Bang goes another century!

January

The year ended with a bang - the Bradford's Best Millennium Community Awards. But it began with a banger. On the very first day of 1999 the T&A carried a photograph of octogenarians Horace and Alice Wilkinson, of Eastby, sitting on the bonnet of the Ford Anglia De Luxe which had been bought 41 years earlier for just under £615 and still had only 80,000 miles on the clock.

"We used to go camping with it and drove it to Italy four times," said Mr Wilkinson, adding that now its use was largely restricted to the weekly shopping trip to Skipton.

On January 2 Queensbury couple Tony and Elaine Taylor, 59 and 54 respectively, told the T&A that their £9.4 million Lottery win 18 months earlier had been too much.

"People don't understand the horrendous problems you go through," said Mr Taylor, although he did add: "I wouldn't go so far as to say I wish we hadn't won it."

Staying in Queensbury, on January 21 new mum Tracy McGee introduced the world to five-week-old twins Dominic and Benjamin - making her the fourth member of the same slimming club in the village to give birth to twins.

One of these mothers thought it might be something to do with the fact that they were all on the same diet, although another thought they might all have been affected by the altitude of Queensbury.

February

On the second of the month Linda Pollard, chairman of Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust, penned an open letter to T&A readers, thanking them for raising £1 million in just 18 months to bring state-of-the-art MRI scanner technology to the BRI.

"Without the pivotal role played by the T&A and its readers, who once again have rallied round to help their local health service, I doubt that we would be in the exciting position we are now in - looking forward to scanning our first patients by the summer," she said.

On February 6 we revealed that 11-year-old Sinead Burniston, of Heaton, faced a rather tricky problem after she was chosen to play the title role in the musical Annie at Shipley United Reformed Church. She had an aversion to dogs - which was unfortunate as one of her key co-stars was to be Herbie, a Jack Russell/Lakeland terrier cross. However, with the help of amiable Herbie and a lot of stage ambition, she was working to overcome her fears.

February 13 was the day we announced that the familiar bowler-hatted duo of Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley were to be pensioned off as part of the major change of image of the building society for which they had been the trademark. The new logo, an array of 20 coloured bowler hats, was said to have been chosen to give "a less masculine look".

March

It snowed on March 6, but that didn't deter hundreds of budding street urchins and pickpockets from braving the elements as they queued outdoors in Saltaire to audition for roles in the production of Oliver which was to be staged at the Alhambra in June.

Pupils and teachers at St Peter's RC School, Leeds Road, Barkerend, went to school in their pyjamas on March 13. It was one of the many fund-raising stunts around the district for Comic Relief Day - an occasion which also saw two 16-year-old (male) pupils at Beckfoot Grammar School, Bingley, have their legs and chests waxed and saw pensioners lunching on cold mashed potatoes at Dudley Hill & Tong Social Club.

Pensioners were expected to be the main customers of new pub which opened in Fagley on March 27. The manageress of The Royal, 53-year-old Dot Hill, said it would be somewhere older people could drink free from the blare of a juke box or intrusive background music.

April

It was the first of the month, but there was nothing foolish about the 4,000 T&A readers who took advantage of a special voucher offer and flocked to a preview of the new-look National Museum of Photography, Film and Television. This major tourist attraction for the city centre had been closed for 18 months for a £16 million facelift. During that time some of the exhibits had been transferred to a Museum in Exile at the former Treadwell Art Gallery in Little Germany.

On April 1, rugby league legend and tireless charity worker Trevor Foster, 84, became the first-ever recipient of the Lord Mayor of Bradford's Lifetime Achievement Awards for 60 years of outstanding service to the city. His service to rubgy league had included 433 appearance for Bradford Northern and three Great Britain caps.

A Keighley cat called Tilly astounded veterinary opinion on April 22 by giving birth to the third kitten of her litter a full six days after producing the first two. Silsden vet Rachel Burrow said she had heard of that sort of thing happening to sheep, but never before to a cat.

May

The organisers of Bradford Festival Mela were well pleased with themselves on May 4. They announced a three-year sponsorship deal with electronics giant Sony. Under its terms, Sony entertainment Television Asia was to become the headline sponsor for the two-day event which attracts 150,000 people, many from outside Bradford.

A tourism-world accolade was bestowed on Bradford on May 20, for the imaginative way it handled the premiere of Fairytale - A True Story, the film based on the mystery of the Cottingley Fairies, the previous year. Bradford was given the White Rose Award for Tourism Event of the Year by the Yorkshire Tourist Board for the premiere's "significant" impact on tourism in the region.

On May 29 Bradford businessman Randolph Victor was praised as a good neighbour and considerate boss after it was revealed that he spent £10,000 resurfacing the road in which his business is based off Cutler Heights Lane, had renovated the drainage system and spent £1,000 on hanging baskets to make the street look its best. He had also given his staff at Principal Reprographic Services Ltd use of a sauna, sunbed, gym, staff bar and canteen complete with pool table, TV, video and hi-fi.

