite the main stand.
Further work was performed to lower the railings, erect barriers, move the pitch and add extra turnstiles. The changing rooms were moved, with a tunnel leading from the rooms underneath the Kop along the main stand side of the ground; the total project cost £9,958, raised the capacity to 40,000. The work was not completed until midway through the 1908–09 season; the first match after work was finished took place on Christmas Day 1908, when 36,000 fans saw City host Bristol City. The improvements allowed Bradford City to set their record attendance of 39,146 on 11 March 1911 against Burnley during the club's FA Cup winning run, it is the longest surviving attendance record at any league ground in the country. On 17 March 1932, Bradford City paid Midland Railway Company £3,750 for the remaining two-thirds of the site to become outright owners of the ground, now 45 years old; the stadium had remained unchanged since 1908, did so until 1952, when the capacity of the ground was reduced after examinations of the foundations were ordered following the 1946 Burnden Park disaster.
The investigation resulted in the closure of half the Midland Road stand. The stand's steel frame was sold to Berwick Rangers for £450 and a smaller replacement stand was built at Valley Parade in 1954. Six years the stand had to be demolished for a
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold that office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her "The'Iron Lady'", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style; as Prime Minister, she implemented policies known as Thatcherism. She studied chemistry at Somerville College and worked as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his Conservative government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom, she became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.
Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her decisive re-election in 1983, she survived an assassination attempt in the Brighton hotel bombing in 1984. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge was unpopular, her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet, she resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.
After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke in London at the age of 87. Always a controversial figure, she is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings of British prime ministers, her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in the United Kingdom. Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925, in Lincolnshire, her parents were Alfred Roberts, from Northamptonshire, Beatrice Ethel, from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham. In 1938, prior to the Second World War, the Roberts family gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl who had escaped Nazi Germany. Margaret, with her pen-friending elder sister Muriel, saved pocket money to help pay for the teenager's journey. Alfred Roberts was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher, brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist, attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church.
He stood as an Independent. He served as Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School, a grammar school, her school reports showed continual improvement. She was head girl in 1942–43. In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at the University of Oxford's Somerville College, a women's college at the time, but she was rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours, in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin, her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. Thatcher did not devote herself to studying chemistry as she only intended to be a chemist for a short period of time.
While working on the subject, she was thinking towards law and politics. She was prouder of becoming the first Prime Minister with a science degree than becoming the first woman, as Prime Minister attempted to preserve Somerville as a women's college. During her time at Oxford, she was noted for her isolated and serious attitude, her first boyfriend, Tony Bray, recalled that she was "very thoughtful and a good conversationalist. That's what interested me, she was good at general subjects". Her enthusiasm for politics as a girl made him think of her as "unusual". Bray met Roberts' parents and described them as "slightly austere" and "very proper". At the end of the term at Oxford, Bray became more distant and hoped for their relationship to "fizzle out". Bray recalled that he thought Roberts had taken the relationship more than he had done; when asked about Bray in life, Thatcher prevaricated but acknowledged the circumstances between herself and Bray. Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946.
She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, which condemned economic intervention by government as a
Bradford City A.F.C.
Bradford City Association Football Club is a professional football club in Bradford, West Yorkshire, which plays in League One, the third tier of English football. Gary Bowyer is the club's manager, appointed on 4 March 2019; the club was founded in 1903 and elected into the Football League Second Division. Promotion to the top tier followed in 1908 and the club won the FA Cup in 1911, its only major honour. After relegation in 1922 from Division One, the club spent 77 years outside the top flight until promotion to the Premier League in 1999. Relegation followed in 2000–01 and since a series of financial crises have pushed the club to the brink of closure and resulted in two more relegations to League Two. In the 2012–13 season, they became the first team from the fourth tier of English football to reach the League Cup Final, losing 5–0 to Swansea City. In the same season, they returned to Wembley for the playoff final and won promotion to League One with a 3–0 win over Northampton Town; the club's colours are claret and amber and they play home games at Valley Parade.
The ground was the site of the Bradford City stadium fire on 11 May 1985 which took the lives of 56 supporters. Bradford City were formed in 1903 as a result of a series of meetings called by James Whyte, a sub-editor of the Bradford Observer, with Football Association representatives and officials at Manningham F. C. a rugby league side. The Football League saw the invitation as a chance to promote association football in the rugby league-dominated county of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it duly elected the new club in place of Doncaster Rovers. Four days at the 23rd annual meeting of Manningham FC, the committee decided to change code from rugby league to association football. Bradford City Association Football Club were formed without having played a game, taking over Manningham's colours of claret and amber, their Valley Parade ground. Robert Campbell was appointed the club's first manager and with the help of the new committee, he assembled a playing squad at the cost of £917 10s 0d. City's first game was a 2–0 defeat at Grimsby Town on 1 September 1903, six days before their first home game attracted 11,000 fans.
The club finished 10th in their first season. Peter O'Rourke took over as manager in November 1905, he led City to the Division Two title in 1907–08 and with it promotion to the Division One. Having narrowly avoided relegation in their first season in the top flight, City recorded their highest finish of 5th in 1910–11; the same season they won the FA Cup, when a goal from captain Jimmy Speirs won the final replay against Newcastle United. City's defence of the cup, which included the first Bradford derby against Bradford Park Avenue, was stopped by Barnsley after a run of 12 consecutive clean sheets. City remained in the top flight in the period up to the First World War and for three seasons afterwards, but were relegated in 1921–22 along with Manchester United. Back in Division Two, attendances dropped and City struggled for form, with five consecutive finishes in the bottom half of the table, they suffered a second relegation to Division Three in 1926–27. Two seasons O'Rourke, who had retired in 1921 following the death of his son and guided City to promotion with a record haul of 128 goals.
O'Rourke left for a second time after one more season, although City spent a total of eight seasons back in Division Two, they looked like earning promotion back to the top flight. Instead in 1936–37, the club were relegated back to Division Three. City won their third piece of silverware two seasons when they lifted the Third Division North Challenge Cup, but they were unable to defend the trophy because competitive football was suspended for the Second World War. After the war, City went through two managers in the first two seasons, were in the bottom half of the Division Three table until 1955–56. After three successive top half finishes, City were placed in the new Division Three in 1958–59. Bradford spent just three seasons in Division Three, but during their relegation season in 1960–61, they upset Division One side Manchester United in the inaugural season of the League Cup. With 34 goals from David Layne, City nearly earned an instant promotion the following season 1961–62, but it did include a record 9–1 defeat to Colchester United.
Layne left for Sheffield Wednesday, without him City finished second from bottom of the league and had to apply for re-election. Bradford City just failed to win promotion in 1963–64, winning more games than any other team in the division that season, twenty five, with Rodney Green top scoring with 29 league goals. There followed three difficult seasons during which time manager Grenville Hair died following a heart attack in training, City returned to Division Three getting promoted in 1968–69. City's stay in Division Three lasted just three years, when they finished bottom in 1971–72. Promotion via fourth spot was won again in 1976–77 but it was followed by a relegation season. City failed to win promotion for three successive seasons, until the board appointed former England centre back Roy McFarland as manager in May 1981. McFarland won promotion in his first season, but was poached by his former club Derby County just six months later. City won compensation from Derby and installed another England international Trevor Cherry as McFarland's replacement.
Cherry, with former teammate Terry Yorath as his assistant manager, failed to win for two months, but the pair guided City to safety from relegation. During the summer, the club chairman Bob Martin had to call in the official receivers; the club was saved by former chairman Stafford Heginbotham and former board member Jack Tordoff
