Joyce's (belated) October Column

Well, I never thought I would be the centre of media attention, but recently I had my photo and an editorial in The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Oldham Times, The Times, Manchester Evening News and even Welsh Newspapers plus a live interview on GB News on TV, and all because I was the woman from Oldham that Sir Kier Starmer mentioned in his speech at the recent Labour Conference.

The reason behind all the media attention was that my recollection of his visit to my home was completely different to the one he gave, so when the media found out I was this woman they wanted my side of the visit, so I gave them my version of the visit the true version, plus how I asked him to leave my home when he inferred that I was ‘Racist.’

I am anything but, I live in a neighbourhood that has a high Asian population, and a lot of these Asians come to me with their problems and ask for help with their bank accounts etc as they don’t trust their own people, plus I buy Christmas presents for at least 28 Asian children in the area, go to all the weddings and events, so if I was racist I wouldn’t be doing any of these things.  Maybe after all this attention that has come from his speech he will in future rack his brain for the truth, but then again, I doubt it very much. Just to add within 9 hours of the interview on GB News I had over 9000 comments, and most of them agreeing with what I had said.

Now even more about me - well it is my chat column!! Recently had a holiday to Djerba which I had wanted to go to for quite a long time, and all set off well until we got to the car park in Manchester and found out a passport had been left at home, so it was a fast turn- around to get back to Oldham to get it, and luckily enough the flight got delayed by 90 minutes so it still gave time to enjoy the lounge at the airport.

Thinking once we set off that would be it, but how wrong can one be, as a certain unkindly person decided to vape in the toilet on the aircraft, and the announcement the staff made to all passengers was very strong to say the least, but the man that had done this didn’t seem to care, but he did when we landed.

We sat on the plane for a good 30 minutes before we could get off as the airline staff were waiting for the police to come and arrest the man which they did and he was taken away and the staff said he would have to try to get back home the best way he could as one airline informs another of events like this and the person gets barred from travelling with them.  OK so that was over and done with and next was the passport check it took 90 plus minutes to get through this, they were so slow and only 3 booths open, so I began to think maybe this holiday was a bad thing after all. Mind you though how it changed and from the upon arrival at the hotel all went swimmingly and a great week in nice hot sunshine followed. The journey home was just the opposite and we landed at Manchester Airport 25 minutes early, which in itself is most unusual, just hope when I return to Djerba (which I will) that there are no problems.

Industry stalwart Ray Wells who has been based in the Isle of Man for numerous years now recently went back to his employment roots which was aviation and in 1952 he served a 7 year apprenticeship at an aircraft factory just outside of Hull where he lived at that time, and he has now been helping to restore a Manx Airlines aircraft for the Aviation Museum at the Isle of Man Airport, he also roped his wife Margaret to assist with this. Taking an old ATP aircraft into a hangar and repainted it from a grey BA colour (it had been used as a freighter) back to the original Manx Airlines colours then it was time to resurrect the inside of the aircraft, and this is where Margaret came onto the scene.

Margaret made headrest covers from one of the old original ones and she fitted them, and it looks like she did a fantastic job of them. The aircraft is open at weekends for viewing but there are many people that it brings back memories for who had flown on Manx Airlines in the past for some reason or another like maybe a trip to Liverpool to the hospital or a weekend visit there, flew to Heathrow for a connecting flight to Disney, USA if not a connecting flight then maybe the flight to Heathrow to enjoy the joys of London, whatever the reason Manx Airlines played a big part in many people’s lives. Well done to Ray and Margaret for all their hard work and enthusiasm with this project and the photos show some of their work, and I suppose the title of the Rod Stewart song ‘We Are Sailing’ could be altered to ‘Ray Is Flying.’

I was watching Eastenders recently and virtually the first person that appeared in the episode was none other than ex BACTA’s Parveen Sharma, it was just a quick walk on part but I could tell without doubt it was Parveen.

Sterling Amusements John Marriott and Pasquale Petruccio of Game Coin enjoyed their visit to the Beer Festival in Munich courtesy of Blueprint, they had 2 nights in Munich for the Oktoberfest, the first night they went out to dinner with alcohol of course and ended up in a Karaoke bar, the second night was the night they had to dress up to get their dinner and alcohol, which if course they did, and the photos here prove it.

Sorry to hear of the recent passing of Roger Melling ex journalist with Casino World, Roger was a well-known and respected journalist in the Casino industry, and had led an exciting and fulfilled life, and I will tell you more about this life in November chat column, as there will be some very interesting recollections and some surprising ones.   I would like to send condolences to his family and friends, and add that it had been an honour to know Roger.

We now have the first exhibition of what I call the exhibition season under our belts, the ACOS exhibition which seems to go from strength to strength each year, with new exhibitors gracing the floor together with the regular ones.  I can hardly believe that it celebrated the 10th year, where has that time gone? Maybe, the success of this show has something to do with the organiser Karen Cooke and the way she organises the show which she is always first class at and there will be some jottings from the show next month.    

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6 November 2025

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