June

The local literary world was shocked on June 8 when criminologist-author James Tully claimed in a new "faction" book that Charlotte Bronte poisoned her sisters and her brother Branwell so she could inherit the royalties from their books. The theory was branded a "fantasy" by Mike Hill, director of the Bronte Parsonage at Haworth.

Bradford's booming curry-house sector rose to the challenge on June 18 after McDonald's launched its McChicken Korma Naan (with vegetable samosas). The T&A put the burger to the test with the help of an expert, comparing the newcomer to fresh locally-made korma, tikka and rogan josh dishes. No prizes for guessing which didn't come out on top.

On June 29 Bradford councillors decided to ask the public for their views on a proposed £10,000 sculpture of a giant needle, intended to stand at the junction of Duke Street and Cheapside. It was to be made of stainless steel and stand 15 feet high. The people of Bradford gave their view in many letters to the T&A deriding the idea, but the decision was eventually taken that it should go ahead.

July

The contractors who painted double yellow lines on Market Street, Thornton, were called back on July 6 to burn them off and repaint them in the paler yellow and narrower stripes required for a conservation area. The originals were too bright and too wide.

On July 12 Shipley fireman Neil Griffin, 25, took on the Guinness Book of Records table-wrestling title holder Chris Sturman, 47, from South Elmsall - table-wrestling involving swinging beneath a table and on to the top of it again without touching the ground. Neil's challenge, at Shipley fire station gala, came to a premature end when the table broke.

On July 30 Saltaire, named by Culture Secretary Chris Smith as the finest example of a model village in England, learned that it had won a place on the tentative list of heritage sites bidding for World Heritage Status - which would place it alongside the likes of the Taj Mahal, Hadrian's Wall and Stonehenge.

August

By August 3 a heatwave had sent sunseekers in their thousands to Ilkley's Lido: 8,000 of them over four days, in fact, the highest recorded figure since 1995 when 4,000 attended in a single day. The Lido was opened in 1936.

People in Bradford were not in line to see the total eclipse of the sun on August 11. That pleasure was reserved for Cornwall. Nevertheless, local people turned out in force to see the 85 per cent eclipse that was visible around here - and had the last laugh because while the skies over Yorkshire were relatively clear, Cornwall was shrouded in cloud.

It was announced on August 23 that Bradford City Hall was to be used as a location the following month for a new film about competitive hairdressing, Never Better, written by Keighley's Simon Beaufoy (of Full Monty fame). The star was to be Alan Rickman, but equally as exciting was the fact that many local people were to get the chance to appear as extras.

September

On September 4 the T&A reported that Bradford Bulls fans had set a new Super League attendance record when a 24,020 crowd at Odsal saw the team beat arch rivals Leeds Rhinos. The previous Super League record was 21,666, though Odsal's best-ever attendance was 102,569 in 1954.

A week later, a press conference arranged to introduce Bradford City's new French striker Bruno Rodriguez foundered when it emerged that he couldn't speak a word of English. T&A reported Simon Ashberry, covering the press conference, saved the day by acting as interpreter.

On September 27 there were revelations of spooky goings on at Prospect Mills in Wilsden, where footsteps had been heard on stairs and doors had been seen to open and slam shut when there was no-one about. Village gossip has it that in 1895 a weaver hanged herself from a lift shaft in the mill.

October

Black Dyke Band signed contracts on October 5 to buy its band room and start essential structural work - a vital step on the way to creating a "centre of excellence" for brass in Queensbury. It had needed to raise £100,000 before it could apply for grants from elsewhere.

It was a grant - from the National Lottery - which enabled Bradford Astronomical Society to buy a computerised telescope, which it unveiled on October 12. All a sky-watcher needs to do is tap in details of a planet or constellation and the telescope homes in on it. Isn't science wonderful?

On October 27 it was announced that Keighley and Ilkley MP Ann Cryer had been elected president of Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Preservation Society - thought to be Europe's first and only female senior officer of a heritage railway. Mrs Cryer's late husband, Bob, helped to found the society in 1962.

November

The second of the month saw another first for Bradford - the launch of curry-oke nights at The Shehab restaurant in Thornton Road. This was believed to be the only Asian restaurant in Yorkshire to present this sort of spicy version of karaoke.

November 16 was when T&A readers learned the happy ending to the story of Sasha, the black-and-white cat which was believed to have been killed in a road accident in the summer of 1996 after disappearing from Jenny Sampson's Bradford Cat Rescue at Allerton. But when three cats were brought to the Allerton sanctuary this week, Jenny recognised the distinctively-marked Sasha among them.

On November 26 Keighley postman David Driver announced his forthcoming marriage to Tanya Epifanova, the Siberian sweetheart he "met" through a World Wide Web dating agency and wooed on the Internet for nine months.

December

The month has been dominated by one big story about local people: the T&A Bradford's Best Millennium Community Awards, which culminated in a prestigious gala presentation dinner at the Cedar Court Hotel on December 16.

There, those people and groups who have done so much to help others were honoured and Bradford pride blossomed. It was a wonderful way to send the district marching towards the new millennium with its head held high.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.