Three for me. BBC Radio’s Allan Beswick on Manchester landmarks.

BBC Radio Manchester’s Allan Beswick, the breakfast show presenter known for putting local politicians through their paces, gives us his three favourite Manchester landmarks. Now, glass of Vimto, anyone?

The Baby

At 11am on 21 June 1948 at the University of Manchester, ‘Baby’ ran the world’s first storable computer programme. Wow! Hardly. That first programme was distinctly underwhelming. ‘Baby’ managed to make a comparatively simple (for mathematicians) calculation and display a pre-known answer. It took almost an hour. Imagine, if you will, a machine that performs just one of the many functions capable of the most basic mobile phone but is the size of a dozen wardrobes. Sadly, the original Baby no longer exists, but in 1998, the Computer Conservation Society built a half size replica, which now stands in resplendent glory at MOSI. With its myriad dials, a Spaghetti Junction of wires and collection of mustard jar-like valves, it looks as if it was built from the innards of a thousand steam radios. Every time I see it I think of: the micro-wave oven, sat-nav, the internet, mobile phones, space travel and even synchronized traffic lights. This baby is the parent of everything that has a switch on it and quite a lot that doesn’t.

A Monument to Vimto

Visit the Middle East during Ramadan and you’ll see millions of bottles of Vimto being downed by the locals. This purple drink can be served hot or cold and is said to taste of fruit. There is even a rumour that it might actually contain fruit. Since 1992 Kerry Morrison’s sculpture A Monument to Vimto has stood in oaken magnificence at Granby Row, the site where in 1908 John Noel Nichols, a druggist, herb importer and purveyor of ‘nit ointment’ wondered how to get punters to part with their brass. His answer? He came up with a drink that promised to invigorate without getting you drunk – and thus Vim Tonic, later shortened to Vimto, was born. The elixir played on the popularity of alcohol abstention and was a huge hit in the growing number of Temperance Bars. And so it remained until the late 1940s when the leisure industry first peeped from the post-war gloom. Nichols seized his moment and repositioned Vimto as ‘a soft drink taken for pleasure and the quenching of thirst’. Nowadays, this global export is no longer made in Manchester. So Kerry Morrison’s sculpture is all we’ve got left. Except, of course, for those millions of cans of Vimto.

The Royal Exchange

Enter the Royal Exchange building and you can’t help but be impressed by its modernity. At its heart is the lunar landing module that is the theatre itself, to one side the Craft Shop, and on the other, the restaurant and bar. Yet look up and you see history: three sets of numbers that depict the price of cotton in Liverpool, Alexandria and New York and were the measure and principle factor in the wealth of nations, the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution that had Manchester at its centre. Cotton spinning was previously a cottage industry; Manchester’s trick was to industrialise the commerce of cotton and in 1729 Manchester’s first ‘cotton exchange’ was built. The current Royal Exchange stands on that same site, the fourth of its kind, re-built each time trade outgrew the space. And those numbers? They are the closing figures from the day in 1968 when King Cotton finally genuflected to the new king – synthetic fibre – and Manchester relinquished its crown. Those three numbers, meaningless today, are the very reason for Manchester.

Allan Beswick presents the daily breakfast show on BBC Radio Manchester. He has worked as a radio broadcaster for over 30 years, rising to fame in the 1980s thanks to his late night phone-in show on Red Rose Radio.

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