A recent missive from the J B Priestley Society, of which I am a life member, led to me having another attack of Bradforditis. It’s an incurable disease. I do not want to be cured. Simply leave me alone to ponder on memories of people and places.

I hark back to the city of the day before yesterday when the tang of coffee wafted across the pavement as you passed Collinson’s restaurant, when Fred Power had a bookstall in Kirkgate Market, and when dear old Bonnyface – a locomotive, that is – hauled a rake of carriages on a weekday journey twixt Bradford and Hawes.

My most vivid memory of J B Priestley was of driving him over Buckhaw Brow in my 1939 Ford which, the day before, had been the subject of a report by a local garage proprietor. It seems that the car had tappet rattle, piston slap – and a crack in the chassis. With J B’s rather portly form – and mine – the car seemed more confined than a space capsule.

I was taking him to see Harry J Scott at The Dalesman in Clapham. Here, two pipe-smokers had soon blotted out Harry’s office with smoke, which had the density of the chimney of a Bradford mill dealing with a rush order for cloth.

O B Stokes, a Welshman in a prime Yorkshire position as editor of the Telegraph & Argus, was a fellow Methodist. He had a fund of good tales about the city but acknowledged in 1971, which was the year we spoke about it, that the place had changed. Gone were the cloth-capped mill-owners only a generation or two removed from overlookers and weavers, being content with old-fashioned machinery and certain that King Wool would reign forever.

Bradford was noted for the wealth of its inhabitants. It was said there were more Rolls-Royce cars to be seen in Darley Street (known then as the Bond Street of Yorkshire) than in any other street in the country.

Some of the Bradford textile manufacturers were strange characters. One, who lived in a neighbouring village, took surplus eggs from his hens to sell to his mill operatives. One morning, while waiting for his train on the village station, an egg rolled from an overfull basket and cracked on the platform. The manufacturer bent down and with his morning newspaper scooped up the yolk with the words: “It’ll poach.”

In the old Palace Theatre, the young Gracie Fields, embarking on her dazzling career, entertained large audiences. Appearing at the Empire Theatre was a young man called Charlie Chaplin, whose ambition led him to Hollywood.

Hardy’s Continental restaurant was the place where, according to O B Stokes, the well-known restaurateur conversed with his customers from wool textile centres overseas in French, in German and in Spanish as well. Yet he, Henry Hardy, had come to Bradford from an obscure mid-European town and initially was a waiter at the Midland Hotel.

Just another Bradford success story.